CHAPTER 1 | PROTESTANT MUSIC OUTSIDE THE CALVINIST ORBIT 41
K This watercolor depicts
Moravian bishop Jacob Van Vleck
at the keyboard accompanying
young singers who may be
students at the school in
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, of
which he was the principal.the congregation (musical instruments carried none
of the secular taint here that disturbed the Calvin-
ists). Such groups of instrumentalists also met outside
worship services to play chamber and even orches-
tral music, most of it composed in Europe. By 1780
the Bethlehem collegium musicum—one such group,
consisting of four violins, one viola, and pairs of vio-
loncellos, fl utes, oboes, French horns, and trumpets—
was skilled enough to play symphonies by the day’s
leading composers: Haydn, Mozart, and the sons of
J. S. Bach. Like the singers, collegium members were
amateurs who performed to enrich a community life
dedicated to God’s glory.
Ich will dir ein Freudenopfer thun (I will freely sacri-
fi ce unto Thee; LG 1.5), by Johann Friedrich Peter, is a
good example of a Moravian anthem. Peter, a native
of Holland who was educated there and in Germany,
was an exact contemporary of William Billings. He
immigrated to America in 1770 at the age of twenty-
four to serve Moravian communities in Pennsylva-
nia. A schoolteacher who also fi lled several church
positions, he directed music for the Salem, North
Carolina, congregation between 1780 and 1790, and
there he seems to have composed this work for four-
voice choir (sopranos I and II, alto, and bass) and
orchestra (strings with two French horns). Peter’s
anthem is through-composed: instead of literally
repeating one or more sections of music, the composer continually spins out
new music. Tying it all together, though, is one repeated musical fi gure: the
rising melody to which the fi rst words of the text are set. Played by the vio-
lins to start the anthem, this melody is also sung at the choir’s fi rst entrance.
And from there, it returns often: in the instruments, in the voices, sometimes
with the pitches changed but the rhythm intact, and sometimes in different
keys. The natural interweaving of this fi gure throughout the piece points
to the composing skill of Peter, whose six quintets for strings (1789) are the
earliest known instrumental chamber music (one player per part) written in
America.
Each of the traditions touched on in this chapter carried a different sig-
nifi cance in its own day. The music of Spanish Catholic missionaries aimed to
bring magnifi cent display that would impress American Indian converts and
strengthen the faith of settlers in Europe’s westernmost outposts. New England
psalmody produced a homegrown tradition of singing and, eventually, of com-
posing that served the needs of English-speaking Calvinists. Anglican church
music created a niche for European-trained professionals. The Ephrata Cloister
gave rise to a novel musical style. And the Moravians set up theocratic communi-
ties whose life owed much to cosmopolitan styles of music making. The variety
of ways that colonists found to praise God through music refl ected the diversity
of American religious life itself.172028_01_018-043_r2_mr.indd 41 23/01/13 9:51 AM