Moravian Music

We walked back through the town of Old Salem, across the pedestrian overpass, and into the Visitor's Center.  It's a beautiful building with well-done displays, but somehow we weren't overly impressed on our earlier walk through.  I still can't figure out why.  But on our way back we go through glass doors in a wall of glass into a foyer hall of glass.  In the foyer there are some huge interpretive plaques discussing Moravian's love of music.  Inside the auditorium behind the second wall of glass we see a truly gorgeous pipe organ.

This organ was built in 1800 by David Tannenberg (1728-1804), the premiere 18th century American organ builder.  Tannenberg built fifty organs for Protestant and Catholic churches between 1765 and 1804, and fewer than ten survive.  This organ is the largest of those.  It has two manual keyboards, a pedal keyboard, 644 pipes, and eleven manual and two pedal stops.  Wowzer!


Hold it.  Wait just a minute.  Think about it.  Over 200 years ago Christian missionaries were sent to America.  In school we were taught about the Pilgrims of 1620 arriving on the Mayflower - but they were fleeing religious persecution, not coming as missionaries.  Okay, okay.  It was 150 years later, in 1770, that the Moravian's arrived and established Bethabara, but still...  The Moravians were well funded and strongly supported by their church back in Europe.  Their sole purpose was to be missionaries to Native Americans.  The work they did in farming and other endeavors was not to prosper themselves.  The money they earned went to support their mission work.  Individuals didn't own any part of the 98,985 acres; it was all owned by the church.  And looking at this organ, they weren't sent on a wing and a prayer - they were on solid financial ground, but still expected to become financially independent, successful businessmen on behalf of the church.  When I think of how missionaries are treated nowadays...  tsk, tsk, tsk.

This organ wasn't their only instrument.  Brass, string, woodwind, and other keyboard instruments were also there.  The Moravians were the first to bring trombones to colonial North America; Tannenberg and Johann Klemm were the first organ builders in the American colonies; John Frederick Peter of Salem was the first composer of chamber music in America and held one of the first American performances of Haydn's The Creation.

The Moravian's music was sacred and secular.  There was even a Moravian brass band that became famous with the Confederate 26th Regiment, North Carolina.  They wrote military marches and played at Confederate inaugurations.  Today, Moravian brass bands play at funerals and major church holiday services as well as staging concerts. 

And it all started because the Moravian's wanted to win people to Christ.  Cool.