“We went to the Moravian Meeting, where I had the pleasure to hear an Excellent Comment on that Passage in Scripture Relating to the Prodigal Son, and after some very agreeable Church Music, half an hour after 9 they broke up.”[46]
This testimony is not without its value, as this gentleman was evidently somewhat of a musician himself, since under the same date in his diary we find:
“I Rose from my Bed and pass’d two hours in writing, the rest of the time till Breakfast, I spent with my Fiddle and Flute.”[47]
Concerning the music in the Moravian church we have other evidence, at a later date. John Adams remarks in his diary for October 23, 1774:
“The singing here [Methodist meeting] is very sweet and soft indeed; the first music I have heard in any society except the Moravians, and once at church with the organ.”[48]
He also remarks September 4, 1774, upon “the organ and a new choir of singers at Christ Church, which were very musical.”[49]
Franklin, in 1755, speaks of hearing Moravian music at Bethlehem, and praises it generously.[50] A year earlier Acrelius, who visited the same place, gives a more detailed account in the following words:
“It was finally agreed that we should sit below [in the auditorium of the church], as the music sounded better there. The organ had the accompaniment of violins and flutes. The musicians were back in the gallery, so that none of them were seen.” One of the ministers “read some verses of a German hymn book, after which they were sung with excellent music.”[51]
Their style of music and manner of performing it must have been exceptionally good, as compared with the music of other churches, to have impressed so favorably such men, who, we may be sure, were quite different. There is the sturdy pastor Acrelius, understanding church music and the manner of its performance; the cordial, genial Ben Franklin, who knew something about music from living in London; the somewhat cold but highly cultured, John Adams, with his Puritan traditions; then the gentleman from Virginia, William Black, who most probably partook of the nature of the warm, sunny-tempered Southerners, himself somewhat of a musician. Could we ask for witnesses more unlike?
To the Moravian church undoubtedly belongs the palm for music during the eighteenth century; but there was music, and good music, in some other churches as well. We have already mentioned the music in Christ Church and the Methodist Church. Concerning the music in the German Lutheran Church, we have the testimony of Daniel Fisher, who writes in his Diary for May 25, 1755: