The country was just recovering from the Thirty Years’ War, and the strength of the people was being expended in building up the homes, and improving the land made desolate during that fierce struggle. At this time, too, the German people had little liberty, but rather were under the thumb of absolutism, which was at that time the great force in European countries. It was not an epoch favorable to the cultivation of the fine arts. There was no great literature, no great art, no great music. There was, however, a strong religious spirit, which is often the result of hardship and suffering. It is in the field of religion, too, that we find the best music during the seventeenth century, although it was not original in style, but simply a continuation of Luther’s music.[1] The hymn-writers of that time, both Catholic and Protestant, are not to be despised, and we need mention but a few, whose songs have lived even to the present day: as Paul Fleming (1609-1640) and Paul Gerhardt (1606-1676), Protestant; Friedrich Spee (1591-1635) and Johann Scheffer (1624-1677), Catholics. It can be said, then, with some degree of surety, that the performance of music by the early German settlers in Philadelphia was confined, in the province of music, to hymns.
In this department the Germans hold an important position; not only was their church music an essential part of their services, but the number of hymn-writers and the many editions of German hymn-books published in Philadelphia testify to the love which these new settlers had for church music.
It is only necessary to mention a few of these hymn-writers to recall to mind the extreme productiveness of this style of literature and music. Among the most important hymn-writers were F. D. Pastorious, of Germantown; Johann Kelpius, of the Wissahickon; Conrad Beissel, of Ephrata, and Count von Zinzendorf, the Moravian.[2]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Louis Elson, National Music in America, p. 18.
[2] Cf. for further information on this subject: J. H. Dubbs, Early German Hymnology of Pennsylvania; Hausmann, German American Hymnology 1683-1800, in Americana Germanica 1898, Vol. II. No. 3, p. II.
PART I
Beginnings before 1750
CHAPTER I.
Hymn Music of Germans in Philadelphia.
To Francis Daniel Pastorious has been assigned the honor of being the first German hymn writer on American soil. Pastorious[3] was born Sept. 26, 1651 at Sommerhausen, Germany, of cultured parents of some means and position in society. His father Melchior Pastorious had studied Catholic theology and also jurisprudence, but had finally renounced his faith and had become a Protestant. Needless to say Francis Daniel’s education was not neglected. He was sent to school in various places: as Windsheim, Basel, Nuremberg, Erfurt, Strassburg where he studied law and the French language, Jena where besides law he studied Italian, and finally he took his degree of Doctor of Laws at Altdorf, 1676.