Last Sunday April 20, 2008 was celebrated as Moravian Music Sunday. On Moravian Music Sunday, we highlight and celebrate Moravian composers, hymn writers and musicians. This year we celebrated Christian La Trobe. Today we give an insight into the Moravian Music Foundation and what it does.
The Moravians, a Protestant denomination, went to Pennsylvania and North Carolina in the 18th century. They took with them a rich musical heritage which they maintained and enriched in the American wilderness. Moravian musicians sent music from Europe, hand-copied what they could not purchase composed both sacred and secular music formed the first community music ensembles and built the first stringed instruments and organs in America. When music went out of style, Moravians carefully laid it aside for some future use. That music now makes up the large collection of manuscripts, early imprints, books, and documents in the collections of the Moravian Music Foundation.
The Moravian Music Foundation was founded in 1956. It preserves Archival Collections of 10,000 music manuscripts, first editions, early imprints, and related materials in Winston-Salem, NC and Bethlehem, PA (the only comparable collections are in the Library of Congress and the NY Public Library),
- maintains the Peter Memorial Library, a secondary reference collection, of 6,000 titles,
- fulfills over 100 free lending library loans per year - 80% to non-Moravian music groups and churches; the Music Lending Libraries contain scores and parts for the 400+ works edited by the MMF for modern performance, 300+ of which are published editions with over 2 million copies in circulation,
- produces scores and parts for an additional 6-10 edited works each year,
- provides ongoing music programming consultation for approximately 12 professional musical groups worldwide,
- provides ongoing research guidance of various graduate degree studies; has fostered over 50 Doctoral dissertations and Master's theses since its founding, and
- Issues catalogs of the collections, publishes monographs, periodicals, and sheet music, and produces professional quality audio recordings.
The Moravian Music Foundation (MMF) cares for the physical safety of over 10,000 music manuscripts, books, and documents interpreting Moravian and early American musical traditions. Our collections include:
- One of 9 surviving copies of the 1st printing of the Star Spangled Banner
- A complete set of Civil War band books from the 26th NC Regimental Band
- The 1789 Six String Quintets of Johann Friedrich Peter, perhaps the earliest chamber music composed in America
- The only known surviving copy of JCF Bach's Sinfonia in E
- Sacred vocal works with orchestra accompaniment used by the early Moravian settlers in America
- A collection of hymnals from the 16th through 21st centuries
The treasures of the MMF are available to music lovers, church musicians, performers, and scholars through:
Top quality recordings of Moravian music; Published music, books, and a quarterly Newsletter; Choral and instrumental lending libraries; Internship and research opportunities.