Moravian Architecture and Town Planning

Moravian Architecture and Town Planning
Author: William J. Murtagh
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 168
Release: 1997-01-29
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0812216377

The industrial city of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, was originally settled in colonial times by Moravians from southeastern Germany. These religious utopians were noted for urban planning. In this large-format, richly illustrated volume, historian William Murtagh compares more than 20 Bethlehem landmarks with other Moravian communities for a fascinating glimpse into a part of America's past.

Music, Women, and Pianos in Antebellum Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Music, Women, and Pianos in Antebellum Bethlehem, Pennsylvania
Author: Jewel A. Smith
Publisher: Associated University Presse
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2008
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780934223904

This volume documents not only the academic and music curricula offered at a distinguished seminary, but the importance of piano study from a sociological viewpoint, music making in a gendered environment, and performance opportunities available for 19th century women.

Moravian Soundscapes

Moravian Soundscapes
Author: Sarah Justina Eyerly
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2020-05-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0253047730

In Moravian Soundscapes, Sarah Eyerly contends that the study of sound is integral to understanding the interactions between German Moravian missionaries and Native communities in early Pennsylvania. In the mid-18th century, when the frontier between settler and Native communities was a shifting spatial and cultural borderland, sound mattered. People listened carefully to each other and the world around them. In Moravian communities, cultures of hearing and listening encompassed and also superseded musical traditions such as song and hymnody. Complex biophonic, geophonic, and anthrophonic acoustic environments—or soundscapes—characterized daily life in Moravian settlements such as Bethlehem, Nain, Gnadenhütten, and Friedenshütten. Through detailed analyses and historically informed recreations of Moravian communal, environmental, and religious soundscapes and their attendant hymn traditions, Moravian Soundscapes explores how sounds—musical and nonmusical, human and nonhuman—shaped the Moravians' religious culture. Combined with access to an interactive website that immerses the reader in mid-18th century Pennsylvania, and framed with an autobiographical narrative, Moravian Soundscapes recovers the roles of sound and music in Moravian communities and provides a road map for similar studies of other places and religious traditions in the future.