Hymnody of Eastern Pennsylvania German Mennonite Communities: Notenbüchlein (Manuscript Songbooks) from 1780 to 1835
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HYMNODY OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN MENNONITE COMMUNITIES: NOTENBÜCHLEIN (MANUSCRIPT SONGBOOKS) FROM 1780 TO 1835 by Suzanne E. Gross Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Maryland in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 1994 Advisory Committee: Professor Howard Serwer, Chairman/Advisor Professor Carol Robertson Professor Richard Wexler Professor Laura Youens Professor Hasia Diner ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: HYMNODY OF EASTERN PENNSYLVANIA GERMAN MENNONITE COMMUNITIES: NOTENBÜCHLEIN (MANUSCRIPT SONGBOOKS) FROM 1780 TO 1835 Suzanne E. Gross, Doctor of Philosophy, 1994 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Howard Serwer, Professor of Music, Musicology Department, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland As part of an effort to maintain their German culture, the late eighteenth-century Mennonites of Eastern Pennsylvania instituted hymn-singing instruction in the elementary community schoolhouse curriculum. Beginning in 1780 (or perhaps earlier), much of the hymn-tune repertoire, previously an oral tradition, was recorded in musical notation in manuscript songbooks (Notenbüchlein) compiled by local schoolmasters in Mennonite communities north of Philadelphia. The practice of giving manuscript songbooks to diligent singing students continued until 1835 or later. These manuscript songbooks are the only extant clue to the hymn repertoire and performance practice of these Mennonite communities at the turn of the nineteenth century. By identifying the tunes that recur most frequently, one can determine the core repertoire of the Franconia Mennonites at this time, a repertoire that, on balance, is strongly pietistic in nature. Musically, the Notenbüchlein document the shift that occured when these Mennonite communities incorporated written transmission into their oral tradition. Elements of oral tradition written down in the Notenbüchlein include ornamentation using small black notes, and pitch variations within a single tune. The majority of the tunes are in monophonic form notated in whole and half note values. A significant portion of the repertoire is in two- three- and even four-part harmony. Harmonized settings are found scattered throughout the repertoire. Various harmonic styles suggest an evolving harmonic vocabulary, styles that include archaic parallel folk harmonies reflective of an oral tradition, unresolved dissonance, and contemporary eighteenth-century fuging tunes borrowed from the surrounding Anglo-American culture and set to German texts. Such harmonizations eventually led to the organizing of evening singing-schools similar to those popular in much of rural eastern America during the nineteenth century. INTRODUCTION The Notenbüchlein Tradition of the Franconia Mennonites The manuscript songbooks of sacred music compiled in Eastern Pennsylvania during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries reflect the musical life of the Pennsylvania German communities during that time. The manuscript hymnals of the Ephrata Cloister, beautifully illuminated books that include both complete texts and hymns, are well known and documented.1 Another category of manuscript songbooks includes those that were intended to be a reference for the tunes of the day, but not for the texts. Incipits of the texts indicated which hymns were to be sung to the given tune. The texts, presumably, were to be found in the hymnals, which at this time were mostly without tunes.2 Three examples falling within the latter category are the Notenbücher, compiled by Mennonite congregational songleaders; copybooks used by the Schwenkfelder people in which tunes were in harmonized settings, along with the hymn number for quick reference to their hymnal;3 and the Notenbüchlein (music booklets) coming from the interdenominationally supported community schools, and intended for teaching the skills of singing from notation. The majority of the Notenbüchlein, the subject of this dissertation, come from Mennonite communities in Eastern Pennsylvania, east of Lancaster County and north of 1 See Betty Jean Martin, "The Ephrata Cloister and Its Music, 1732-1785: The Cultural, Religious, and Bibliographical Background" (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1974). 2 This practice of separating the text and tune was common in the New England singing-school books of the mid-eighteenth century. By the late eighteenth century, text and tune were wedded in the English oblong singing- school books. German Pennsylvania seems to have been several decades behind in this regard. 3 The Schwenkfelders took their name from Caspar Schenckfeld, a sixteenth- century forerunner of Pietism. For more on the Schwenkfelder copy books, see J. Edward Moyer, "The Hymn-Tunes of the Schwenkfelders" (unpublished master's thesis, Westminster Choir College, Princeton, N.J., 1942). Philadelphia, an area for which the term Franconia is used.1 It is this body of Notenbüchlein, found in public collections in the United States, that comprises the source material of the present study.2 The Notenbüchlein coming from Lancaster (Mennonite) Conference communities as well as non-Mennonite communities remain the subject of future research. The Notenbüchlein in question are not unknown to the scholarly world. Their beautiful title pages have been studied by cultural historians. Known as Fraktur, this type of art, popular throughout the Pennsylvania-German culture during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was child-oriented and education-related. This Pennsylvania-German art has been studied at length by scholars of folk art, and is therefore dealt with in this dissertation only in passing.3 The musical contents of these booklets, however, have not been studied. A window into the contemporary music repertoire, these Notenbüchlein are a 1 While Skippack was for a long time the center of Mennonite activity north of Philadelphia, the little village of Franconia came to be associated with the region, largely because of a semiannual ministers' meeting held in the Franconia Meetinghouse just outside the village of Franconia. By 1840, the area represented by these meetings included twenty-two congregations in Montgomery, Bucks, Chester, Berks, and Lehigh counties. Today, the area is referred to as the Franconia Conference of the Mennonite Church. See J. C. Wenger, History of the Mennonites of the Franconia Conference (Telford, Pa.: Franconia Mennonite Historical Society, 1937), 48-56. 2 Notenb_chlein in private collections as well as the four booklets in the Jordan Museum of the Twenty, in Ontario, Canada, are not included in this study. Based on the relatively small number of extant Notenb_chlein that originated in the Lancaster area, we can presume that the tradition never took hold there as it did in the Franconia area. The Free Public Library does have one manuscript songbook in its collection from Manor township in Lancaster. Written for Johann Jacob Koch by schoolmaster Jacob Botz, this so-called Botz Hymnal seems to have served a different function from that of the Franconia booklets. The book includes several verses for each hymn, for example, suggesting that it was viewed as a hymnal, and not as a note-reading book. We can therefore assume that the Notenb_chlein tradition, as defined below, is limited to the Franconia area, as well as to Southern Ontario, where many Franconia people migrated because of the Revolutionary War. See Michael S. Bird, Ontario Fraktur: A Pennsylvania-German Folk Tradition in Early Canada (Toronto: M.F. Feheley, 1977). 3 For an up-to-date bibliography on the study of Fraktur, see Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. V (Scottdale, Pa.: Mennonite Publishing House, 1990), 310. record not only of texts known to the community, but also of musical performance practice, descriptions of which have not yet appeared in print. State of Present Research American Mennonite hymnody in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries has received little attention to date. Richard Byron Rosewall of the University of Minnesota wrote a dissertation in 1969 on the singing school movement in Pennsylvania during the nineteenth century in which he included information about several Notenbüchlein.1 He largely overlooked the early years of Notenbüchlein production (1780-1800), and furthermore claimed that these manuscript booklets were part of the nineteenth-century weeknight singing school movement, when, as will appear, in fact, they were part of the school curriculum for children. A German dissertation by Ada Kadelbach (1971) presents an overview of the hymnody as reflected in the published hymnals of the period.2 Also serving as an overview is a dissertation written by Paul Yoder on nineteenth-century sacred music in the Mennonite Church.3 Philip Stoltzfus has written a lengthy senior seminar paper at Goshen College (1987) on the 1804 Lancaster hymnal, the Unpartheyisch Gesangbuch, in which he outlines theological themes found in the hymn texts.4 However, there is as yet no study of Franconia hymnody at the turn of the nineteenth century. This dissertation, therefore, attempts to break new ground in the study of the music of the Pennsylvania German Mennonites in the early post-colonial period of the United States. 1 Richard Byron Rosewall, "Singing Schools of Pennsylvania, 1800-1900" (University of Minnesota, Ph.D. dissertation, 1969). 2 Ada Kadelbach, "Die Hymnodie der Mennoniten in Nordamerika (1742-1860)" (Johannes Gutenberg-Universit_t, Mainz, Ph.D. dissertation, 1971). 3 Paul M. Yoder, "Nineteenth-Century