The first time I heard A Storm
in the Land and Cheer, Boys, Cheer!—two recordings
by the contemporary American Brass Quintet—I was immediately
struck by their wealth of catchy, evocative music, all
of it taken from the band books of a group of Civil
War-era musicians known as the 26th North Carolina Regimental
Band. Period instruments such as piston cornets and
alto horns play a variety of music on these albums:
marches, waltzes, dirges, popular melodies, sacred chorales,
even a clever arrangement of a Schubert serenade. This
was music composed with great skill, incorporating sophisticated
harmonies, rhythms, and dynamics. The more I listened,
the more I wondered about the 26th North Carolina Regimental
Band, about the lives of those musician-soldiers. And
then I learned something about that Confederate band
that piqued my interest further: Its members were all
Moravians.
The first Moravians came to colonial America as missionaries
in the mid-18th century. They were German-speaking Protestants
from middle Europe, followers of the martyred church
reformer Jan Hus. Their earliest permanent settlements,
dating to 1741, were near Bethlehem, Pa., but some Moravians
migrated south and eventually made their way to what
is now Winston-Salem, N.C. In 1756, they purchased 98,000
acres (known as the Wachovia Tract), and by 1766, they
had established a closed theocratic community remarkable
for its social, educational, and artistic values.
Moravian life continues to flourish in Winston-Salem,
and I wanted to experience it firsthand, to understand
how the earliest American Moravians entwined commerce
and creativity and why music is still such an important
part of their culture.
