This volume explores the variety of musical expression among German-speaking immigrants to America and their descendants from the 18th century onwards. Topics range from Moravian music in colonial America to musical life among 21st-century Candadian Hutterites. There is a companion CD.
Despite the laments of some nineteenth-century German immigrants that America was a land bereft of poetry and song, a "land without nightingales," the history of German American music is a rich one. This book explores the wide variety of forms of musical expression among German-speaking immigrants to America and their descendants from the eighteenth century to the present. Topics range from Moravian music in colonial America to musical life among twenty-first century Canadian Hutterites, from polka music to German singing societies, from Lutheran hymns to the songs of German-speaking Catholic and Jewish immigrants, and from the songs of German-speaking Swiss settlers to the music of immigrants from the Burgenland region of Austria.
