Early German Music in Philadelphia

The early immigration of Germans to Philadelphia increased to such an extent, that before the middle of the eighteenth century the English colonists became alarmed for fear that Pennsylvania might be alienated from the English crown, and be dominated by the German immigrants. Indeed, throughout the eighteenth century the greater part of the German immigrants landed at Philadelphia, and from there were distributed into other States. We should naturally expect, with so great a population of Germans in Philadelphia and the surrounding country, that these people would continually extend their influence, and constantly spread abroad their ideas of art, religion, music and literature.

Let us consider for a moment the condition of the Germans who landed in this country. In 1683, moved by William Penn’s alluring proclamations of the glorious new world, as well as by the fact that freedom of conscience was granted in Pennsylvania to all, a band of German immigrants arrived in Philadelphia and founded Germantown. With the exception of the scholar, Francis Daniel Pastorious, there were no highly cultured men or women among them. These people were of the middle class, and were more interested in weaving and agriculture and religious salvation, than in the cultivation of the fine arts. The conditions in Germany were not conducive to culture.

The country was just recovering from the Thirty Years’ War, and the strength of the people was being expended in building up the homes, and improving the land made desolate during that fierce struggle. At this time, too, the German people had little liberty, but rather were under the thumb of absolutism, which was at that time the great force in European countries. It was not an epoch favorable to the cultivation of the fine arts. There was no great literature, no great art, no great music. There was, however, a strong religious spirit, which is often the result of hardship and suffering. It is in the field of religion, too, that we find the best music during the seventeenth century, although it was not original in style, but simply a continuation of Luther’s music. The hymn-writers of that time, both Catholic and Protestant, are not to be despised, and we need mention but a few, whose songs have lived even to the present day: as Paul Fleming (1609-1640) and Paul Gerhardt (1606-1676), Protestant; Friedrich Spee (1591-1635) and Johann Scheffer (1624-1677), Catholics. It can be said, then, with some degree of surety, that the performance of music by the early German settlers in Philadelphia was confined, in the province of music, to hymns.