While the account of Moravian missionary endeavors with the Native Americans has been well researched, Sarah Justina Eyerly's Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania brilliantly illuminates forty years of mid-eighteenth-century Moravian missions in eastern North America by exploring sonic devices. Using song and sound surrounding Moravian customs as the focus of this novel history, Eyerly provides a compelling examination of this previously untapped treasure-trove. Through this narrative Eyerly reveals how sounds and silences possessed unusual power that extended to negotiating cultural differences between European immigrants and Native homelands and peoples. As Eyerly argues, “the natural and human environments of early Pennsylvania were comprised of complex biophonic, geophonic, and anthrophonic acoustic soundscapes. Study of these acoustic environments is important to understanding the social, religious, and spatial relationships that characterized life in both Native and settler communities” (12). Hymn singing was a major part of this acoustic environment; in fact, hymns were synonymous with Moravian culture. Given that hymns were incorporated in every aspect of daily life—spiritual as well as social—it is not surprising that the texts and routine practices where hymns were sung (within and beyond the sacred halls of worship) served as historical markers: identifying customs, events, and locations. Further, Eyerly has proven that the use of such sonic devices makes it possible to restore accounts of early American history beyond the scope of Moravian involvement that have been ignored, if not lost to oblivion.

As a descendent of the German missionary Johann Jacob Eyerly Jr. and a native of eastern Pennsylvania, Eyerly frames this narrative with an autobiographical reflection, emphasizing that history is an old story that is ever new. Following an introduction that provides the background for this book, Eyerly chronologically traverses the interactions between German Moravian missionaries and Native communities in chapters 1 through 4, beginning with the founding of the first Moravian settlement in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1741 and concluding with the massacre at Gnadenhütten, Ohio, in 1782. Chapter 1 broadly chronicles the initial explorations of the Moravian missionaries through the Pennsylvania woodlands and their encounters with the Natives, while chapters 2 and 3 take a close look at the internal relations of Bethlehem during the 1740s and 1750s. The final chapter examines the termination of Bethlehem as a closed Economy in 1762, and the events leading up to and culminating with the massacre of the Gnadenhütten community. A detailed historical analysis of musical and non-musical, audible and inaudible sounds that outlined the Moravians’ religious belief and foundation of their culture provides a heretofore unearthed goldmine in American Moravian eighteenth-century history.

An accompanying website using digital technologies such as mapping and sound design software (ArcGIS and Logic Studio) coordinates with the book. Each chapter includes interactive sound maps, consisting of “soundscape compositions, field recordings, and historically informed recordings of spoken texts and hymns in Delaware, Mohican, English and German” (32). Icons located throughout the book carefully guide the reader in navigating the website. This online companion is a fascinating component that uniquely brings to life the sounds of days gone by—for example, hymn singing, Bethlehem's 1755 Old Water Works, and the Blacksmith's shop—when people were particularly cognizant of the sounds around them. Comprehensive interactive and static maps, archival materials, photographs, and sound samples enable the reader to engage with history through a window on the past.

Written for the musicologist, historian, and general reader alike, Moravian Soundscapes is thoroughly researched and meticulously documented. Eyerly has left no stone unturned, painstakingly investigating numerous contemporaneous accounts, literature, and artifacts such as diaries, correspondence, journals, maps, photographs, and hymnals housed in the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and the Unity Archives of the Moravian Church in Herrnhut, Germany, as well as engaging with scholarly writings of musicologists, historians, anthropologists, cultural critics, and theologians across the centuries that intersect this rich heritage. To reconstruct “the acoustic environments and singing practices that characterized life in eighteenth-century Moravian communities” (32), Eyerly conducted extensive fieldwork, mapping, and “spatial reconstruction based on archival documents, archaeological data, and georectification of historical maps against modern satellite data” (33). This process proved immensely fruitful in verifying historical accounts of communities that have since vanished.

Moravian Soundscapes is an important contribution to our understanding of the significance of the history of Moravian missions in eastern North America not only because of extensive historical details but particularly regarding how song and sound shed light on an era in history that was hitherto shrouded in darkness. Eyerly convincingly articulates her point interpreting the use and meaning of hymns and the role of singing in Moravian culture, as well as the voluminous messages portrayed through sound and silence. With the compendium website the reader can ingeniously perceive mid-eighteenth-century American life of peace sometimes amid warfare. This book deserves a place on the shelf of every Moravian and early American musicologist, historian, theologian, and music lover.