Description
This music is the earliest string chamber music composed in America, written in Salem, NC by Moravian administrator and composer, Johann Friedrich Peter (1746-1813) in 1789. The quintets would have been composed with the Salem Collegium Musicum in mind, but actually survive in the Philharmonic Society of Bethlehem (PA) Collection. He left no copy in Salem upon his departure in 1790.
This edition is the real thing, edited from the original manuscripts signed by Peter himself!
Johann Friedrich Peter (1746-1813) was born in Heerendijk, Holland, to German Moravian parents. He was educated in Holland and Germany, and, with his brother Simon, came to America in 1770. Peter appears to have begun composing very shortly after his arrival in the new world. He served the Pennsylvania Moravians in Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Lititz, and was sent to Salem, NC in 1780. There, among other duties, he assumed the position of music director for the community. In 1786 he married Catharina Leinbach, a leading soprano in the church choir. Under Peter’s energetic and capable leadership a musical tradition was established in Salem which benefited the community long after his departure in 1790. He afterwards served Moravians in Graceham, MD, Hope, NJ, and Bethlehem, PA, where he was clerk, secretary, and organist at the Central Church.
His six string quintets, written in Salem and dated 1789, are among the earliest known chamber music written in this country. He died in Bethlehem on July 13, 1813, almost literally at the organ bench, shortly after playing for a children’s service. All of Peter’s known compositions (nearly one hundred in all), with the exception of the string quintets, are sacred concerted vocal works. Of these, most are known to have been written for a specific occasion, often using a Scriptural text assigned for the day. In keeping with Moravian compositional practice, Peter’s vocal works are marked by clarity and simplicity. The text is always of primary importance, and the instrumental writing highlights the text, never over-shadowing the vocal parts. In the vocal works, his writing for strings in particular shows that the instrumentalists at his disposal were accomplished players; the writing is consistent with Classic-era style and technique. Peter’s works have earned him the reputation of being the most gifted of Moravian composers in America.
Peter’s compositional gifts brought him great joy and satisfaction; they also gave him cause for concern. In his Lebenslauf (spiritual autobiography) he wrote that his musical gift was troubling to him; he saw that this was valued by “the world”, and he questioned his own motivation for composing music. (It is interesting to note that he wrote this section of his Lebenslauf before composing the quintets-his only known “secular” works!)
Johann Friedrich Peter’s Six String Quintets survive in both full score and parts in Peter’s hand, in the collection of the Philharmonic Society of Bethlehem, housed in the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, PA. (The Viola 1 part is missing, and for this edition has been extracted from the full score.) The full score of Peter’s six string quintets is dated 9 January 1789, and the parts are dated 28 February 1789, indicating the probability that these works were composed during his later years in Salem. This in itself is a curious circumstance, since it indicates that Peter took the quintets with him when he left Salem, leaving no copy behind. (The sacred vocal works would be assumed to be the property of the congregation; if he took copies with him to use at his new post, he would have been expected to leave the Salem copies behind.) Peter kept no personal diary as such; there is thus no evidence as to why he wrote these works, nor over how long a period of time he worked on them. Their very existence is a mystery, as these would not have been seen as “necessary” to the life of the church. Were they written simply out of the compulsion to compose, the need to use his gift for instrumental writing without the restrictions of text and occasion? Was Peter “experimenting”?
The string writing in the quintets is, not surprisingly, more virtuosic than in the vocal works. The formal structures adhere to Classic principles of statement, digression, and return, often within a clear sonata-like structure. In Quintet #4, however, he stretches the norms by introducing a foreign key (major submediant) and new thematic material in the development of the first movement, and by using asymmetrical phrase structures in the third movement. Throughout the quintets, Peter shows admirable facility in writing for the instruments, varying textures by using pairs or trios (themselves varied in recapitulations; what began as first and second violins in opposition to first and second violas may be repeated as first violin and viola in opposition to second violin and viola).
Johann Friedrich Peter’s string quintets, then, are lovely and compelling examples of the genre in their own right, worthy of careful attention and rewarding to performer and listener alike. They also provide a foil to his sacred vocal works, showing a facet of his musical gift that is not always readily apparent in the vocal works: a gift for sustaining a larger-scale form, with variety and interest, while maintaining coherence and unity.
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