I have been keeping a working document of references as I research sources relating to my interest. A tentative early title is ‘Music as Coercion: The Church Organ as an Enabling Tool for Christian Colonialism’. For a subject like this, the possibility of losing focus in such a wide historical field, is very real. In this case, I have had to do quite in-depth research, narrowing into a specific window of time. Often, I have found my research locating itself closer and closer to one individual; Christian Ignatius Latrobe, a key figure in the expansion and export of Christian music, especially the organ throughout the 19th century.
‘The musically most active missionaries before the establishment of the Society of Jesus in 1540 were the Franciscans. Cabral’s first journey to India, where he arrived on 13 September 1500, was already accompanied by eight Franciscans; among them was the organ player Frei Matteu, who is said to have been able to play an organ on one of the ships. On their arrival in India, the Franciscans immediately began their missionary work.’ (pp. 224)
‘Summarizing the hitherto presented letters, reports, and researches, which are only the few tips of a much larger iceberg, some key characteristics of the function and the functionalisation of music in missionary work can be deduced, however. The benefits of (Christian) education, particularly of children, and including many orphans, has to be set against a political backdrop in which the local people had no other choice were they not to be enslaved by the colonial rulers. Many of the children were orphans only by dint of the acts of the colonisers and their military powers.’ (pp. 228)
‘Music did function as a key to intercultural understanding, but in many cases it became a mere key to cultural occupation, domination, and eventually cultural genocide as well. To reconsider the three keywords of the conference, a discourse on how best to utilise music in order to ‘convince’ the pagans of the merits of Christianity was first accompanied, later partly, replaced by an extensive wielding of colonial power, finally leading into the intensified imperialism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’ (pp. 230)
Storch, C. (2012) ‘How the Pagans Became ‘Convinced’ About Christianity: Four Conclusions on the Relationship Between Music and the Missions in Early Colonialism’, in M. d. R. G. Santos and E. M. Lessa (eds) Música Discurso Poder. Minho, Portugal: Universidade do Minho Centro de Estudos Humanísticos.
‘Latrobe sent standardised Christian hymn books, in English and German but also translated into indigenous languages, to mission stations around the world, from Suriname to Jamaica to Labrador to Greenland to Siberia to South Africa. He also sent musical instruments to accompany the hymn-singing, favouring the organ both aesthetically and for its ability to function in different climates. He also circulated specific instructions for training organists, with firm recommendations for a simple accompaniment style and learning hymns by heart.’ (pp. 77)
‘At the different stations, the policy increasingly became to train local members of the congregation according to Latrobe’s advice, so that the instrument, the canon of tunes and the performance conventions were exported uniformly from Europe, embodied in the organ and the organist. Crucially, this uniform and standardised imposition of music-although always resisted and never fully achieved-required the remaking of the cultural landscapes on which they were to be imposed, including through the violent outlawing of existing musical practices and styles.’ (pp. 77)
‘For hymns he favoured a homophonic melody with a separate note for each syllable to increase clarity, and he strongly advocated a restrained and sober accompaniment style, ideally on an organ. He criticised flourishes and unnecessary ornaments in the musical accompaniment, as they would distract from the words and their meaning’ (pp. 84)
‘But there was also an issue of practicality and, indeed, scalability. Latrobe received several letters from the Labrador missionaries complaining that the various instruments he had sent previously, especially the wind instruments, would freeze and become unplayable in the colder months, so an organ, however small and cheap, would be gratefully received.’ (pp. 97)
‘Elsewhere in the Moravian world, missionaries tried to construct their own organs. A small, home-made organ was debuted at the 1806 Christmas hymns at the Cherokee mission, for example, and it still ‘accompanied the voices’ in autumn 1808.’ (pp. 97)
‘The choice to export and/or construct a European instrument, rather than adapt instruments already used by and widely available among the indigenous congregations, is another element of the pixel-like scalability that the Moravians aimed for. Many instruments in the African context, for example, reflected local metallurgical engineering skills and resource availability, but they had cosmological, spiritual or other cultural significance that meant the missionaries were inclined to suppress or replace them.’ (pp. 97)
John Antes Latrobe (1831, 366) emphasised ‘the astonishing power reposed in the hands of the organist’, the tenor of whose performance would ensure the religious enrichment or the regrettable dissipation of the congregation: ‘He holds over them an enchanter’s wand, powerful as the lightning, and almost equally destructive.’ (pp. 98)
‘As early as 1835 the missionaries in South Africa were boasting that a young African man names Ezekiel Pfeiffer had ‘begun to play the organ at the church, and is thus, in all probability, the first Hottentot organist in the world’ (PA XIII 1834-6, 340). Here the racial term refers not specifically to a southern African group but rather reflects the fact that, by the eighteenth century, the word was a generic epithet for those considered barbarian or primitive, and as such the successful musical training of Pfeiffer represented the feasibility of employing indigenous musicians to accompany the singing at all the mission stations across the world.’ (pp. 98)
Dodds, P. (2023) Music and the Cultural Production of Scale. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36283-5 (Accessed: 17 October 2024)
For a class exercise, we recorded a select quote that we had chosen, along with a sound that could represent an initial stimulus for our research subject. I found a YouTube clip uploaded four months ago by Jermaine Cain, of the St. Vincent Basilica in Latrobe, Pennsylvania (named after Christian Ignatius’ brother, Benjamin Henry) Significantly, it prominently features the church organ, and could inform how I create the spatial sense of the church building in my audio paper.