MUSICAL ANALYSIS
Sarah Eyerly

Once Sarah had identified the tune for “Jesu paschgon kia,” she prepared a modern edition of the music in Sibelius, a music notation program, using the soprano and bass lines and unrealized figured bass markings as they appeared in manuscripts H.3 and H.4 (Figure III). Identifying the chorale tune and preparing a modern edition were obviously important steps in reconstructing “Jesu paschgon kia.” But before the hymn could be sung, we faced another challenge. It has been nearly a century since Mohican was spoken. Indeed, the last speakers, who died in the 1930s, mostly spoke English, although they remembered their parents using Mohican. Thanks to our knowledge of German, we were able to sound out the hymn texts using the German phonetical renderings from the Mohican hymnals. We then used the phonetic version of the text to create an initial attempt at matching the text with the tune of “Herr Jesu Christ, dein Tod/In dulci jubilo” (Figure IV). But we wondered if the texts had been transcribed accurately and whether the German phonetics captured the sounds of Mohican as a spoken language. For guidance on pronunciation, we turned to linguist Christopher (Chris) Harvey. Chris, who studies related Algonquian languages and historical records, created a spoken-word recording of “Jesu paschgon kia” (Recording I) and transcriptions using IPA (international phonetic alphabet) while also correcting the Moravian versions of “Jesu paschgon kia” grammatically and orthographically. Using his new text, Sarah reworked the text underlay for the edition she had created of “Jesu paschgon kia” and began to rehearse the pronunciation of the text with her students in the early music choir Cantores Antiquae Musicae at Florida State University (FSU).

Before the choir could move beyond pronouncing the text to rehearsing the music, however, the chorale manuscript needed to be decoded from the original figured bass (numerical figures that represented the harmonic structure). Sarah therefore sought help from a doctoral music theory student from FSU, Joshua Tanis, who wrote alto and tenor parts to accompany the original soprano and bass lines that appeared in the H.4 manuscript and ensured the hymn was singable and harmonically correct, according to eighteenth-century European musical principles. Over the course of several weeks, Sarah and her students worked to sing and rebalance the text settings and musical underlay (Figure V) to produce a final edition of the music. Weeks of choir rehearsals followed, conducted by ethnomusicology student Drew Griffin and accompanied by organ student Teodora Mitze-Cîrciumaru on a continuo organ that could imitate the quiet sound of eighteenth-century Moravian organs. During these rehearsals, Sarah guided the singers on the aesthetic practices of Moravian singing. Finally, in February 2018, the singers and organist recorded the hymn in collaboration with engineer John Hadden, a specialist in early music recording, on the FSU campus (Recording III).

At the same time that Sarah and her students were rehearsing and preparing a recording of “Jesu paschgon kia” based on eighteenth-century Moravian aesthetics, Sarah also sent the modern edition of the hymn to composer Brent Michael Davids. He began the important work of transforming the original eighteenth-century chordal harmonies into harmonies that would better appeal to a modern church congregation. Brent also shortened the English translation of the Mohican text so it could be inserted above each musical phrase. Further, he added chord indications that could be read more easily by guitarists and other musicians familiar with tablature notation, rather than standard Western musical notation. The result was a flexible, modern version of “Jesu paschgon kia” that could be used in a number of different musical contexts, including a modern ecumenical worship service (Figure VI; Recording IV).

For the third version of “Jesu paschgon kia,” created by Bill Miller, we dispensed entirely with the German chorale tune. Instead, Bill worked with Chris Harvey in April 2018 in Indianapolis to learn the pronunciation of the hymn verse. Then he improvised new music to set to the text, based on his interpretations of Northeastern Native styles of singing. The result was a very different musical take on the piece, a rendition that helped us to appreciate the extent to which the original chorale tune had exerted a distinct sonic presence that almost overshadowed the Mohican text of “Jesu paschgon kia.” Bill’s version of the hymn carefully articulates and separates each of the individual phrases of the hymn verse, providing a new way to experience and hear the text itself (Recording V). Since Bill’s version was created through improvisation, there was no need to transform it into a notated piece of music. The oral nature of Bill’s version also allows the possibility to transform future iterations of “Jesu paschgon kia” into different combinations of text and tune that reflect new ideas about the meaning of the Mohican words.

In the end, the musical reconstruction and singing of “Jesu paschgon kia” has helped us to appreciate the extent to which its original text was a kind of flexible shorthand even in the eighteenth century. It was a prompt for the communal activity of singing, rather than a textual communication, such as a letter or a congregational diary, whose intent was to convey a particular message. Moravian hymns in general were not intended to be sung from books. Instead of being used as prescriptive texts to be read from during singing, hymnals preserved the repertory of hymns commonly used by the church. The practice of singing individual hymns was also flexible and meant to respond to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So texts or tunes could change from performance to performance. 

Singing “Jesu paschgon kia” has also allowed us to appreciate the collaborative and social nature of hymnody in general. Singing hymns is an activity that depends upon community participation, especially since chorale tunes can only be sung if there are four parts (or voices) present to sing them. Reconstructing “Jesu paschgon kia” in the present has required a deeply collaborative process, just as it was an act of collaboration to create and sing the hymn in the eighteenth century.