Keywords

For Édouard Glissant, ‘the rhizome of all places that makes up the totality’ must be contrasted with what he criticises as ‘the temptation of the generalizing universal’ (Glissant, 2020, 109; 79). The ‘weave’ of the world’s particularities cannot be treated as ‘a generality giving birth to its own generalizations’, and he cautions against ‘the false clarity of universal models’ (ibid., 118; 16). He criticises not the attempt to understand a shared world but the ‘imposing’ or ‘project[ing] into elsewhere’ of ‘the Universal’ (ibid., 61; 37). He asks:

Why has the rationality of the Universal become the precious and semi-exclusive claim of this collection of cultures that has been called the West? (Ibid., 61)

Scholars have asked this question, especially in the last half century or so, in terms of ‘cultural imperialism’ (see Tomlinson, 1991), including in the field of music studies (e.g. Garofalo, 1993). The question has been some version of: why has this aspect of culture, or this aspect of music, been somehow imposed beyond its original context such that it now is treated as some kind of universal standard or norm? The title of Geoffrey Baker’s (2008) book Imposing Harmony on colonial Cusco indicates the trend well. Studies such as Glenda Goodman’s (2012) account of ‘the Soundscape of Colonialism’ in seventeenth-century North America have shown that cultural-imperialist projects in general, and musical colonisation in particular, have a long history. These projects have also always been resisted, very often through indigenous and oppressed groups challenging the universalist premises of cultural or specifically musical imperialism, as much recent work has shown (see, e.g., Okigbo, 2010; Goodman, 2012; Chikowero, 2015; Eyerly, 2020; Ryan, 2021). What Zine Magubane (2004, 148) calls ‘the politics of refusal’ have been deployed to refuse, re-use, re-appropriate, re-work or otherwise counter the colonial imposition of music, or the imposition of colonial force through music. Nevertheless, Dylan Robinson has shown that the ‘epistemic violence’ of cultural imperialism has had a lasting legacy as a structural feature of settler colonial states, and that it has involved undermining indigenous norms and beliefs about what music is and what it can or should do (Robinson, 2020, 46). Colonialism, for Robinson (ibid., 10), is a ‘state of perception’. It applies, as Magubane (2004, 33; 35) points out, an ‘Aesthetics of Rule’ through the ‘fiction of a universal standard of taste’. This Aesthetics of Rule positions racialised and gendered Others as ‘objects of aesthetic contemplation’ in relation to the gentlemanly ‘aesthetic subject’ who is constructed as the universal or ‘generic perceiver’ (ibid., 34). In missionary diaries and travel accounts, for example, ‘the one who can see and appreciate beauty is the one who can exercise the right to rule over all those who are merely aesthetic objects’ (ibid., 36).

Sarah Justina Eyerly (2020) is one of several scholars who have focused their attention on the particular role of missionaries in musical colonisation. Missionary projects of various kinds ‘often equated or presaged acts of cultural genocide’ (Eyerly, 2020, 14). Any exceptional ‘good’ missionaries and their empowering effects on their indigenous congregations notwithstanding, the missionary projects’ ‘religious soundscapes, and their attendant hymn traditions, can be understood as colonial structures that attempted to standardize, indeed to colonize, indigenous soundscapes, musical practices, and religious traditions’ (ibid., 13; see also Chikowero, 2015; Johnson-Williams, 2020). Mhoze Chikowero emphasises how, in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Zimbabwean context, missionaries ‘maligned the power of African song’ as part of a ‘mission to culturally alienate and disarm’ (Chikowero, 2015, 3). European colonialism was ‘culturally propagated’ through missionaries’ use of music ‘as a weapon to undermine African sovereignty’ (ibid., 2). European colonialism’s successful ‘propagation’ relied on a concerted project of ‘epistemicide’ whereby ‘missionaries cast African musical cultures as paganism, to be destroyed if the African was to be saved’ (ibid., 3–4). Grant Olwage (2004; see also 2010) in fact traces ‘the Birth of Musical Colonialism’ to the large-scale missionary projects in southern Africa in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the examples he focuses on, the musical-colonisers were particularly keen to validate their efforts through ‘recurring appeals to “nature”’ and to the universal (Olwage, 2010, 196). John Curwen (1816–1880), who diffused the tonic sol-fa system of music education, wrote articles with titles like ‘The Musical Scale of All Nations and of All Times’ and ‘was eulogized as “the father of Universal song”’ (ibid., 204). And Olwage argues that the ‘theoretical project to universalize sol-fa … speaks also of its universalizing imperialist intentions’ (ibid.). Crucially, in these and other accounts, music did not just happen to accompany colonisation, nor even to facilitate or enable it, but it was rather one of the key, indispensable means of large-scale colonial expansion. European Christian hymns were vital in the breaking of new ground, the establishment of new settlements, and the imposition of Western culture, as well as universalised Western norms of aesthetic appreciation and cultural practice, around the world.

For Chikowero (2015, 9), ‘Scholars have yet to sufficiently engage with the meaning of the missionary effect on African music’. This point has been made more forcefully in Kofi Agawu’s chapter in Audible Empire entitled ‘Tonality as a Colonizing Force in Africa’. There Agawu assesses how African music was transformed by the imposition of European tonality from the mid-nineteenth century in what amounted ‘to musical violence of a very high order, a violence whose psychic and psychological impacts remain to be properly explored’ (Agawu, 2016, 338). He argues:

[I]n domesticating hymns whose texts were originally in German or English for local consumption, melodies often disregarded the natural declamation of indigenous singing, imposed a regime of regular and symmetrical periodicity, and rode roughshod over the intonational contours prescribed by speech tones. (Ibid., 338)

Agawu aims to provide ‘a step toward future theorization of the dynamics of musical colonization’ but regrets that musical colonisation remains understudied (ibid.).

Here I want to suggest a further step in understanding the dynamics of musical colonisation by attending to the production of scalability in relation to Moravian missionaries’ musical methods in the early part of the nineteenth century, including in Africa, but before the period that Agawu, Olwage, Chikowero and others have focused on. I likewise propose to analyse the efforts to make ‘universal’ claims about music, as this was a crucial part of the moral justification and implied effectiveness of the Moravians’ musical strategies. To universalise (in the Glissantian sense of imposing or projecting) something like music is not easy; it takes effort. Specifically, it takes what Anna Tsing (2012) calls ‘scale-building’ effort and ‘scalability projects’.

Tsing explains that scalable projects are those that have ‘the ability to expand—and expand, and expand—without rethinking basic elements’ (ibid., 143). Scalability ‘block[s] our ability to notice the heterogeneity of the world’ and ‘allows us to see only uniform blocks, ready for further expansion’ (ibid.). To achieve scalability, the essential project elements must not form ‘transformative relationships [which] are the medium for the emergence of diversity … that might change things’ (ibid., 145). For this reason, Tsing uses the logic and language of the ‘pixel’ to describe the production of ‘uniform, separate, and autonomous’ units ‘cleansed of transformative social relations’ (ibid., 146; 151). These pixel-like interchangeable, zoomable units are what scalability thrives on. So when Garofalo (1993, 26), for example, explains the global success of rock music in terms of it being ‘easy to export’, ‘easy to indigenize’ and ‘readily amenable to local content’ with ‘stylistic elements which can easily be incorporated into local musics’, he is describing the essential scalability of rock music: that it does not need to be transformed to be applied at a large scale. Will Straw (1991, 378) similarly explains how the ‘localism’ of alternative rock ‘has been reproduced, in relatively uniform ways, on a continental and international level’, and in doing so he also makes a scalability argument:

The ability of groups and records to circulate from one local scene to another, in a manner that requires little in the way of adaptation to local circumstances, is an index of the way in which a particularly stable set of musical languages and relationships between them has been reproduced within a variety of local circumstances. (Ibid., 379)

The critical thrust of Straw’s and Garofalo’s observations is that this globalised music system means obsolescence for those who do not adopt the scalable template or model. What they both miss is a Tsingian perspective of how these sets of ‘locals’ that are amenable to the globally circulating, exportable forms have themselves been made as part of the scalability project: it was not just that a few musicians worked out how to make music that would work at scale; they relied on and in some cases contributed to bigger, pre-existing and ongoing scale-making efforts that produced the pixel-like set of locals to which their music was amenable. This is the essential insight of Tsing (2005, 57): ‘projects cannot limit themselves to conjuring at different scales—they must conjure the scales themselves.’ They must also produce scalability.

So, when it comes to the Moravian missionaries’ musical scale-conjuring, there is only one man to start with: Christian Ignatius Latrobe (1758–1836). As the London-based administrator of Moravian mission work, Latrobe sat at the very centre of a Latourian ‘centre of calculation’ where ‘masses of inscriptions pour in, tipping the scale once again by forcing the world to come to the centres’ (Latour, 1987, 233; italics in original). For a half-century, from the 1780s to the 1830s, it was his job as Secretary of the Church and Missions of the United Brethren to correspond with Moravian missionaries stationed in Greenland, Canada, the US, the West Indies, Suriname, Siberia, South Africa and several other missions of varying size and success around the world. His archived correspondence in the Moravian Church Archives in London is organised into sections for, say, Tobago, Labrador and the Calmucks, and his private journal in Manchester’s John Rylands Library describes his daily work engaging with these varied communications. Based in the department for the ‘Superintendency of the Missions’, his job was essentially to administer and oversee the whole Moravian project:

All Missionaries keep up a constant correspondence with this department, and also transmit to them copies of their Diaries and Journals. A Secretary is appointed to make extracts from them, of which manuscript copies are sent and read to all the congregations and Missions. (PA VII 1819–20, 16)

Indeed, he was also tasked with circulating the correspondence that came to him in London back out to all the missions, and he did this partly by editing a regular publication of Periodical Accounts of the Church of the United Brethren that he then posted around the world.Footnote 1 This enabled the missions to feel part of a global effort and, importantly, to share when certain methods had succeeded. Through this circulating correspondence Latrobe could help build and share a standardised, best-practice model of missionary behaviour. And besides the paperwork, it was Latrobe’s job to source and send the items necessary for missionary success around the world. He sent maps, tools, bells and building materials, but the most common items requested by the missionaries and sent by Latrobe were hymn books. He also took a keen interest in the musical instruments that would be used in the missionaries’ religious services. The Periodical Accounts contain several mentions of missionaries receiving with gratitude musical instruments that had been sent by Latrobe in London. (The ship that delivered a violincello to Labrador, for example, was called ‘the Harmony’.) Latrobe’s diary also shows that he helped new missionaries pack and prepare for their trips out into the field, and this often involved helping them pick out the best lightweight, mobile musical instruments.

Latrobe’s personal network in Europe included music historians such as Charles Burney as well as some of the leading musicians of the day, especially Joseph Haydn, who was Latrobe’s favourite. Latrobe himself was influential in his time as a composer and especially as an editor of collections of hymns and sacred music. In 1790 Latrobe edited the first English edition of Moravian hymn tunes, including around a dozen of his own compositions. That hymn book and its subsequent editions continued to be used by missionaries throughout the nineteenth century. Latrobe’s passion was music, which he saw as both spiritually and practically crucial for the evangelical cause. He wrote, in 1815, on his return from an official visit to the missions in South Africa:

Among the precious gifts which it has pleased God to bestow upon his creature man … I consider music as one of the most important and valuable, both as to its nature, its effects, its use, and its eternal duration. (Latrobe’s letter to his daughter Agnes, quoted in The Moravian Church Miscellany IV 1853, 345; italics in original)

He emphasised both ‘the secret and mysterious power which it possesses over the heart, and the rapturous delight which it conveys to the intellectual part of man, and which language cannot describe’ (ibid., 345–6). He recorded in his diary the many debates and discussions he had among his friends about the use and potential misuse of something with such power over the heart and mind, but he always returned to his unwavering belief that religious messages could be ‘brought home to the heart by Verse easier than Prose’ (Journal of Christian Ignatius Latrobe, 9 Jan 1788, f. 2; underlines in original).

This belief that music should be used for delivering and supporting clear spiritual messages meant that he favoured certain musical features. 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. He spent several years deriding what he saw as an overly demonstrative organ-playing style and the tendency to play ‘jiggish’ tunes in church and at other denominations’ mission stations (Latrobe, 1818, 216). Instead, he promoted a slow, steady, sober approach to accompaniment with an emphasis on ‘Correctness and Simplicity, the two grand sources of beauty in the performance of Music’ (Latrobe, 1828 I, 2–3; italics in original). He thought that flourishes and fast transitions would distract from the spiritual messages and also make it impossible for a large congregation of untrained singers to follow. Even more complex anthems should not be ‘disfigured by slurs, passing notes, and flourishing interludes’ (ibid., iv). In fact, Latrobe was the key figure in a stylistic revolution in Moravian church music, instituting a simplified accompaniment style that Moravian missionaries continued to use through the next two centuries (Stevens, 1971). Of course, this standardisation of a simpler form of accompaniment that did not require advanced musical skills made these Moravian hymn performances more scalable, that is, reproducible in contexts even where virtuosos were unavailable.

Through his position at the administrative centre of the Moravian missionary project, Latrobe contributed to the institution of a large-scale, standardised mission model. He received all the different missions’ reports, diaries and correspondence, sending back advice and materials, and he published edited selections of these in the Periodical Accounts, which he also sent back around the different missions. Many of the letters he received from the different missionaries begin by thanking Latrobe for having sent the latest editions of the Periodical Accounts with news of Moravian progress. Some of the missionaries also mention that they read these texts aloud to their assembled congregations. Latrobe edited selectively and inserted his own comments when he wanted to emphasise a point, especially in relation to music. For example, he included an extract of the 1809 diary of the Gnadenthal mission in the Cape Colony describing how the African congregation were apparently ‘struck and delighted’ by the performance of an anthem by four European missionaries. Latrobe inserted an explanatory footnote: ‘Their [the congregation’s] surprise was chiefly occasioned by hearing the four natural parts of harmony, each singing to appearance a different tune, and yet all sweetly flowing together in one’ (PA V 1811–14, 7). But the primary method of standardising a policy was simply to circulate news of its success. For example, the simplicity of the congregation’s singing in Labrador—and the apparently positive effect of this on the congregation’s Christian sincerity—was emphasised. Latrobe also drew attention to the Greenland example as a model to follow, not least because of the apparent effectiveness of the formal singing schools that had been instituted before later becoming unnecessary because of communal self-education. In the early editions of the Periodical Accounts, Latrobe quoted with approval sections from David Cranz’s History of Greenland (1767), part of which ‘describes very minutely the mode by which the Missionaries proceed among the free Heathen: which indeed is every where the same as to the main point’ (PA I 1790–95, 12). Latrobe must have known that the Moravian mission being ‘every where the same’ was an aim rather than a reality at that point, but he likely wanted to use Cranz’s description of the role of music and singing in the missionary project as an example:

Singing, if sweet, and accompanied with a feeling of heart, is not the smallest part of a rational worship; the hymn-theology being of so much the more blessed tendency, as hymns are easily learnt, and charmingly sung even by the smallest children; and thus all, even the profoundest truths, may, as it were, in a way of refreshment, be insinuated with almost an indelible impression into their minds … the blessing of which is beyond description, both upon the hearts, and for the advancement of young and old in knowledge. (Cranz, 1767 II, 370)

Latrobe circulated several examples of missionaries using singing and music when making first contact with potential converts around the world. (In the language of the time, these potential converts and established congregations were ‘hearers’ and/or ‘the auditory’ who, if they proved unresponsive, were said to be ‘not ready to hear’.) It also became clear through the collected reports that the first, most basic and most fundamental task of the missionaries was to translate European, Christian hymns into the language of the people among whom they were working. This was considered the best means of beginning the process of insinuation. All this became clear through the correspondence and Periodical Accounts that Latrobe maintained.

Hymn translation was usually an extremely difficult task, executed imperfectly and often with disregard for the rhythms, rhymes and intonations of the native languages (see Goodman, 2012; Agawu, 2016), but it was the primary task of the missionary in the field, and it contributed to the global standardisation, or the Glissantian universalisation, of music. It was also a task that connected the field missionary to Latrobe in the administrative centre, as he would receive these manuscript translations and arrange for them to be printed in London, before sending them back to the mission stations. (Many of Latrobe’s incoming letters acknowledge receipt of these hymn books and thank him for his efforts in printing and posting them.) In general, the missionaries translated hymns from the standard Moravian hymn books, including those compiled and even composed by Latrobe. This meant that when the Periodical Accounts described performances of, for example, ‘The Lord Has Done Great Things For Us’ among the congregations in Greenland and South Africa, Latrobe could insert a standardised hymn number (e.g. ‘No 613’) and/or page number from the common Moravian hymn book. The Periodical Accounts also contained examples of missionaries in Suriname, Greenland and Delaware composing their own hymns, but these compositions followed the established Moravian conventions. There were even examples of what Eyerly calls ‘indigenized forms of Christianity and music-making’ among the ‘Native Christians’ who composed their own hymns (Eyerly, 2020, 15), but the fundamentals of Moravian musicking remained. Latrobe hoped, as he wrote in his introduction to his collection of hymn tunes, that the same spiritually uplifting music should be heard ‘in all our congregations; and that, scattered as we are in all parts of the world, we may nevertheless, in this part of our worship also, be perfectly uniform’ (Latrobe, 1790, ii). His hope that ‘pleasing uniformity may … be established among us’ in matters of music (ibid.) was part of the Moravian aim to establish themselves as ‘one people’ who shared a faith, an evangelical mission and a standardised set of cultural practices that could overcome national or tribal differences (see Schutt, 1999).

It is remarkable how much emphasis the Moravians placed on singing and music as evidence of spiritual conversion and of the progress or success of the mission more generally. Missionaries often remarked on their congregations’ ‘sweet’ or ‘harmonious’ singing ‘in unison’. They heard this style of singing as the fruit of their missionary labours, especially when compared with the singing they claimed to have first encountered, which they often described as ugly, inharmonious and muddled. Cranz’s History of Greenland, for example, contains a missionary’s description of overhearing the ‘extraordinary sweet singing’ of a converted family’s morning hymns:

[W]e stood still and listened to this sweet melody with hearts exceedingly moved, and with tears in our eyes … These people were no longer than two years ago savage heathens, and now they sing to the Lamb that was slain, in so sweet a manner, that it penetrates one’s marrow and bone. (Cranz, 1767 II, 370)

Often it is the overheard, undirected nature of the singing that provokes such an emotional response. The Periodical Accounts contain many such examples of apparently spontaneous Christian song from among the converts being celebrated as evidence of the mission’s success. But more formal or coordinated performances were important too. A particular trope was that when missionaries arrived at an established mission station for the first time they would be greeted with a hymn from the assembled congregation, and this musical welcome would be reported as a testament to the mission’s progress. It was, for the missionary, remarkable to find people ‘seated only a few years ago in darkness, and now singing melodical hymns for the living God’ (quoted in Boon, 2015, 73). Latrobe received a letter of this kind from a missionary who had recently arrived at one of the South African mission stations in 1807 and he published it in the Periodical Accounts:

My dear Friend! I wish you could waft yourself hither for but eight or ten days. I am pretty sure you would not often have a dry eye, in beholding what the Lord has done for this nation, which but a few years ago was buried in gross ignorance, darkness, and sin: I am not able to describe it, it must be seen and felt. Whenever I hear them sing that verse: ‘The Lord for us great things hath done,’ &c. I feel my whole soul melted within me! they [sic] do it with such energy and sincere thanksgiving. (PA IV 1806–10, 297–8)

Latrobe received and published further musical evidence of the progress of the South African mission in 1811:

You may conceive how we felt, while we were sitting at dinner, to hear the voices of the greater part of our congregation, which had assembled unknown to us before our door, singing the praises of our Saviour with cheerful hearts. I assure you, it penetrated our very souls. Thus also, after the close of the evening-service, the whole congregation remained standing before the church, and continued, for a long time, singing hymns of praise and thanksgiving. The evening being very calm, the chorus of … sweet voices seemed to be carried forward through the air, and was echoed back from the hills in a most delightful manner. I wish you could be witness to the effect of such music. The Hottentots never fail to add their favourite hymn, ‘The Lord has done great things for us,’ &c. which is, indeed a most heart-reviving truth. (PA V 1811–14, 246)

Latrobe did ultimately hear this for himself. In 1815–16 he took a tour of the South African mission stations, the only such tour he did in his capacity as an overseer of the Moravian missionary project. He was welcomed by the singing of the congregation and he was overwhelmed with joy upon

seeing this company, lately a scattered race of wretched, ignorant, and wicked heathen, but now brought together as a people of God … Here is seen the effect produced by the preaching of the gospel of a crucified Saviour, unadorned and unaided by human eloquence! I was greatly affected, beyond the power of utterance, and we all stood in silent devotion, listening to the sweet voices, which formed their delightful chorus. (Latrobe, 1818, 40)

For Latrobe, whose job it was also to attract funding from Europeans sympathetic to the cause, these musical descriptions helped demonstrate that the Moravians’ missionary efforts were bearing fruit and were therefore worthy of further support. The Periodical Accounts also recount many occasions of white Europeans, including colonial governors and officials, visiting the missions and expressing their satisfaction at the quality of the congregations’ singing. When some Danish plantation owners travelled over from Demerara to visit the Suriname mission in 1803, they ‘expressed their surprize [sic] at the order, stillness, and harmonious singing of the Indian congregation’ (PA III 1801–05, 137). In 1804, the South African missions were frequently visited by military officers and Cape Colony officials who were said to be ‘delighted with the singing’ and ‘observed, that it was manifest, that our people sung not with their voices only, but with their hearts’ (PA IV 1806–10, 43). Three different Governors of the Cape Colony visited in 1806, 1808 and 1813 respectively, and each apparently declared himself pleasantly surprised at the quality of the singing, and promised his financial and political support for the mission (ibid., 172–4; 368–9).

These performances and their anecdotal retelling fitted into the Moravian strategy of emphasising the quality rather than quantity of converts—Cranz, for example, described his aim as ‘to shew not so much the increase in number, as the inward growth in knowledge and grace’ of the Greenland congregation (Cranz, 1767 I, xi) and ‘growth in depth’ was a key strategy of the South African mission (Boon, 2015, 87)—and this suited several constituencies, including the expanding colonial state. Qualitative accounts of sweet, spontaneous or perfectly harmonious singing—contrasted with unflattering accounts of the indigenous music it was said to have replaced—were understood to indicate the fundamental moral and religious reform of the singers. Colonial governors heard this as a musical manifestation of the progress of the Christian ‘civilising’ mission. The missionary and colonial projects were in many ways intertwined, often acting in mutually beneficial ways. Most missionaries relied happily on the force and support of colonial officials, and ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia’ were sung as well as hymns. Missionaries often made their congregations express their gratitude to the colonial government, and they were highly effective advocates of loyalty to the British imperial centre, as Elizabeth Elbourne (2002) has pointed out. Missions were particularly important ‘on the margins of empire’ (Elbourne, 2002, 14): they often represented the first or primary contact with people at the colonial frontier, and they were crucially involved with ‘the initial steps of imperial expansion’ in the first half of the nineteenth century (Johnston, 2003, 13). Anna Johnston has emphasised that the missionary project pretended to represent ‘a model of “civilised” expansionism and colonial community management’ (ibid.). Missionaries seemed to offer a certain moral justification for imperialism, as they enabled colonial expansion to be framed as the noble progress of Christian civilisation, with what they saw as ignorant heathens remodelled into ‘imperial archetypes of civility and modernity’ (ibid.).

This view was especially prominent, around the turn of the nineteenth century, in abolitionist and antislavery discourse, which intersected strongly with evangelising and missionary ideas (see Vernal, 2012). Latrobe himself was a strong opponent of slavery. He relied on rich and powerful abolitionist figures in his personal network—especially Beilby Porteous, Charles Middleton and Henry Thornton—for financial and political support for the Moravian mission, so he was often obliged to make this moral case quite strongly. He recounts in his diary several productive meetings with the leader of the abolitionist movement, the Member of Parliament William Wilberforce. On 7 January 1788 Wilberforce ‘paid me an agreeable Visit, with a View to speak with me on the mode of converting the poor negroes on the [West] Coast of Africa to Christianity—hoping thereby to civilise them & make them useful to themselves’ (Journal of Christian Ignatius Latrobe, 7 January 1788, f. 2). The two met again on 25 January 1788 and talked at length about them potential benefits of a mission in Guinea. According to Latrobe, Wilberforce stated his view that the Moravian missionaries ‘would easily bring those of this poor nation, that would adopt the Christ[ian] Religion into a regular way of life, teaching them to till the ground, to plant Cotton & Indigo, articles much more valuable to this Country—than Slaves—to live in a regular Sociable manner … and thus, by introducing Civilisation & above all things true Christianity amongst them, make some amends to this nation for the Cruelties inflicted upon them’ (ibid., 24 January 1788, ff. 4–5). Other diary entries show Wilberforce offering his support for Moravian missionary endeavours in St Kitts and at Botany Bay in Australia (ibid., 2 June and 16 July 1789, ff. 106–7). Wilberforce seems to have seen ‘introducing Civilisation’ and encouraging a ‘regular way of life’, according to the European model, as a means of making up for the injustices of the slave trade. Some abolitionists around the time of Latrobe’s meetings with Wilberforce even invoked music in their attempts to garner support. William Dickson, for example, referred to ‘The fondness of the negroes for music … [and] their taste for melody and harmony … as an argument in proving their humanity’ (Dickson, 1789, 84). Latrobe knew that accounts of civilised and regular singing among African congregations and the (formerly) enslaved would strengthen the abolitionists’ arguments and their crucial financial support for the Moravian mission.

This ‘use of musicality to demonstrate humanity’ (Ryan, 2021, 158) was an important part of the Moravian missionary project that Latrobe administered. Although it is true that Moravian missionaries contributed to the well-discussed ethnomusicological ‘hunt for difference’ in colonial contexts (see Agawu, 2003; Chikowero, 2015), they were also looking for examples of ‘natural’ or ‘universal’ musicality that could demonstrate the essential, shared humanity of their (future) congregations. Tsing (2005, 89) describes how the ‘searcher for universal truths must establish an axiom of unity’, emphasising ‘Convergences [that] offer legitimacy and charisma to nascent categories’. In practice this was a highly partial ‘hunt for sameness’ in the colonial-missionary context, where evidence of shared humanity was found in examples of European-style musical performance among non-Europeans.

Latrobe inserted examples of shared musicality in the Periodical Accounts, such as this ‘Extract of the Diary of the Mission of the United Brethren at Gnadenthal, near the Cape of Good Hope’ for 11 July 1813:

We have often had occasion to observe, that the Hottentots possess considerable talents for music. This is remarkably evident in the harmonious singing of the congregation, and especially when small companies get together to sing hymns. To-day Brother Schwinn reported another proof of it. Going to call at one of the houses, he overheard the Hottentot inhabitant performing on the violin, who not only played that difficult hymn tune Come, Holy Ghost, Come, Lord, Our God, (see Hymn-book, p. 65), without fault, but contrived, by double stops, to play a very good second to it. (PA VI 1814–17, 27–8)Footnote 2

Here, ‘proof’ of Africans’ natural musicality is an individual’s ability to play a ‘difficult’ European hymn in a way that this missionary considered sophisticated or challenging. ‘Double stops’ refers here to a technique used on string instruments, such as the violin, where the player presses down two strings at the same time with the bow to produce two notes simultaneously. By doing so, violinists can play two parts of the music at the same time, essentially ‘harmonising’ with themselves. Latrobe scored the hymns in his hymn books with second and third parts printed in the treble staff, so this violinist may even have been performing Latrobe’s arrangement, although the word ‘contrived’ here suggests that the violinist had to use some impressive ingenuity or creativity to make this work because the arrangement was not written with solo violin performance in mind. Essentially, the ability to use harmony in this way was considered evidence of a natural musicality and even humanity.

On his own visit to the Gnadenthal mission in South Africa two years later, Latrobe himself made a similar observation and logical claim:

To-day I heard with much pleasure a party of men and women, employed as day-labourers in the missionaries’ garden, both before and after their meal, which they enjoyed in the shade of the grove, most melodiously singing a verse, by way of a grace. One of the women sung a correct second, and very sweetly performed that figure in music, called Retardation [here Latrobe includes a small sheet music image showing a feature often found in his own compositions and arrangements] from which I judge, that dissonants are not the invention of art, but the production of nature. Nothing would be more easy, than to form a chorus of the most delightful voices, in four parts, from among this smooth-throated nation. (Latrobe, 1818, 67)

Again, it is the ability to perform harmony with a second part that demonstrates this people’s natural musicality, plus the skilful use of dissonant non-chord tones in a style that was common among European composers of the Classical era. Latrobe also extrapolates from this African musical performance that ‘dissonants’ are not a specific invention of European culture but are in fact a natural part of human musicality. Their possession of this skill means, for Latrobe, that it would be ‘easy’ to make further musical progress. Latrobe’s son John Antes Latrobe made this argument—that ‘harmonizing or performing in parts’ was natural, God-given and deducible through experience and reason—more fully in his book on The Music of the Church (1831, 44–5). All this was part of the scaling up process and the production of scalability. The expansion of the colonial project and the expansion of the missionary project relied on each other, both practically and in terms of offering a kind of moral justification. The demonstration of success in reforming the heathen, and in establishing a shared humanity via shared musicality, was also important for the abolitionist movement, who provided moral, practical, financial and political support to the Moravians.

But for the Moravians to make their musical-culture project fully scalable, two problems remained: (1) the need for reliable and appropriate musical accompaniment (both instruments and musicians) to support the congregations’ singing, and (2) the need to eradicate other, pre-existing or conflicting forms of music and musical culture. Solving both these problems would produce the scalability necessary for the musical methods that had proved successful to be applied more generally.

To take the second problem first: it is important to remember that, for Moravians, the use of music was not purely a practical means of building and extending the missions as institutions. For them, harmonious, European-style singing was evidence of the mission having produced truly reformed Christian believers who were closer to God and to a place in heaven. Latrobe and others thought that the universal, natural qualities of music were literally divine—a way of experiencing something of heaven on Earth. Latrobe (1790, ii) saw melodious, Christian singing as a ‘gift of God bestowed upon us’, and the missionaries presented it in this way to their congregations. Agawu (2016, 338) reflects critically on how colonisers’ hymn-singing apparently ‘promised access to some precious accoutrements of modernity and eventually a place in heaven’. Crucially, this emphasis on the heavenly nature of Moravian music came with strong denigration of other styles of music, both other secular European music and especially the musical cultures and rituals that the missionaries encountered and sought to stamp out. For Latrobe, the use of God-given music should be ‘altogether confined to the service of religion’ (PA IX 1823, 238), and it should not be ‘abused’ by being used for other purposes. Latrobe wrote that ‘I have been taught most highly to value Music as a gift of God bestowed upon man for the noblest purposes, to regret its misapplication, and to abhor its abuse’ (1828 I, iv). In a musical essay addressed to his daughter, Latrobe told her that her ‘musical talent was given you, that you might in this state of trial and preparation have, for your encouragement, the means of enjoying a foretaste of that eternal bliss, wherein your occupation will be a perpetual expression of gratitude to Him … Under this impression, you will be tempted to use it for no other purpose than for the glory of our Savior’ (quoted in The Moravian Church Miscellany IV 1853, 353). He seems to have taught his son the same thing, since a few years later John Antes Latrobe (1831, 151) criticised ‘the mean and licentious ditties of the tavern, or the more refined but equally vain melodies of the opera—any thing, in short, that is inferior to the sublimest strains of our richest ecclesiastical harmonies’. John Antes Latrobe, as his father, considered it highly regrettable ‘when the chief instrument of their elevation is accounted a mere tool of convenience, or amusement for the vulgar … By their own negligence, they incapacitate themselves from joining in the only mode of expressing the highest state of spiritual exultation’ (ibid., 181).

Considering this attitude, widespread among Moravians, it is not surprising that missionary accounts used highly pejorative and critical language to describe the indigenous music they sought to replace. They denigrated dancing especially. Take, for example, this extract of a report on ‘the beginning of the mission of the United Brethren, Among the Chippeway Indians, near Lake Erie, in Canada’ that Latrobe published in the fourth volume of the Periodical Accounts:

[T]he Indians held their autumnal dance [in late September 1802], a festivity observed with a view to a successful chase. Their drums resounded all night through. It cannot be described how these people are sunk in superstition, and how fast they are bound in the chains of satan. On these occasions, the sorcerers play the chief, and to themselves the most profitable, part. Oh, that the Lord would soon have mercy upon this nation! (PA IV 1806–10, 142)

A couple of months later, the missionary there was already making ‘a trial to translate some hymns’ (ibid., 145) as part of his first attempt to replace the ‘superstitious’ drum-based musical culture he found with melodious singing of European Christianity.

As non-Moravian music was outlawed at the mission stations, the missionaries reacted extremely severely when they discovered that the congregation had been dancing or musicking otherwise. The 10 June 1809 diary entry for the Gruenekloof mission in South Africa describes a particularly spectacular example of this. The missionaries had learnt that a member of the congregation named Klaas Trompeter had been inclined to

entice women and children and others to come to his house and join in a dance, connected with the most superstitious and indecent practices. These abominations had existed for some time in darkness, till some of the school-children betrayed the party, by informing Sister Schmitt of it. On examination, we found that not only most of the scholars had joined in it, but even several women, and two of the candidates for baptism. We consulted together, how we might, with the help of God, at once put a stop to such dangerous and seductive practices, and prayed the Lord, in this distressing case, to give us grace, firmness, and success. On the following evening, Brother Kohrhammer … declared their nocturnal dances, following immediately upon their assembling to hear the word of God, to be a work of the devil, by which the arch-enemy of souls seeks to destroy the good seed sown, that it may bring forth no fruit … On the following day, the children came running to Brother and Sister Schmitt with tears and lamentations, crying for forgiveness, promising never more to be guilty of such evil doings. The women came with the same professions of contrition to Brother and Sister Kohrhammer. This proved a seasonable opportunity of representing to them the abominably sinful and damnable nature of all their old heathenish superstitions and wanton practices, by which the devil leads them captive at his will, and to explain, how by these things the wrath of God comes upon all unbelievers. They were then permitted, by giving us their hands, solemnly to promise never to suffer themselves again to be seduced in these sinful ways. Klaas Trompeter, perceiving that his diabolical traffic was at an end, came at length himself, fell on his knees, and entreated us to forgive him. However, to him we could not speak as to those who had fallen into his snares, but as to an agent of the devil and wicked seducer. But he persisted to cry aloud for mercy, till we told him, that if he would bring his violin, with which he had set his wicked dance a-going, and deliver it up into custody, in token of his never encouraging these practices again, we should consider about it. He was overjoyed at this glimpse of hope of forgiveness, got up, ran home, took the old violin down, and exclaimed, ‘Get out of the house, thou instrument of the devil!’—and brought it immediately to us, to keep for him as long as we pleased. Having once more represented to him the atrociousness of his former practices, we added, that though we forgave him, yet that this would not clear him of his guilt; for he must seek forgiveness with God, who alone could save him from eternal punishment. Thus ended this distressing business; and we were glad to perceive, that a deep and salutary impression was made upon old and young. (PA V 1811–14, 62–4)

Although this was just one part of wider missionary efforts to reform African cultural rituals, gender roles, dress and so on (Tonono, 2019), it is hard to overstate the violence of this kind of spectacular episode in which music and dancing were represented as ‘abominably sinful and damnable’, with ‘a deep and salutary impression’ on the rest of the congregation. The Periodical Accounts report other, similar accounts in South Africa alone, such as when some prospective converts who had been ‘very wild, and spent their time in fiddling and dancing’ later ‘broke their fiddles in pieces, and are now attentive hearers in all our meetings’ (PA IX 1823, 38). Violent violin destruction happened in the nearby South African mission stations of the London Missionary Society too for similar reasons (see Elbourne, 2002, 187). This denigration of indigenous musicking was a key process of ‘perceptual reform’ (Robinson, 2020, 40) and the ‘cultural disarmament’ and ‘alienation’ (Chikowero, 2015) that musical colonisation always entailed. Formally renouncing dancing and trivial music-making was, in missionaries’ eyes, an important stage in the process of conversion from unworthy heathen to good Christian. According to the Periodical Accounts, members of the various Moravian mission congregations were often quick to renounce their old musical practices as sinful and shameful, and they were rewarded for doing so. This extinguishing of existing social ‘entanglements’ of various kinds in order to create pixel-like blocks devoid of transformative social relations is what Tsing (2012, 151) sees as a crucial stage in the production of scalability. The cultural landscape must be cleared, simplified and fundamentally remade, with the people alienated from their existing rituals, sounds and aesthetic preferences, for certain practices to become scalable.

The other obstacle to full scalability concerned the need for reliable and appropriate musical accompaniment (both instruments and musicians) to support the congregations’ singing. It was common for missionaries to lament that their congregations apparently struggled to maintain the correct pitch. Cranz, for example, wrote of the Greenlanders: ‘Their only fault is, that they are apt to let their voices sink, especially in a long metre, but this is remedied by the help of music’ (Cranz, 1767 II, 423). Latrobe wrote in the introduction to his collection of Hymn-Tunes (1790, iii) that ‘the natural imbecility of the human voice is such, that few can keep to the pitch in which a tune is begun, especially in long hymns, or a succession of many verses’. (Notice again that this flaw is apparently ‘natural’ and presumably shared by all.) For this reason, Latrobe dedicated a great deal of effort to finding the best musical instruments to export to the scattered mission stations, often stopping in at his favourite music shops in London to find a bargain for that purpose. He also addressed the voice-lowering issue, conducting experiments on his South African tour. He describes how he sat down to play piano one evening at a mission station, only to be joined by a few curious members of the congregation:

I told them, that I would play for them, but they should sing for me, as I wished to ascertain, whether, by the help of an instrument, they would keep true to the tune, without sinking their voices. They then gave out, and sung some verses, in different tunes; I always found them true to the pitch of the instrument, though every now and then I let them sing some lines by themselves, then falling in with the piano-forte, found they had not in the smallest degree lowered their voices. The number of singers gradually increased to thirty. I was pleased with this new proof of the naturally musical qualities of this nation, and was convinced, that the sinking of the voices at church, is only owing to bad precentors, but would be prevented by an organ. (Latrobe, 1818, 107; italics in original)

We see here, again, the search for ‘natural’ musicality, but in this case the realisation of natural talent relies on musical accompaniment, ideally from an organ.Footnote 3 Organs were ‘undoubtedly of all other instruments best adapted’ for this purpose (Latrobe, 1790, iii). Latrobe’s strongly pro-organ position was partly a straightforward aesthetic preference, one that his son inherited. John Antes Latrobe (1831, 350) wrote: ‘No instrument on earth can be compared to the organ for fulness [sic], majesty, richness, modulation, and condensation of sound; and no instrument seems therefore so suited to the exclusive adoration of Him … Perhaps no work of man’s device can claim equal power of exciting and arresting the feelings.’ 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 (see, e.g., PA VIII 1821–23, 96–7; 182–3). An organ was finally sent from Europe to Labrador in 1824. The congregation at New Fulnec in Jamaica gratefully received their organ in 1834, noting that ‘it has a sweet tone, and we shall often thank you for it’ (PA XIII 1834–36, 284). 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 (see PA IV 1806–10, 255; 379–80).Footnote 4

Having a standard instrument that could be used in the vastly different contexts of the various Moravian missions was only a partial solution to the problem of accompaniment. There was also a need for trained organists. Most Moravian missionaries had some musical training but few had the specific skills to take on what Latrobe saw as the vitally important role of the church organist. The organ, thought Latrobe, was commonly used in an ‘improper’ manner by the untrained musician who ‘easily exposes his inattention and want of true devotion’ (Latrobe, 1790, iii). 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’ (ibid., 366). The collection of hymn tunes that Latrobe sent around the missions contained important instructions for the (trainee) organist. Moravian organists should be extremely attentive to the singing of the congregation, taking care never to overpower but always playing with ‘sufficient strength of sound to prevent their sinking’ (Latrobe, 1790, vi). They should also be restrained and avoid the ‘shakes, and other graces’ that Latrobe so despised (ibid.). And, most importantly, whoever filled this important role should know all the hymns in the book by heart and ‘should be able to play the hymn Tunes in most if not all the different keys extempore’, following the rhythms and pauses of the singing, in order not to disrupt the sometimes spontaneous choices of the minister and congregation (ibid.). These instructions were distributed in successive editions of Latrobe’s Hymn-Tunes throughout the nineteenth century, as a guide to how organists should be trained, both in Europe’s seminaries and throughout the Moravian missionary world. By 1837, the Labrador congregation’s singing was supported by ‘an Eskimo brother, who is able to play most of the hymn tunes in use among us on the organ, and gladly assists in the services of the Church’ (PA XIV 1836, 217). As early as 1835 the missionaries in South Africa were boasting that a young African man named 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. By 1838, Pfeiffer was ‘our regular Organist’ (PA XIV 1836, 325), accompanying the choir who had been trained to sing four-part harmonies. This achieved Latrobe’s aim of forming a well-trained chorus from among the South African people (Latrobe, 1818, 67), with accompaniment on an instrument and in a style endorsed by him. Pfeiffer then helped train another African organist, Alexander Haas, who went as a ‘native assistant’ to another mission station in the colony in 1843. In this way, both the standardised musical instrument and the standardised skills and performance styles that Latrobe had instituted were scaled up across South Africa and beyond. At the different stations around the world, 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 from Europe, embodied in the organ and the organist.

This was the musical production of scalability—a means of ensuring a favoured set of musical practices and materials did not need to be changed in order to be widely extended, expanded and reproduced. This entailed, on the one hand, standardising forms, instruments, tunes and performance styles. From producing and circulating books of translated hymns, to sending musical instruments that would work in any conditions, to selecting and training musicians according to a specific set of rules, the Moravian missionary project was based on a concerted effort to scale up a particular musical repertoire and a particular way of musicking. On the other hand, the Moravians’ musical colonisation project also involved engineering the contexts of the circulation and performance of these musical forms, instruments, repertoires and styles by radically simplifying the cultural landscape in which they would be propagated. This large-scale standardisation relied on a concerted project of ‘cultural alienation’ and ‘epistemicide’ (Chikowero, 2015, 3–4)—outlawing and denigrating indigenous musicking, dancing, instruments and so on in order to produce the stable, standard, pixel-like units devoid of transformative social relations that were necessary for musical expansion. Latrobe and the other Moravian missionaries justified this by emphasising the elevated nature of their style of music, the divinity of which meant that any ‘lower’ use of music—for entertainment or socialisation, say—was to be severely regretted. Latrobe wrote that music should not be used in ‘amusements for the vulgar’, and in fact it should be heard ‘for no other purpose’ than for moving closer to heaven (Latrobe quoted in The Moravian Church Miscellany IV 1853, 353). His son similarly thought that ‘every sound that is uttered should be a vehicle for divine communications’ (John Antes Latrobe, 1831, 75). Replacing indigenous forms of musicking with what they saw as the only music worthy of human time and attention was an integral part of the Moravian project, and it was a way of scaling up the significance of music by placing it beyond ‘this world’ at the level of the heavenly or divine (Latrobe quoted in The Moravian Church Miscellany IV 1853, 349). But of course the supposedly divine features of music—those that apparently pointed to its large-scale spiritual significance—were in fact a quite particular set of features favoured by European evangelicals. It was these musical features that Latrobe and others looked for in the indigenous congregations they sought to convert, and it was these apparently ‘natural’ and even ‘universal’ musical features that they emphasised as evidence of the progress of European civilisation when they needed the support of colonial governors, and as evidence of a shared humanity when they sought support from abolitionists in Europe. Of course music was by no means the sole agent of colonisation in the places where the Moravians evangelised, but it worked in important relation with many of the practices of the colonial state, while functioning as a moral justification for imperial ideologies.

In 1831 John Antes Latrobe wrote that, with the great Classical European composers, music had ‘reached its highest pitch of refinement’ in a style that had been ‘universally adopted among civilized nations’ (John Antes Latrobe, 1831, 69). But as this chapter has shown, this universalisation of culture—in the Glissantian sense of imposing or projecting one place into elsewhere—required substantial scale-building effort.