Commemorating August Thirteenth: Music and Theology in Eighteenth-Century Moravian Communities

One of the most important memorial days in the Moravian liturgical calendar is August Thirteenth, a commemoration of the communal spiritual awakening that eighteenth-century Moravians experienced on the Saxon estate of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf (1700–1760). While the Moravian church has celebrated this storied event for centuries, complete with music-rich religious services, only a few original compositions were crafted specifically for these services. In light of the importance of August Thirteenth, and given of the abundance of musical works that eighteenth-century Moravian composers wrote for other memorial days and religious holidays, this article employs musicological and theological perspectives to inquire about the uncharacteristic scarcity of original works composed for this commemoration. Adopting these two lenses together deepens existing scholarly understanding of Moravian musicians’ creative practice, suggesting that the lack of dedicated musical works for August Thirteenth reflects artists’ deep personal devotion to the Moravian church’s Christocentric aims and the extent to which this theology permeated musical aspects of eighteenth-century Moravian life.