Music of Pennsylvania
During this time, Pennsylvania has been the birthplace for some of the most prominent musicians of their respective eras and the introduction of entire new genres of music to the nation and world.
The Philly sound of the 1970s is soul music that includes notable Pennsylvania performers Gamble and Huff, The O'Jays, The Stylistics, Teddy Pendergrass, Harold Melvin, and The Delfonics, jazz legends like Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, and John Coltrane.
Philadelphia gave to the musical world diverse singers, such as Marian Anderson, Mario Lanza, Solomon Burke, Chubby Checker, Dee Dee Sharp, and the trio performing as The Golden Boys, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Rydell, and Fabian Forte, who grew up together in the same Philly neighborhood.
Philadelphia became especially renowned for musical development and was the home of the esteemed Alexander Reinagle, John Christopher Moller, Rayner Taylor, and Susannah Haswell Rowson.
Others include McCoy Tyner, Joe Venuti, Jimmy Amadie, Robert Chudnick, Jan Savitt, Philly Joe Jones, Reggie Workman, Lee Morgan, Henry Grimes, Ray Bryant, Tommy Bryant, Jimmy Heath, Albert Heath, Specs Wright, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, Hasaan Ibn Ali, Rashied Ali, Muhammad Ali, Sonny Fortune, Kenny Barron, Shirley Scott, Luckey Roberts, Jimmy McGriff, Bobby Durham, Stanley Clarke, Rex Stewart, Eric Reed, among many others.
[3] Pennsylvania, at the crossroads of Appalachia, the Eastern Seaboard and the Midwest has a rich history of Folk Music sharing influences with many other regions of the nation.
George Britton a singer with a long career, who took particular interest in reviving the music of his mother's Pennsylvania Dutch ancestors.
This was a group of Seventh Day Baptists led by Peter Miller and Conrad Beissel, who believed in using music as an integral part of worship.
The Society lasted until 1906, but their final settlement, Old Economy Village in present-day Ambridge, Pennsylvania contains archives with sheet music that is still performed at special community events.
Falckner evidently believed that music was a very important element of missionary work, writing to Germany to ask for an organ, which he said would attract more Native American converts.
The Mennonites used a hymnbook from Schaffhausen, reprinted in the present-day Germantown section of Philadelphia in 1742 as Der Ausbund Das ist etliche schöne christliche Lieder.
Founded in 1457, the Moravian Church originally spread across Moravia, Poland, and Bohemia before persecution forced the remaining faithful to Saxony, where they lived under the protection of Count Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf.
A legend has arisen claiming that a group of Native American warriors approached a Moravian settlement during the French and Indian War, but left after hearing a trombone choir because they believed it to be the voice of their Great Spirit.
Moravians were devoted to missionary work, especially among African slaves and Native Americans; in 1763, they published a collection of hymns in the Delaware language.
Moravians also had a tradition of secular art music that included the famed composer Johann Friedrich Peter, who was a German born in Holland who emigrated to Bethlehem in 1770.
After living in Bethlehem for a time, Peter moved to Salem, where he founded the Collegium Musicum (in 1786) and collected hundreds of symphonies, anthems and oratorios.
Herbst was also a noted collector, whose archives, left to the Salem church after his death, were made public in 1977; these included more than 11,000 pages of content.
