PhD candidate Patricia Milewski, who dedicates her dissertation research to the recognition of the lyrical production of the early modern Königsberg author, Gertrud Möller, with a focus on two music-notated songbooks that she published in collaboration with the court music director Johann Sebastiani, has published an article in “Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie Band 60, 2021.”
Milewski’s article, “Gertrud Möller as author of ‘anonymous’ songs” corrects previous scholarship proposing that none of Möller’s spiritual songs from these volumes found their way in Protestant hymnbooks. It proves that two of Möller’s texts were taken up anonymously into the most influential book of pietistic hymnody in the eighteenth century devoid Sebastian’s musical settings. The ‘travels’ of one song is traced throughout diverse confessional songbooks and hymnals throughout Germany and onwards to North America in the 19th centuries, eventually to be found in a songbook brought to the Waterloo district of southern Ontario by American Mennonite settlers.
Featured image: Photo by Marius Masalar on Unsplash
