Joyful Singing

Book excerpt: This is the tenth in a series of monographs--Shaping American Lutheran Church Music--published by the Center for Church Music, Concordia University Chicago, River Forest, Illinois., highlighting people, movements, and events that have helped to shape the course of church music among Lutherans in North America. In this volume, Benjamin A. Kolodziej uncovers and records the story of the Lutherans who undertook the daunting and uncertain work of carving out a new life in a new land, and of the music that accompanied them. The book is rich in historical and contextual detail, and Kolodziej overcomes the difficulty of delineating different Lutheran sects--immigrants aligned to whatever iteration of the Lutheran church was available, --to tell the stories of the church's past in clear and compelling prose. The book will be a great help to scholars, historians, and musicians alike.