Perry County Lutheran Chorale

     The 15th annual Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival will recognize the contributions of German-Americans to the culture of the Missouri Ozarks with a performance by the Perry County Lutheran Chorale on Saturday, June 20, at 12 noon on the main stage.

     Founded in 2006, the Perry County Lutheran Chorale consists of active members of Lutheran churches in southeast Missouri directed by accomplished conductor Tyson Wunderlich. 

     Wunderlich is the director of music at Saxony Lutheran High School in Cape Girardeau County and an organist at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg, his hometown.  A graduate of Southeast Missouri State University, where he now serves as an adjunct instructor, he holds a master’s degree in conducting from the New England Conservatory of Music.

     According to its mission statement, “The purpose of the Perry County Lutheran Chorale is to act as an extension of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod in proclaiming the good news and grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ to all people through song and word, and to prepare and present classical and contemporary choral repertoire in our local settings and beyond.”

     The choir’s appearance at this year’s Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival reflects the festival committee’s efforts to feature traditions that are significant in the cultural history of the Missouri Ozarks but are distinct from the Anglo-American, Upland Southern culture that the majority of the festival’s content represents.

     German-Americans, many of them Lutherans, have contributed substantially to Ozark folklife, especially in the northern and eastern reaches of the region. 

     “Immigrants from the Kingdom of Saxony in present-day Germany who settled in present-day Perry County in the 1830s were largely responsible for the establishment of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, now the second-largest Lutheran denomination in the United States,” said Matt Meacham, folklorist with the West Plains Council on the Arts.

     “The area in which the eastern Missouri Ozarks overlaps with the central Mississippi Valley remains the site of many congregations affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and other Lutheran denominations, as well as a rich folk culture that reflects both German-American and Upland Southern influences and is especially prominent in the small communities of eastern Perry and northern Cape Girardeau counties,” Meacham commented.

     Some of the hymnody sung within the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod consists of versions of German Lutheran chorales dating from the Reformation era and the early post-Reformation period (the 16th and 17th centuries) in which the original musical style has been at least partly restored.

     Meacham explained, “Like much music composed before the 18th century, as well as some composed since then, the melodies and harmonizations of many of the chorales, or hymns, written during the early decades of Lutheranism are based on systems of organizing pitch called modes rather than on the major and minor scales to which we’re now accustomed.  Similarly, in many cases, their rhythms reflect older rhythmic systems instead of the more metrically oriented rhythms that later became standard.”

     As tonal and rhythmic systems evolved over the 16th and 17th centuries, many of these early chorales were adapted accordingly and were published in updated arrangements.  It was this newer style of chorale that became associated with Johann Sebastian Bach, the most acclaimed of all Lutheran composers.

     In the hands of more modest talents, however, this chorale style later degenerated into oversimplification and insipidness, in the opinions of many scholars and musicians.  Consequently, in the mid-19th century, German publishers began to issue arrangements of early Lutheran chorales in a musical style that more nearly resembled that in which they were originally composed.

     The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and other Lutheran denominations in North America incorporated many of these retrogressive arrangements into their hymnals, and some are still sung.

     “Because of their intentionally antiquated musical style, these versions of German chorales often come as a surprise to listeners who tend to associate Lutheran church music with mainline Protestant hymnody and the choral music of Bach,” Meacham said.  “They sound somewhat similar to the folk hymns and spirituals found in early shape-note tunebooks, especially when they’re sung by the congregations of rural churches.”

     The Perry County Lutheran Chorale’s performance at the Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival will include renditions of some of these selections.