The Singing Box

The Singing Box Rachel Wheeler (bio) and Sarah Eyerly (bio) WHEN we titled our article "Singing Box 331," it was a reference to what we understood ourselves to be doing: together with our collaborators, we were bringing sound once again to the sparse papers that rested in Box 331 at the Moravian Archives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. But when Rachel taught a draft of the article last fall, students invariably changed the title, consistently referring to "the singing box." Similarly, a colleague regularly referred to this project as "the music box project." These descriptions conjured an image of a box being opened carefully, with a few quiet notes emerging in a single voice, hesitantly at first, and then louder, more confidently and joyfully as more and more voices joined in. Rather than simply being the singers of the box, were we also the listeners? The reversal of agency suggested in these variations on the article's title has offered us an occasion to reframe our thinking on the project as a whole, a process further encouraged by the Forum participants. Jean M. O'Brien entitles her reflection "Animating Box 331," noting that in orchestrating the collaborative project, we "animated the box itself while giving voice to layers and layers of meaning that would have otherwise remained silent." Likewise, Patrick M. Erben ends his essay with an evocative aural metaphor about the physics of sound, describing our collaboration as the work of amplifying the faint yet still resonant reverberations of the distant past by building relationships with others who have kept their ears attuned to those reverberations. This Forum has offered us a rare and welcome occasion to continue these conversations about "the singing box," while also moving the discussion outward to reflect more fully on the possibilities of this type of community-engaged scholarship.1 [End Page 393] All of the respondents, in one way or another, comment on the theme of collaboration in the eighteenth century and the present, remarking that this type of collaborative work is more than coauthorship and interdisciplinarity. Centering the human relationships, as O'Brien highlights, is what animates Box 331. The respondents also point to the benefits and the challenges of such work, and to our commitment to the cocreation of knowledge in partnership with members of a descendant community. Cameron Blevins and O'Brien, in particular, observe the logic of gravitating toward the methods of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS), on the one hand, and digital history, on the other, as both fields value collaboration and the cocreation of knowledge.2 We are grateful that each respondent has generously continued this collaborative conversation, pointing to the potential for future reverberations as this project continues to evolve and we work through its methodological implications. "Singing Box 331" is a history of relationships that reflects some intentionality but also a hefty dose of serendipity. It is impossible to locate one point of origin for "the singing box." It could be Rachel's participation in a German handwriting course at the Moravian Archives, taught by then-archivist Vernon Nelson, or Sarah's meeting with him when she began to research her Moravian ancestor, Johann Jacob Eyerly. Or it might be the 2001 Mohican history conference sponsored by the Stockbridge-Munsee Community in Wisconsin, where Rachel met Dorothy (Dot) Davids and Brent Michael Davids, and heard Bill Miller perform for the first time. There she also learned of the community's language revival efforts, spearheaded by Marlene (Molly) Miller. Or perhaps it was Sarah's doctoral research on Moravian hymnody and musical improvisation that brought her to the Moravian Archives in Herrnhut, Germany, where she met archivists Paul Peucker and Rüdiger Kröger, who brought out the chorale books from the 1750s thinking they might be relevant to her research. Or maybe it was in 2010 when Rachel's old college friend Kate Boyd, now a professor at Butler University, introduced her to Sarah, who had just arrived at Butler and was also working on eighteenth-century Moravians. By that time, Rachel had seen Bill perform numerous times and had spoken with him about the hymns. The three of us spoke concretely for the first time

Acoustics · Agency (philosophy · Art · Cognitive reframing · Epistemology · Guitar · Linguistics · Meaning (existential · Metaphor · Singing · Sociology · Visual arts · History · Moravian Church and William Blake · Philosophy · Psychology