Jeremiah Dencke

{{Short description|American Moravian organist and composer}}

Jeremiah Dencke was born October 2, 1725, in Langenbielau, Silesia and died May 28, 1795, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He joined the Moravian Congregation at Gnadenfrei and was called to Moravian center in Herrnhut in 1748, where he became an organist.{{Cite book |last=Knouse |first=Nola Reed |title=The Music of the Moravian Church in America |publisher=University of Rochester Press |year=2008 |isbn=978-1-58046260-0 |pages=270 |language=en}} He emigrated to the American colonies in 1761 on the same ship with the father of Johann and Simon Peter.A dictionary of American composers Neil Butterworth, New York: Garland, 1984Two odes by Jeremias Deneke : eighteenth-century American Moravian style.- June C. Ottenberg, The Music Review. 45 (1984), S. 112-121.The complete works of Jeremias Dencke (1725-1795) - John Douglas Jueckstock, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary (Louisville). 1984. dissertation.Early American music : music in America from 1620 to 1920- Harold Gleason, Published by Bloomington, Indiana: Frangipani Press, 1981The new Grove dictionary of music and musicians -Stanley Sadie, 1980Biographical dictionary of American music-Charles Eugene Claghorn, Published by West Nyack, N.Y.: Parker Pub. Co., 1974, 491 p. 1974Baker's biographical dictionary of musicians-Theodore Baker, Published by G. Schirmer, 1940 year. The oldest existing American Moravian art music is a set of seven solos and three duets Dencke composed for the Single Brethren's observance in 1765. It was performed in both Nazareth and Bethlehem, whose diaries use the term Vest Psalm when referring to it.{{Cite journal |last1=Claypool |first1=Richard D. |last2=Steelman |first2=Robert F. |title=The Music Collections in the Moravian Archives |date=1979 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/41179406 |journal=Transactions of the Moravian Historical Society |volume=23 |issue=2 |pages=13–49 |jstor=41179406 |issn=0886-1730}}

Jeremiah Dencke was a MoravianThe Moravian Contribution to American Music Donald M. McCorkle Notes, 2nd Ser., Vol. 13, No. 4 (Sep., 1956), pp. 597-606 {{doi|10.2307/892776}} {{JSTOR|892776}}Catalogue of the Salem Congregation Music by Frances Cumnock Author(s) of Review: Thomas E. Warner American Music, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1983), pp. 94-96 {{doi|10.2307/3051588}} {{JSTOR|892776}} and one of the first American composers.http://www.voxnovus.com/resources/American_Composer_Timeline.htm American composer Timeline