Johannes Kelpius

Johannes Kelpius (Transylvania, 1673 – Germantown, Pennsylvania, 1708) was a German-born mystic whose name is linked to the earliest written musical materials in the North American colonies. Born near Schässburg, in what is now Romania, he studied at the University of Altdorf, near Nuremberg, where in 1689 he obtained a master's degree in theology and published his dissertation.

After two further theological publications in Latin, the second produced together with Johannes Fabricius, he emigrated to America at the head of some forty celibate Pietist followers, who were preparing for the millennium they believed to be imminent. They landed at Bohemia Landing, Maryland, on 22 June 1694, and settled on a wooded hill beside the Wissahickon Creek, in Germantown.

Between 1697 and 1706 he compiled a manuscript hymnal of some seventy pages which, in the English version made by his disciple Christopher Witt, is the oldest surviving manuscript music book of the Thirteen Colonies. Of its ten melodies, four are taken from Christian Knorr von Rosenroth's Neuer Helicon (Nuremberg, 1684) and another four from German sources dated 1690 or later. The seven melodies with bass are arranged for keyboard and reveal remarkable musical skill.