Dust-Covered Hymns Sung Again After 50 Years in Storage

When historian Sam Doering opened a dust-covered chest in a church Sunday school building last May, he found something extraordinary: handwritten sheet music that had been silent for half a century.

The treasure was hiding in Point Pass Immanuel Lutheran Church in South Australia, where Doering was researching a book for the church's 150th anniversary. Inside the chest, he discovered stacks of browned paper covered in German script and musical notes, many bearing the names of parishioners from the 1800s.

"I just couldn't believe it," Doering said. "This sort of stuff usually just doesn't survive."

The hymns came from German settlers who arrived in the area around Eudunda during the 1860s. They brought with them a strong choral tradition that thrived from the 1920s through the 1950s, then faded into memory as the chest gathered dust.

This past weekend, those voices returned. The Tanunda Liedertafel choir performed two of the rediscovered hymns at the church's anniversary celebration, including "I Worship the Power of Love" and "O Sacred Head, Now Wounded."

Choir conductor Matthew Falland said the handwritten notes were remarkably clear. "Whoever it was had a very clear hand," he noted, making it simple to match the music with lyrics found online.

The Ripple Effect

The anniversary brought more than 200 guests to Point Pass, a town with just 123 residents. Among them was 101-year-old Gordon Schutz, who taught Sunday school there for more than three decades and was confirmed in German in 1938.

He's the last survivor of his confirmation class of 14, but he's not worried about the church's future. Church elder Bruce Schutz points to about 40 regular attendees, including many young families.

"We've got a lot of young ones at the moment, so it's still got a little while yet," Bruce said. "Young people are our future, and without them, there's no church."

The church also refurbished its distinctive golden spire, built in 1912, just in time for the celebration. Doering continues investigating the music's origins, piecing together how it traveled from a sister church that merged with Point Pass in 1960.

"There's a joy to hearing music that's seldom sung," Falland reflected. "It's that connection from past to present that still exists here."

The hymns that once filled a pioneer church now echo through it again, carrying voices from the past into a future that looks surprisingly bright.