Review of: “Singen is a part vu unsern Lebm”: Musik bei den Hutterern von Fairholme/Manitoba—Judith Rubatscher

Vlatka Škender

Abstract

In winter 2012, I serendipitously stumbled upon a recording of the Hutterites singing which, to my bewilderment, mesmerized me with a swiftness and intensity thus unbeknown. It was a splendid exhibition of YouTube’s algorithmic erraticism: the aural acrobatics of Bach and the melancholy-inducing Händel’s Sarabande were succeeded by a chant that was—as per Henrik Ibsen’s (alleged) final words—“quite the contrary.” The choir sung of transcendence in a manner so basal and blissful, and so barefacedly human as only a folk song can be, that one was compelled to listen with downcast eyes. And thus began my journey to the Anabaptists: by way of a Hutterite canzonet. My desperate novitiate attempts at securing a research stay among the Schmiedeleut in Canada remained just that; fed and tired, one Hutterite member wrote to me, were they of “others” telling their story. When a decade later Judith Rubatscher’s manuscript “‘Singen is a part vu unsern Lebm’: Music among the Hutterites of Fairholme, Manitoba” (2022) was published, I received the book—along with a symbolic closure. [First paragraph.]

Recommended Citation

Škender, Vlatka. 2025. "Review of: “Singen is a part vu unsern Lebm”: Musik bei den Hutterern von Fairholme/Manitoba—Judith Rubatscher." Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies 13(1-2):70–72.