AMERICAN LITHUANIAN CHURCH CHOIRS – NURTURERS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY DANUTĖ PETRAUSKAITĖ Danute Petrauskaite is a professor at the Department of Music History and Theory at Klaipeda University and a senior reseracher and director of the Institute of Musicology. She has published several books and numerous articles both in Lithuania and abroad. Introduction Mass emigration of Lithuanians to the USA started at the end of the nineteenth century. There were musicians among the first immigrants. Some of them brought along their violins, harmonicas and clarinets, gathering in dormitories after a hard day’s work so that their songs would ring out even a few blocks away. Others partied in their own homes; and still others, who were more business minded, opened their own saloons–Lithuanian- style inns with dancing and singing, only bolder and more audacious. Thus country musicians, like art pioneers, were the first to spread Lithuanian music among their own and other nationalities. It would be difficult to imagine any large Lithuanian gathering, party, and wedding without them. These evening gatherings were spontaneous, without anyone purposefully directing or coordinating them. Thus today, we can consider them only as the beginnings of musical life or the introductory stage of a new era, which started by founding Lithuanian parishes and associations. Being far from their motherland, Lithuanians not to forget their native language, national customs and traditions as well as the faith inherited from their ancestors. This is why they donated their hard-earned money for the construction of Lithuanian churches, hired organists, started parish choirs, and engaged in various musical activities. Founding of church choirs With the foundation of Lithuanian parishes, the first choirs also began to be founded. Although, due to the shortage of choirmasters, not right away; this is why the priests had to hold Mass unaccompanied. The organists and bolder choir singers, who were able to read sheet music, became choir founders and leaders. Although organists started coming to America in 1879, the first church choir wasn’t established until 1885 at St. Casimir’s Parish, in Pitston, Pennsylvania. Evidently, it was difficult to gather singers and to select the appropriate repertoire. As more organists became available, however, and as more sheet music for them was printed, the number of choirs grew. The choir singers were longing for Lithuanian church services, and at the beginning they attended rehearsals willingly, even though some of them had to walk seven to eight miles to get there: back then, there were no means of mass transportation yet. Most of the time, they would chant in a folk way–in two-part singing, or harmonizing. “If a certain mixed choir was singing in four parts, it was widely talked about.” 1 For Lithuanian Americans, singing in a church choir was not merely an assembly of singers, but also an opportunity to get together, to share their hardships and joys, and to remember their home country. As Lithuanians started organizing into various parties and organizations, disagreements arose that hurt the existence of the church choirs. At the slightest excuse, dissatisfied singers would leave the parish and establish secular choruses. They were joined by those who thought that church activities were too confining. This, however, was not to the detriment of the parish choirs, since for many being Lithuanian also meant being Catholic. Singing in church choirs, as a matter of fact, was a form of spiritual existence. In the U.S., between the end of the nineteenth century until the last decade of the twentieth century, there were more than a hundred church choirs that lived, dissolved and formed again. Their abundance and activity was most prominent between the two world wars. The states of Pennsylvania, Illinois and