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The Moravian Music Foundation (MMF) is an organization dedicated to preserving, sharing, and celebrating Moravian music from the 17th and 18th centuries to the present. Based on its stated mission, it serves the Moravian Church, musicians, researchers, educators, and audiences by producing resources, publishing music, creating recordings and video, presenting concerts, and offering classes, lectures, and workshops. If you are looking for Moravian music materials, research tools, worship resources, or ways to get involved as a performer, the Foundation is the central place to start.

Who the Foundation Serves

The Foundation describes its audience broadly:

• The Moravian Church — through worship resources and music for congregational use
• Musicians — through published music, recordings, and performance opportunities
• Researchers — through catalogs, finding aids, and archival collections
• Educators — through classes, lectures, and workshops
• Audiences — through concerts, programs, and recordings

Core Activities

The Foundation's work centers on a few connected areas:

Preserving and Sharing Moravian Music

This is the Foundation's stated purpose: keeping historic Moravian music accessible and bringing it to current audiences.

Publishing Music

The Foundation publishes music and makes scores available. One example from its site is the Charles Fussell score for Specimen Days, a cantata for baritone solo, chorus, and orchestra (1992). A piano/vocal score PDF is available, and the site notes that upon ordering, the PDF is sent by email to the purchaser. Full biographical information can be found in the Finding Aid for the Charles Fussell Collection at MMF.

Recordings and Video

The Foundation creates recordings and video. One example is a recording of Moravian hymns played on banjo by Rev. Adam Goodrich, available through streaming, downloads, and CDs.

Concerts and Events

The Foundation presents concerts, programs, classes, and workshops, including events from its office in Bethlehem, PA, specific to the Lehigh Valley area and throughout the Northern Province.

Worship Resources

For worship leaders, the Foundation provides materials such as Moravian Music Sunday, celebrated on the fifth Sunday of Easter. The 2026 observance is dated May 3, 2026, with resources and materials for worship leaders. The Foundation frames this around the idea that music is a means of proclaiming the Gospel.

A related historical resource is The Psalm of Joy, a service of word and music created by the Moravians in Salem, NC, for July 4, 1783, as part of the first official Independence celebration, giving thanks to God for the end of the Revolutionary War. The Foundation connects this to the America 250 commemoration (1776–2026).

Discovery Tools and Access

The Foundation offers discovery tools, catalogs, and listings of upcoming events and concerts. These are the practical entry points for:

• Finding music in the catalog
• Locating research materials and finding aids
• Checking upcoming concerts and events
• Accessing worship resources

How to Get Involved

One documented opportunity is singing with the Unitas Chorale, a performing ensemble of the Moravian Music Foundation specializing in music of Moravian composers from the past and present. The Foundation's site includes a call for singers.

Other ways to engage, based on the Foundation's described activities, include attending concerts and events, using its resources as a worship leader or educator, and drawing on its publications and recordings as a musician or researcher.

Quick Reference

To decide how to engage, start with the specific need: worship leaders should look at Moravian Music Sunday resources; researchers and musicians at the catalog and discovery tools; performers at the Unitas Chorale; and general audiences at upcoming concerts and recordings.

The Bethlem Museum of the Mind holds the historic records of three hospitals — Bethlem, the Maudsley and Warlingham Park — and you can start exploring them through the museum's Online Archives, which provide catalogue descriptions of those records. In-person access is possible on public opening days (Wednesday to Saturday, 09:30–17:00), while Monday and Tuesday are reserved for pre-booked groups only. If you mainly need to know what exists and where it is, the online catalogue is the right starting point; if you need to consult original material, plan around the public hours.

What the archives cover

The museum describes its Online Archives as catalogue descriptions of the historic records of Bethlem, the Maudsley and Warlingham Park Hospitals held at the Museum. That scope matters for research: these are the institutional records of three connected psychiatric hospitals, not a general mental-health archive.

The museum's wider purpose frames how the records are presented. It states that it "records the lives and experience and celebrates the achievements of people with mental health problems," and that its aim is to make collections more accessible and provide accurate information to help in their interpretation. In practice, that means the archive sits alongside the museum's artwork and gallery collections rather than being a standalone records office.

Online archives vs. the gallery: two different catalogues

It is easy to conflate the museum's two main online offerings. They cover different material:

If your question is "is there a record of X?", use the Online Archives. If your question is "what did this artist produce?", use the Gallery. The catalogue descriptions tell you what is held; they are not the same as digitised images of every document, so expect to identify relevant material online and then arrange to consult it.

How to access the archives online

1. Go to the museum's website and select the Online Archives entry point.
2. Browse or search the catalogue descriptions of the Bethlem, Maudsley and Warlingham Park records.
3. Note the reference details for anything relevant — these are what you will use to request or locate the material.
4. If you cannot visit, check the 360° Digital Museum Tour, which the museum offers for its temporary exhibition, Boardroom and lobby. Note that this tour covers exhibition and room spaces, not the archive catalogue itself.

The museum explicitly frames the online archives as a way to make collections more accessible, so treat the catalogue as the discovery layer and the museum itself as the place where the records are held.

Visiting in person

Opening hours, as published by the museum:

• Monday–Tuesday: pre-booked groups only
• Wednesday–Saturday: open to the public, 09:30–17:00
• Every Saturday: open
• The museum displays a live status ("We are closed today") on its site, so check before travelling.

Location: Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Bethlem Royal Hospital, Monks Orchard Road, Beckenham, Kent BR3 3BX.

If you are coming specifically to consult records, the pre-booked group route on Mondays and Tuesdays is worth considering, since public hours are shared with general visitors. The museum also invites group visits through its Learning Resources pages, which cover topics such as The Maze (one of its most iconic works) and the history of Bethlem and Warlingham Park Hospitals — useful context before you handle original material.

What the archives are good for

The records support research into the history of mental health care and into the experiences of people treated at these hospitals. The museum's blog shows the kind of work this material enables: a placement student wrote about researching and curating the current exhibition Manasa Chitra, and a volunteer decoded inscriptions in works by Indian artist D'Souza created at Bangalore Mental Hospital in the 1950s. Other posts deal with historic patient art collections and with personal and Ukrainian identity in the work of William Kurelek.

Two practical lessons emerge from that work. First, records and artworks often need interpretation — inscriptions, attributions and context are not always self-explanatory, which is why the museum emphasises providing accurate information for interpretation. Second, the collections connect to histories beyond Bethlem itself, so a search that starts with one hospital may lead to related material elsewhere.

Common sticking points

• Expecting everything to be digitised. The Online Archives give catalogue descriptions; the records themselves are held at the Museum.
• Turning up on a Monday or Tuesday. Those days are for pre-booked groups only.
• Confusing the Gallery with the Archives. Artworks are listed by artist name in the Gallery; hospital records are described in the Online Archives.
• Assuming the digital tour replaces a visit. The 360° tour covers the temporary exhibition, Boardroom and lobby — not the archive holdings.

For anything time-sensitive, such as current exhibition dates or opening status, check the museum's site directly, since hours and displays change.