Sarah Eyerly

Sarah Eyerly is Professor of Musicology and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development in the College of Music at Florida State University. She is a founding member of FSU’s Native American and Indigenous Studies Center and Humanities Center. As a musicologist, professional singer, and sound artist, her research and teaching focus on the reconstruction of historic music repertories and soundscapes, and on music as a site of cultural and religious encounter in early America.

Her award‑winning book, Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early America (Indiana University Press, 2020), reconstructs the communal and environmental soundscapes of eighteenth‑century Indigenous and Moravian settlements, demonstrating how sound and practices of listening shaped religious culture, social life, and colonial encounter. The book received the Music in American Culture Award from the American Musicological Society, the Dale W. Brown Book Award from the Young Center for Pietist and Anabaptist Studies, and the Gina Walker Outstanding Project Award from the Communal Studies Association, and was a finalist for the Waterloo Center for German Studies Book Prize.

Her research has been supported by the NEH, the ACLS, the American Musicological Society, and the Society for American Music. She has also received article awards in multiple fields, including the Lester J. Cappon Award from the Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture, the Robert F. Heizer Award from the American Society for Ethnohistory, and the Srinivas Aravamudan Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth‑Century Studies. Her work on adaptations of German music by Inuit musicians in Labrador was reviewed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and received the Marjorie Weston Emerson Award from the Mozart Society of America.

As a sound artist, she has designed sound‑centered installations for public spaces across the United States, including the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana, and the Moravian World Heritage Site in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is currently developing a new installation exploring the hidden underground and underwater soundscapes of Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park near Crawfordville, Florida, as well as an installation for the Philadelphia International Airport on early Lenape history in southeastern Pennsylvania.

She has served as president of the Society for Eighteenth‑Century Music, vice president of the Mozart Society of America, and as a member of the Board of Directors of the American Musicological Society. Prior to joining the faculty at Florida State University, she taught at UCLA, the University of Southern California, and Butler University.

Research Interests
Eighteenth-century music, performance practice and applied musicology, sound studies and geo-humanities (GIS, sound mapping, digital musicology, soundscape recording and composition, audible history), ecomusicology (sound ecology and environmental humanities), Native American and Indigenous Studies, music and religion in early America, data humanities and network visualization, archaeomusicology, global music history, early modern studies

Recent Courses
Multimedia Methods in Music and Sound Studies
Religion, Music, and Sound in the Atlantic World
Sound Studies and Cultural Heritage
Improvisation
History of Music: Renaissance
Renaissance Notation
Early Music Ensembles
Practicum in Collegium Directing
Performance Practice

Affiliations
American Musicological Society
Study Group: Global Music History
Society for Ethnomusicology
Sections: Religion, Music, and Sound; Indigenous Music
Society for American Music
Society for Eighteenth-Century Music
Mozart Society of America
Native American and Indigenous Studies Association
American Anthropological Association
Interest Group: Music and Sound
Section: Society for the Anthropology of Religion
Pennsylvania Historical Association
Society for Early Americanists

Selected Publications
Moravian Soundscapes: A Sonic History of the Moravian Missions in Early Pennsylvania (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020).
https://iupress.org/9780253047755/moravian-soundscapes

“John Adams Hears a Nation: American Music in a Time of Remembrance,” The Journal of the American Musicological Society 79, supplement 2 (October, 2026): 117–141.
https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2026.79.S2.117

“What Is Mohican Music?” in Colloquy: Early American Music and the Construction of Race. The Journal of the American Musicological Society 74/3 (Fall, 2021): 632–644. Co-author: Rachel Wheeler.
https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2021.74.3.571

“Mozart and the Moravians,” Early Music 47/2 (May, 2019): 161–182.
https://doi.org/10.1093/em/caz023

“Singing Box 331: Re-Sounding Eighteenth-Century Mohican Hymns from the Moravian Archives.” The William and Mary Quarterly 76/4 (October, 2019). Co-author: Rachel Wheeler.
https://oireader.wm.edu/open_wmq/singing-box-331

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