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Books > Music > Other types of music
There have been numerous publications in the last decades on the
Bible in literature, film, and art. But until now, no reference
work has yet appeared on the Bible as it appears in Western music.
In The Bible in Music: A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More,
scholars Siobhan Dowling Long and John F. A. Sawyer correct this
gap in Biblical reference literature, providing for the first time
a convenient guide to musical interpretations of the Bible.
Alongside examples of classical music from the Middle Ages through
modern times, Dowling Long and Sawyer also bring attention to the
Bible's impact on popular culture with numerous entries on hymns,
spirituals, musicals, film music, and contemporary popular music.
Each entry contains essential information about the original
context of the work (date, composer, etc.) and, where relevant, its
afterlife in literature, film, politics, and liturgy. It includes
an index of biblical references and an index of biblical names, as
well as a detailed timeline that brings to the fore key events,
works, and publications, placing them in their historical context.
There is also a bibliography, a glossary of technical terms, and an
index of artists, authors, and composers. The Bible in Music will
fascinate anyone familiar with the Bible, but it is also designed
to encourage choirs, musicians, musicologists, lecturers, teachers,
and students of music and religious education to discover and
perform some less well-known pieces, as well as helping them to
listen to familiar music with a fresh awareness of what it is
about.
An advertisement in the sheet music of the song "Goodbye Broadway,
Hello France" (1917) announces: "Music will help win the war!" This
ad hits upon an American sentiment expressed not just in
advertising, but heard from other sectors of society during the
American engagement in the First World War. It was an idea both
imagined and practiced, from military culture to sheet music
writers, about the power of music to help create a strong military
and national community in the face of the conflict; it appears
straightforward. Nevertheless, the published sheet music, in
addition to discourse about gender, soldiering and music, evince a
more complex picture of society. This book presents a study of
sheet music and military singing practices in America during the
First World War that critically situates them in the social
discourses, including issues of segregation and suffrage, and the
historical context of the war. The transfer of musical styles
between the civilian and military realm was fluid because so many
men were enlisted from homes with the sheet music while they were
also singing songs in their military training. Close musical
analysis brings the meaningful musical and lyrical expressions of
this time period to the forefront of our understanding of soldier
and civilian music making at this time.
Unique yet diverse in its approach, The Crucifixion in Music
examines how text is set in music through the specific
musicological period from 1680 to 1800. The treatise focuses
specifically on the literary text of the Crucifixus from the Credo
of the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Mass. Combining analytical
theory and method to address musical rhetoric, semiotics, and
theory, author Jasmin Cameron follows the Crucifixion through many
settings in Baroque and Classical music. In this first title in
Scarecrow Press's new series, Contextual Bach Studies, Cameron
studies musical representations of the text, first through a
discussion that establishes a theoretical framework, then by
applying the framework to individual case studies, such as Johann
Sebastian Bach's B Minor Mass. By studying the musical
representation of the text, and the concepts and contexts to which
the words refer, Cameron examines the way the treatment of a
literary text fuses into a recognizable musical tradition that
composers can follow, develop, modify, or ignore. With equal time
given to the settings of the Crucifixus by composers before and
after Bach's time, the reader is provided with a fuller historical
context for Bach's genius. Cameron also combines the beliefs of
past theorists with those of today, reaching a common ground among
them, and providing a basis and analytical framework for further
study.
for SATB with keyboard Setting a 15th century text, this popular
carol on the birth of Jesus is flowing and expressive. It has been
recorded by the Cambridge Singers (directed by John Rutter) on the
Collegium CD Christmas Night (COLCD 106). Full scores and parts for
John Rutters accompaniment for string orchestra are available on
sale.
Full score for John Rutter's joyful, sprightly carol Rejoice and
sing!, which has been offprinted from Sir David Willcocks: A
Celebration in Carols. With its uplifting 7/8 time signature,
memorable melody, rich and diverse textures, and delightful
orchestral accompaniment, this carol is a fitting tribute to one of
the great names synonymous with Christmas: David Willcocks.
The lyrics of our favorite hymns are rich in images that can help
us in our daily walk with God--they are miniature Bible studies
that lead us effortlessly toward worship, testimony, exhortation,
prayer, and praise. Bestselling author Robert J. Morgan has
gathered 366 hymns, including favorites such as "Amazing Grace" and
"Rock of Ages," as well as classic, lesser-known gems. Each
devotional begins with Scripture, includes a story about the hymn
or its writer, along with the lyrics to the hymn, and ends with a
prayer. Includes an index of hymn titles and first lines.
for SATB (with divisions) and piano or organ The third movement of
McDowall's powerful Da Vinci Requiem, I obey thee, O Lord is a
compelling pairing of the 'Lacrimosa' text from the Latin Missa pro
defunctis with extracts from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,
and has a poignant, tender simplicity. The composer has reworked
the keyboard part from the parent work to facilitate performance by
piano or organ.
Without any formal training in music composition or even the
ability to notate melodies on a musical staff, Irving Berlin took a
knack for music and turned it into the most successful songwriting
career in American history. Berlin was the first Tin Pan Alley
songwriter to go "uptown" to Broadway with a complete musical score
(Watch Your Step in 1914); he is the only songwriter to build a
theater exclusively for his own work (The Music Box); and his name
appears above the title of his Broadway shows and Hollywood films
(iIrving Berlin's Holiday Inn), still a rare honor for songwriters.
Berlin is also notable due the length of his 90+ year career in
American Song; he sold his first song at the age of 8 in 1896, and
passed away in 1989 at the age of 101 having outlived several of
his own copyrights. Throughout his career, Berlin showed that a
popular song which appealed to the masses need not be of a lesser
quality than songs informed by the principles of "classical" music
composition. Forty years after his last published song many of his
songs remain popular and several have even entered folk song status
("White Christmas," "Easter Parade," and "God Bless America"),
something no other 20th-century American songwriter can claim. As
one of the most seminal figures of twentieth century, both in the
world of music and in American culture more generally, and as one
of the rare songwriters equally successful with popular songs,
Broadway shows, and Hollywood scores, Irving Berlin is the subject
of an enormous corpus of writing, scattered throughout countless
publications and archives. A noted performer and interpreter of
Berlin's works, Benjamin Sears has unprecedented familiarity with
these sources and brings together in this Reader a broad range of
the most insightful primary and secondary materials. Grouped
together according to the chronology of Berlin's life and work,
each section and article features a critical introduction to orient
the reader and contextualize the materials within the framework of
American musical history. Taken as a whole, they provide a new
perspective on Berlin that highlights his musical genius in the
context of his artistic development through a unique mix of
first-hand views of Berlin as an artist, critical assessments of
his work, and more general overviews of his life and work.
Choral music is now undoubtedly the foremost genre of participatory
music making, with more people singing in choirs than ever before.
Written by a team of leading international practitioners and
scholars, this Companion addresses the history of choral music, its
emergence and growth worldwide and its professional practice. The
volume sets out a historical survey of the genre and follows with a
kaleidoscopic bird's eye view of choral music from all over the
world. Chapters vividly portray the emergence and growth of choral
music from its Quranic antecedents in West and Central Asia to the
baroque churches of Latin America, representing its global
diversity. Uniquely, the book includes a pedagogical section where
several leading choral musicians write about the voice and the
inner workings of a choir and give their professional insights into
choral practice. This Companion will appeal to choral scholars,
directors and performers alike.
The book defines and describes the relationships between Chopin's
music and one of the oldest but still used monastic rules, the Rule
of Saint Benedict. Its goal is to construct bridges between music
and spirituality. Since these two realms both refer to human life,
the chapters of the book deal with current and existential issues
such as beginnings, authority, weakness, interactions, emotions and
others. The Rule of Saint Benedict and Chopin's music appear to
belong to the same stylistic category of human culture,
characterized by nobleness, moderation and high sensibility. In
this way two seemingly incompatible realities reveal their affinity
to each other, and the one may explain the other. The book is
situated at the boundary of musicology and theology. Its discourse
is illustrated by many examples, carefully chosen from Chopin's
music.
This book offers an overview of issues related to the regulated,
formal organization of sound and speech in verse intended for
singing. Particularly, it is concerned with the structural
properties and underlying mechanisms involved in the association of
lyrics and music. While in spoken verse the underlying metrical
scheme is grounded in the prosody of the language in which it is
composed, in sung verse the structure is created by the mapping of
specific prosodic units of the text (syllables, moras, tones, etc.)
onto the rhythmic-melodic structure provided by the tune. Studying
how this mapping procedure takes place across different musical
genres and styles is valuable for what it can add to our knowledge
of language and music in general, and also for what it can teach us
about individual languages and poetic traditions. In terms of
empirical coverage, the collection includes a wide variety of
(Western) languages and metrical/musical forms, ranging from the
Latin hexameter to the Norwegian stev, from the French chant
courtois to the Sardinian mutetu longu. Readers interested in
formal analyses of vocal music, or in metrics and linguistics, will
find useful insights here.
The study is the first monograph devoted to the musical culture of
a female order in Poland. It is a result of in-depth research into
musical, narrative, economic, and prosopographic sources surviving
in libraries and archives. Focused on the musical practice of nuns,
the book also points to the context of spirituality, morality, and
culture of the post-Trident era. The author indicates the
transformation of the musical activity of the nuns during the 17th
and 18th century and discusses its various kinds: plainsong, Latin
and Polish polyphonic song, polichoral, keyboard,
vocal-instrumental and chamber music. She reflects on the role of
music in liturgy and monastic events and in everyday life of
cloistered women, describes the recruitment of musically gifted
candidates, and the scriptorial activity of nuns.
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