In Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor, historian Nicholas Tarling surveys the landscape of choral works, some standard masterpieces that are commonly performed by choruses around the world, others deserving a second, closer look. As noted in the foreword by Uwe Grodd , music director of the Auckland Choral Society, this work "is a collection of essays about a number of outstanding works, including Beethoven's Miss Solemnis and Britten's War Requiem, but he also invites attention to lesser masterpieces. If the choral movement, which includes both singers and listeners, is to survive, new works must be created and repertory expanded. The book is an easy and captivating read even if you are not a chorister." Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor features short essays on over 28 works, from major masterpieces such as Handel's Messiah and Bach's St. Matthew's Passion to off-the-beaten path choral works such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha and Frederick Delius' A Mass of Life. Throughout, Tarling offers assessments that sparkle with unique insights and at the same time ground listener's in the historical contexts of the work's production and performance. Each work is transformed in Tarling's able hands from musical work into a window into the mind and milieu of the composer. Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor mixes choral mainstays with works that demand revisiting. Choral singers and their audiences, as well as choral societies and their directions and promoters, will find ample food for thoughts in these meditations on the choral tradition.

In Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor, historian Nicholas Tarling surveys the landscape of choral works, some standard masterpieces that are commonly performed by choruses around the world, others deserving a second, closer look. As noted in the foreword by Uwe Grodd , music director of the Auckland Choral Society, this work "is a collection of essays about a number of outstanding works, including Beethoven's Miss Solemnis and Britten's War Requiem, but he also invites attention to lesser masterpieces. If the choral movement, which includes both singers and listeners, is to survive, new works must be created and repertory expanded. The book is an easy and captivating read even if you are not a chorister." Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor features short essays on over 28 works, from major masterpieces such as Handel's Messiah and Bach's St. Matthew's Passion to off-the-beaten path choral works such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha and Frederick Delius' A Mass of Life. Throughout, Tarling offers assessments that sparkle with unique insights and at the same time ground listener's in the historical contexts of the work's production and performance. Each work is transformed in Tarling's able hands from musical work into a window into the mind and milieu of the composer. Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor mixes choral mainstays with works that demand revisiting. Choral singers and their audiences, as well as choral societies and their directions and promoters, will find ample food for thoughts in these meditations on the choral tradition.

In A Conductor s Guide to Selected Baroque Choral-Orchestral Works, Jonathan D. Green's sixth book-length contribution of guides for conductors, he offers this companion to his critically acclaimed A Conductor s Guide to the Choral-Orchestral Works of J. S. Bach. In this volume, Green addresses works of the Baroque era from Monteverdi through Bach's contemporaries. In addition to brief biographical sketches for each composer, Green includes for each work the approximate duration, text sources, performing forces, currently available editions, locations of manuscript materials, notes, performance issues, evaluation of solo roles, evaluation of difficulty, and a discography and bibliography. Duration information comes from a variety of sources, but Green turns to actual recording times of performances. The purpose of this book is to aid conductors in selecting repertoire appropriate to their needs and the abilities of their ensembles. The discographies and bibliographies, while not exhaustive, serve as helpful starting points for further research. A Conductor s Guide to Selected Baroque Choral-Orchestral Works should appeal to conductors in supporting their concert programming. Librarians and music student will also find this work an ideal reference title for the study of Baroque repertoire."

Bands structured around western wind instruments are among the most widespread instrumental ensembles in the world. Although these ensembles draw upon European military traditions that spread globally through colonialism, militarism and missionary work, local musicians have adapted the brass band prototype to their home settings, and today these ensembles are found in religious processions and funerals, military manoeuvres and parades, and popular music genres throughout the world. Based on their expertise in ethnographic and archival research, the contributors to this volume present a series of essays that examine wind band cultures from a range of disciplinary perspectives, allowing for a comparison of band cultures across geographic and historical fields. The themes addressed encompass the military heritage of band cultures; local appropriations of the military prototype; links between bands and their local communities; the spheres of local band activities and the modes of sociability within them; and the role of bands in trajectories toward professional musicianship. This book will appeal to readers with an interest in ethnomusicology, colonial and post-colonial studies, community music practices, as well as anyone who has played with or listened to their local band.

Christian Congregational Music explores the role of congregational music in Christian religious experience, examining how musicians and worshippers perform, identify with and experience belief through musical praxis. Contributors from a broad range of fields, including music studies, theology, literature, and cultural anthropology, present interdisciplinary perspectives on a variety of congregational musical styles - from African American gospel music, to evangelical praise and worship music, to Mennonite hymnody - within contemporary Europe and North America. In addressing the themes of performance, identity and experience, the volume explores several topics of interest to a broader humanities and social sciences readership, including the influence of globalization and mass mediation on congregational music style and performance; the use of congregational music to shape multifaceted identities; the role of mass mediated congregational music in shaping transnational communities; and the function of music in embodying and imparting religious belief and knowledge. In demonstrating the complex relationship between 'traditional' and 'contemporary' sounds and local and global identifications within the practice of congregational music, the plurality of approaches represented in this book, as well as the range of musical repertoires explored, aims to serve as a model for future congregational music scholarship.

Urban God Talk: Constructing a Hip Hop Spirituality, edited by Andre Johnson, is a collection of essays that examine the religious and spiritual in hip hop. The contributors argue that the prevailing narrative that hip hop offers nothing in the way of religion and spirituality is false. From its beginning, hip hop has had a profound spirituality and advocates religious views-and while not orthodox or systemic, nevertheless, many in traditional orthodox religions would find the theological and spiritual underpinnings in hip hop comforting, empowering, and liberating. In addition, this volume demonstrates how scholars in different disciplines approach the study of hip hop, religion, and spirituality. Whether it is a close reading of a hip hop text, ethnography, a critical studies approach or even a mixed method approach, this study is a pedagogical tool for students and scholars in various disciplines to use and appropriate for their own research and understanding. Urban God Talk will inspire not only scholars to further their research, but will also encourage publishers to print more in this field. The contributors to this in-depth study show how this subject is an underrepresented area within hip hop studies, and that the field is broad enough for numerous monographs, edited works, and journal publications in the future.

This is an exploration of the Book of Psalms, with an added section devoted to some of the principles of Christian worship. Have you ever wondered about the strangeness of the poetic structure of the Psalms? And what about those terrible cursing Psalms? Why is this collection of ancient songs so popular? How should they be understood, and what meaning can they have for us who live some 3000 years after their original composition? Those questions and others like them are answered in these pages. Here too you will find an exploration of one of the most fascinating features of the Psalms - those many places where the voice of a prophetic suddenly interrupts the prophetic flow, sometimes changing the direction of the Psalm entirely. Another section is devoted to discovering the wonderfully different poetic structure used by the psalmist, which makes Hebrew poetry alone in the world translatable into any language and culture. The book climaxes with a section on the prophetic and inspired quality that should characterize true Christian worship, lifting it from the mundane to the heavenly, bringing each worshiper to the very throne of God. Anyone who mines the treasures that lie buried, some shallow, some deep, in the Psalms will indeed find in these ancient songs something to enrich every part of life.

This study represents a thorough investigation of a polyphonic vocal village tradition in Bistritsa, Bulgaria. Outsiders describe the narrow intervals of these songs as being "maximally rough", while the singers themselves experience their performance as smooth, beautiful and pleasant. Almost identical polyphonic traditions can be found in places sometimes thousands of kilometers apart. This inquiry is carried out within a very broad and comparative context, whereby historical sources, the origin of different constituents and etymologies as well as electronic sound analysis are taken into account. The results are stunning and ever more relevant - and not just for ethnomusicologists: The babi or grannies of Bistritsa and their songs have been inscribed on UNESCO's List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Mankind in 2008.

An essential guide for anyone who plans, performs, or takes part in the music and worship of the church. Includes helpful planning forms and extensive indices for The Hymnal 1982 not found elsewhere. (250 pp)

This second volume of canticles and settings for the eucharist contains music for the remaining new canticles found in "Enriching Our Worship 1" and more compositions for the eucharist by a wide variety of composers. The varied styles will satisfy many tastes and worship needs.

Grounded in the liturgical tradition and scholarship, the author explores what he calls the "new traditionalism" that notes the recent resurgence of interest in ancient forms of liturgy and spiritual practice. Everett communicates the seriousness with which he approaches his subject by offering a brief history of psalms and an exegesis of selected psalm texts. As a composer, he speaks clearly about the process of capturing the essence of each psalm in the brief, but beautiful antiphons that accompany them. The psalter itself consists of musically notated antiphon melodies with chord symbols followed by the printed psalm textwhich is read aloud... Many alternative and emerging church communities have begun exploring ancient music and liturgical traditions despite a lack of high-quality, published liturgical music, which does not require (or even desire) an organ and a four- part choir. The Emergent Psalter serves to provide that resource. Featuring music written for two emerging communities (Transmission in New York and Church of the Apostles in Seattle), this book is an excellent resource for anyone producing alternative worship service or thinking of starting one."

Aristide Cavaille-Coll (1811-1899) is often referred to as the greatest organ builder of all time. The pipe-organ, being the most complicated musical instrument mechanically and tonally, as well as the most expensive, adds significantly to that world's greatest designation. The talents required to be such a person range far from music-making to advanced physics, architecture, and engineering. That, plus the obvious knack to raise vast sums of money. Cavaille-Coll's Monumental Organ Project for Saint Peter's, Rome: Bigger Than Them All, by Ronald Ebrecht, is the story of the quest to build the largest-ever mechanical-action organ in the biggest church at the time. Cavaille-Coll's model for that organ and the book he wrote outlining his proposal are the core of Ebrecht's discussion. Cavaille-Coll bestrode a century as well as an art-form. His century complicated the project with the most intricate, intractable problems. Saint-Peter's Square, now a part of the Vatican City State, was then part of the newly-united Italy, which had just deposed the pope as ruler of the center of Italy and taken the papal lands. The east end of the basilica facing the square and the Tiber became a much disputed boundary. It was a part of the Italian state so hotly contested that the Italian Republicans would not accept the concept of an organ hanged from the basilica wall, lest it shift. Before, or since, has the music sphere ever provoked such a question that could bring nations to swords?

Sacred music has long contributed fundamentally to the making of Europe. The passage from origin myths to history, the sacred journeys that have mobilized pilgrims, crusaders, and colonizers, the politics and power sounded by the vox populi all have joined in counterpoint to shape Europe s historical longue duree. Drawing upon three decades of research in European sacred music, Philip V. Bohlman calls for a reexamination of European modernity in the twenty-first century, a modernity shaped no less by canonic religious and musical practices than by the proliferation of belief systems that today more than ever respond to the diverse belief systems that engender the New Europe. In contrast to most studies of sacred musical practice in European history, with their emphasis on the musical repertories and ecclesiastical practices at the center of society, Bohlman turns our attention to individual and marginalized communities and to the collectives of believers to whose lives meaning accrues upon sounding the sacred together. In the historical chapters that open Revival and Reconciliation, Bohlman examines the genesis of modern history in the convergence and conflict that lie at the heart of the Abrahamic faiths Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Critical to the meaning of these religions to Europe, Bohlman argues, has been their capacity to mobilize both sacred journey and social action, which enter the everyday lives of Europeans through folk religion, pilgrimage, and politics, the subjects of the second half of his study. The closing sections then cross the threshold from history into modernity, above all that of the New Europe, with its return to religion through revival and reconciliation. Based on an extensive ethnographic engagement with the sacred landscapes and sites of conflict in twenty-first-century Europe, Bohlman calls in his final chapters for new ways of hearing the silenced voices and the full chorus of sacred music in our contemporary world. Ethnomusicologists from different traditions as well as scholars of religious studies and the history of modern Europe will find Revival and Reconciliation a fascinating exploration of the connections between sacred music and the role it plays in the formations of the modern self."

Choral Artistry provides a practical and organic approach to teaching choral singing and sight-reading. The text is grounded in current research from the fields of choral pedagogy, music theory, music perception and cognition. Topics include framing a choral curriculum based on the Kodaly concept; launching the academic year for beginning, intermediate, and advanced choirs; building partwork skills; sight-reading; progressive music theory sequences for middle to college level choirs; teaching strategies; choral rehearsal plans as well as samples of how to teach specific repertoire from medieval to contemporary choral composers. As part of the Kodaly philosophy's practical approach, authors Micheal Houlahan and Philip Tacka employ two models for learning choral literature: Performance Through Sound Analysis Pedagogy (PTSA) and Performance through Sound Analysis and Notation (PTSAN). Both models delineate an approach to teaching a choral work that significantly improves students' musicianship while engaging the ensemble in learning the overall composition in partnership with the conductor. The final chapter of the book includes rubrics to assess the effectiveness of a choral program. This book does not purport to be a comprehensive choral pedagogy text. It is a detailed guide to helping choral directors at all levels improve the choral singing and musicianship of their students from a Kodaly perspective.

This book tells three inter-related stories that radically alter our perspective on plainchant reform at the turn of the twentieth century and highlight the value of liturgical music history to our understanding of French government anticlericalism. It offers at once a new history of the rise of the Benedictines of Solesmes to official dominance over Catholic editions of plainchant worldwide, a new optic on the French liturgical publishing industry during a period of international crisis for the publication of plainchant notation, and an exploration of how, both despite and because of official hostility, French Catholics could bend Republican anticlericalism at the highest level to their own ends. The narrative relates how Auguste Pecoul, a former French diplomat and Benedictine novice, masterminded an undercover campaign to aid the Gregorian agenda of the Solesmes monks via French government intervention at the Vatican. His vehicle: trades unionists from within the book industry, whom he mobilized into nationalist protest against Vatican attempts to enshrine a single, contested, and German, version of the musical text as canon law. Yet the political scheming necessitated by Pecoul's double involvement with Solesmes and the print unions almost spun out of control as his Benedictine contacts struggled with internal division and anticlerical persecution. The results are as musicologically significant for the study of Solesmes as they are instructive for the study of Church-State relations.

Designed for general readers and scholars, this study explores the Lutheran commentary in Bach's St. John Passion and suggests that fostering hostility to Jews is not its subject or purpose. Also included are a literal, annotated translation of the libretto and an appendix discussing anti-Judaism and Bach's other works.

The Supplement continues the tradition of the Catalogue in that it is designed as an aid for the church musician and or pastor seeking to plan unified worship services. It will also be of use to those church musicians who follow the Liturgical Calender and plan music appropriate to the appointed lessons, as well as a source for non-church choir directors who would like to locate choral settings based on a particular passage from Scripture. The Supplement emphasizes music published since 1995, or titles that were overlooked in the previous editions. Entries are arranged from Genesis through Revelation. Each main entry citation provides the biblical reference (book, chapter, and verse), as well as a reference to additional passages from Scripture used in the anthem. The composer, arranger, or editor and the title are listed as they appear on the octavo. Information on voicing, solos, and instrumental accompaniment is noted; the name of the publisher, the most recent date of publication and the octavo number appear at the end of each citation, where information on instrumental parts, other versions of the same title, and collections where the work might appear are also listed. Composer and title indexes round off the work.

La musica napoletana conosce uno straordinario successo europeo fin dai primi decenni del Settecento. I contributi raccolti in questo volume presentano le fonti e la fortuna dei Napoletani, e di Pergolesi in particolare, a Dresda, in Boemia e in Slesia. Le fonti pergolesiane vengono esaminate fin nei dettagli di scrittura, tanto in vista della nuova edizione critica quanto nella prospettiva della prassi esecutiva storicamente informata. La corrispondenza diplomatica tra Dresda e Napoli si rivela un canale ricchissimo di scambi di informazioni e di partiture. Lontano dalla corte sassone, per la diffusione della musica napoletana giocano un ruolo essenziale alcune famiglie nobiliari boeme. Le case di ordini religiosi (cistercensi, gesuiti) si scambiano tra Boemia e Slesia moltissime composizioni sacre, variamente adattate secondo i bisogni locali. Le opere napoletane sono popolarizzate dalle compagnie girovaghe di cantanti, che solitamente provengono dall'Italia settentrionale. Nuovi elementi biografici e analisi di opere arricchiscono la nostra conoscenza di conterranei o contemporanei di Pergolesi come Giovanni Alberto Ristori, Nicola Porpora, Domenico de Micco e Leonardo Leo. Neapolitan music enjoyed an extraordinary European success starting with the first decades of the 18th century. The contributions to the present volume illustrate the sources and the reception of the Neapolitans, and foremost of Pergolesi, in Dresden, in Bohemia and in Silesia. Pergolesi sources are described down to details of writing, with an eye both to the new critical edition and to historically informed performing practice. Diplomatical correspondence between Dresden and Naples was widely used as a source of musical information and a means of exchanging scores. Far from the Saxon court, the Neapolitan music is encouraged by some prominent Bohemian aristocrats. Different religious houses (cistercians, jesuits) exchange sacred music, variously adapted to local needs. Neapolitan opera is popularised through wandering troupes, coming mostly from Northern Italy. New biographical data and work analyses enrich our knowledge of contemporaries or fellow countrymen of Pergolesi's such as Giovanni Alberto Ristori, Nicola Porpora, Domenico de Micco and Leonardo Leo.

Since Britten's death in 1976, numerous articles and books have been written about his life and work. Much has been made of the strong influences of his pacifism and his homosexuality. It is often suggested that Britten felt himself to be an outsider from 'normal' society, and that this accounts for the his concern to portray the 'outsider' in his operas. There is no doubt that this is an important aspect of Britten's art, but the present work attempts to show that his music embraces much wider and more universal concerns, and in addressing those concerns there is a clearly defined pattern of spiritual influence. Part One of the book examines Britten's early life, and the strong presence which the Church had in his childhood and adolescence. It explores the way in which certain spiritual influences were first manifested, and how, like the more specifically musical 'themes' which Donald Mitchell has noted, they can be traced throughout Britten's life and work. The author was privileged to have conversations with two clergymen who were influential in Britten's life, as well as gathering valuable insights through a long series of conversations with Sir Peter Pears. Part Two examines a wide range of the composer's music in which a spiritual dimension can be traced. The specifically liturgical music has received rather less critical notice than Britten's larger works. The music is discussed here, and shown to possess musical characteristics in common with the larger works. Britten could not be described as a conventional Christian; still less is it true to describe him, as Eric Walter White has done, as 'keen, wherever possible, to work within the framework of the Church of England'. Nevertheless, his spirituality was rooted in the religious experience of his childhood. This book seeks to demonstrate that Britten retained a sense of the Christian values absorbed in childhood and adolescence, and that these - along with the specifically Christian heritage of plainsong - were strongly influential in his choice and treatment of themes.

Felix Mendelssohn is one of the most celebrated figures of the early Romantic period. As a composer of sacred texts, he is chiefly remembered today for the oratorios Paulus (1836) and Elijah (1846). In this groundbreaking study, Siegwart Reichwald offers a meticulous analysis of Paulus, beginning with a general overview of the oratorio traditions of the early nineteenth century. He details the phases of the compositional process of Paulus as well as principles governing its development. Numerous musical examples, figures, and tables accompany the text. This thorough treatment of Paulus, while shedding light on Mendelssohn's approach to the oratorio and to sacred music in general, will be of interest to students of musicology.

The tradition of Old Hispanic liturgical chant is here examined through a new methodology, enabling striking new insights into its use. Medieval Iberian liturgical practice was independent of the Roman liturgy. As such, its sources preserve an unfamiliar and fascinating devotional journey through the liturgical year. However, although Old Hispanic liturgical chanthas long been considered one of the most important medieval chant traditions, what musical notation to survive shows only where the melodies rise and fall, not precise intervals or pitches. This lack of pitch-readable notation has prevented scholars from fully engaging with the surviving sources - a gap which this book aims to fill, via a new methodology for analysing the melodies and the relationship between melody and text. Focussing on three genres of chant sung during the Old Hispanic Lent (the threni, psalmi, and Easter Vigil canticles), the book takes a holistic view of the texts and melodies, setting them in the context of their liturgical and intellectual surroundings, and, for the Easter Vigil, exploring the relationship between different Old Hispanic traditions and other western liturgies. It concludes that the theologically purposeful text selections combine with carefully shaped melodies to guide the devotional practice of their hearers. Emma Hornby is a Reader in Music , University of Bristol; Rebecca Maloy is Associate Professor of Music, University of Colorado at Boulder.

Renaissance Music for the Choral Conductor: A Practical Guide addresses the study and performance of Renaissance music in a way that is understandable to the musician at any level. It describes how to find a good edition, mark scores, rehearse, and conduct this type of music. It explains complex ideas from proportion to linear analysis and supplies step-by-step instructions on presenting madrigal dinners ideal vehicles for the presentation of Renaissance music. This guide contains traditional toasts, stage directions, lists of appropriate music, and even instruction on selected Renaissance dances. Summer also includes a large number of musical scores to aid in his explanations on marking scores, conducting, and analyzing polyphonic music. Renaissance Music for the Choral Conductor is the ideal textbook for choral literature and choral conducting classes at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It can serve as a reference for anyone who wishes to program and explore music from this period in greater depth, including church musicians and conductors of professional ensembles. The book concludes with a bibliography, glossary, and selected discography.

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Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen, 1567, was compiled and published by Johann Leisentrit, a Roman Catholic priest who from 1559 to the time of his death in 1586, was Dean at the Cathedral of St. Peter's in Bautzen, a town in southeastern Germany. His hymnbook appeared in three complete editions (1567, 1573, 1584), and in abridged editions in 1575, 1576, and 1589. By adapting the vernacular hymn, a genre created by Protestant reformers, Leisentrit hoped to bring back to the "true church" (wahrglaubiger Christlicher Kirchen) those who had defected to Lutheranism. This was a formidable ambition because his diocese was located adjacent to the Moravian-Bohemian regions where the Protestant movement was born and remained vital. Containing approximately 260 texts set to 175 notated melodies, many borrowed from Protestant sources and adapted to serve Roman Catholic objectives, Leisentrit's book was the second Catholic hymnbook to be published in the sixteenth century. It surpassed its Protestant and Catholic precursors in scope and provided a model for the profusion of hymnbooks of numerous confessions that appeared in Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . Wetzel and Heitmeyer present their study in two parts: The first comprises six contextual chapters that survey earlier German achievements in hymnody, provide analyses of the texts and music in Leisentrit's book, and assess his achievement within the volatile environment of the Counter Reformation. The second gives the melodies in modern notation along with the first stanzas of the texts; provides detailed concordances and references to sources that identify textual and musical provenances; and concludes with six appendixes to facilitate scholarly cross-references. Fourteen of the seventy wood engravings from Leisentrit's book, many of which are visual representations of the prevailing confessional conflicts, are given in enlarged reproductions. The authors provide the only comprehensive study in English of a unique religious figure and his efforts to achieve confessional reconciliation in the decades following the Council of Trent. They add to a more accurate interpretation of the relationship between Lutherans and Catholics in the sixteenth century and support the hypothesis that some Lutherans remained more liturgically formal than their Catholic contemporaries.

America: "Land of the free and the home of the brave." The United States has long been using song as a way of capturing its unique identity. Now, in one volume, official songs from every state (except Michigan and New Jersey, which have no official song) have been compiled. This text is a tremendous resource, from which readers will gain insight into the heritage of American statehood. Histories of these songs, biographical information about the composers and lyricists, and background on each song's entrance into status as "official" make this source the most comprehensive in existence. The entries include sheet music, allowing readers to reproduce for themselves the tunes that have proved so important in the history of the Union. Music teachers, history teachers, librarians, and anyone else interested in learning more about the United States will not want to be without State Songs. Organized alphabetically by state.