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.

This first volume of a two volume edition contains letters written between 1727 and 1756 by the famous hymn writer, poet, and co-founder of Methodism, Charles Wesley (1707-1788), Volume 2 will contain letters written between 1757 and 1788. The edition brings together texts which are located in libraries and archives from across the globe and here presents them as a complete collection for the first time - many of the letters have never been previously published. The appended notes help the reader locate the letters in their proper historical and literary context and provide full information regarding the location of the original source and, where possible, something of its provenance.
These texts provide an intimate glimpse into the world of early Methodism and Charles' own struggles and triumphs as a central figure within it. They collectively document the story of Charles Wesley's early experiences as he sought to find his own place in Methodism and, of key importance for Charles, Methodism's place in the wider purposes of God. Here are letters of a theological kind, letters that reflect on his experiences as an itinerant preacher, letters that show something of his rather unsettled personality and letters that relate to his own personal and domestic circumstances. Here we see something of the inner workings of a nascent religious group. These are not sanitised accounts written by those looking back, but first-hand accounts written from the heart of a lived experience.
While this book will naturally appeal to those who have a specialist interest in the early history of Methodism, for others there is much to be gained from the picture it gives of the wider eighteenth-century world in which Charles and his co-religionists worked and lived.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

In lucid and engaging style, Stinson explores Bach's 'Great Eighteen' Organ Chorales - among Bach's most celebrated works for organ - from a wide range of historical and analytical perspectives, including the models used by Bach in conceiving the individual pieces, his subsequent compilation of these works into a collection, and his compositional process as preserved by the autograph manuscript. Stinson also considers various issues of performance practice, and provides the first comprehensive examination of the music's reception, its dissemination in manuscript and printed form, and its influence on such composers as Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms.

for women's chorus and piano. This cantata features sixteen highly-varied folk song settings, bound together in seasonal groupings to take the listener on an engaging journey through the year from Spring to Winter. The prologue implores us to 'sing and be merry', and many of the songs facilitate this with their charmingly light-hearted melodies and imaginative orchestral accompaniment. There are also darker moments, such as the haunting and heart-rending setting of 'The Unquiet Grave' in 'Autumn'. For this comprehensive new edition, the editor Graham Parlett has drawn on all available sources, providing an authoritative full score with critical commentary. This edition also makes available new materials for the version for string orchestra and piano, and a new vocal score.

Christian churches and groups within Anglo-American contexts have increasingly used popular music as a way to connect with young people. This book investigates the relationships between evangelical Christianity and popular music, focusing particularly on electronic dance music in the last twenty years. Author Stella Lau illustrates how electronic dance music is legitimized in evangelical activities by Christians discourses, and how the discourses challenge the divide between the secular and the sacred in the Western culture.

Unlike other existing books on the relationships between music cultures and religion, which predominantly discuss the cultural implications of such phenomenon, Popular Music in Evangelical Youth Culture examines the notion of spirituality in contemporary popular electronic dance music. Lau s emphasis on the sonic qualities of electronic dance music opens the door for future research about the relationships between aural properties of electronic dance music and religious discourses. With three case studies conducted in the cultural hubs of electronic dance music Bristol, Ibiza and New York the monograph can also be used as a guidebook for ethnographic research in popular music.

Strategies, Tips, and Activities for the Effective Band Director: Targeting Student Engagement and Comprehension is a resourceful collection of highly effective teaching strategies, solutions, and activities for band directors. Chapters are aligned to cover common topics, presenting several practical lesson ideas for each topic. In most cases, each pedagogical suggestion is supported by excerpts from standard concert band literature. Topics covered include: score study shortcuts; curriculum development; percussion section management; group and individual intonation; effective rehearsal strategies; and much more! This collection of specific concepts, ideas, and reproducible pedagogical methods-not unlike short lesson plans-can be used easily and immediately. Ideal for band directors of students at all levels, Strategies, Tips, and Activities for the Effective Band Director is the product of more than three decades of experience, presenting innovative approaches, as well as strategies that have been borrowed, revised, and adapted from scores of successful teachers and clinicians.

Beth Szczepanski examines how traditional and modern elements interact in the current practice, reception and functions of wind music, or shengguan, at monasteries in Wutaishan, one of China's four holy mountains of Buddhism. The book provides an invaluable insight into the political and economic history of Wutaishan and its music, as well as the instrumentation, notation, repertoires, transmission and ritual function of monastic music at Wutaishan, and how that music has adapted to China's current economic, political and religious climate. The book is based on extensive field research at Wutaishan from 2005 to 2007, including interviews with monks, nuns, pilgrims and tourists. The author learned to play the sheng mouth organ and guanzi double-reed pipe, and recorded dozens of performances of monastic and lay music. The first extensive examination of Wutaishan's music by a Western scholar, the book brings a new perspective to a topic long favored by Chinese musicologists. At the same time, the book provides the non-musical scholar with an engaging exploration of the historical, political, economic and cultural forces that shape musical and religious practices in China.

The interrelationship of music and theology is a burgeoning area of scholarship in which conceptual issues have been explored by musicologists and theologians including Jeremy Begbie, Quentin Faulkner and Jon Michael Spencer. Their important work has opened up opportunities for focussed, critical studies of the ways in which music and theology can be seen to interact in specific repertoires, genres, and institutions as well as the work of particular composers, religious leaders and scholars. This collection of essays explores such areas in relation to the religious, musical and social history of nineteenth-century Britain. The book does not simply present a history of sacred music of the period, but examines the role of music in the diverse religious life of a century that encompassed the Oxford Movement, Catholic Emancipation, religious revivals involving many different denominations, the production of several landmark hymnals and greater legal recognition for religions other than Christianity. The book therefore provides a valuable guide to the music of this complex historical period.

The Art of Avaz and Mohammad Reza Shajarian: Foundations and Contexts, by Rob Simms and Amir Koushkani, examines the traditional art of singing classical Persian poetry, as represented by its greatest living exponent. This in-depth study surveys the social and historical context of the twentieth-century tradition of avaz while placing Shajarian's early career within this complex culture, from being a child prodigy of Qur'an recitation in Mashhad to his rise to national prominence in the 1970s. As a globetrotting celebrity who is renowned for singing medieval poetry with impeccable technique and radiant inspiration, Shajarian's life and work provide a compelling case study for larger issues of reconciling tradition and modernity, and the crucial role of the individual in maintaining and renovating traditional art forms. Avaz is discussed in the broader context of Iranian narrative performance traditions, where the performer retells well-known scripts in a way that is appropriate to the audience and the present occasion, spinning the tale to convey a personal message. Shajarian's career also exemplifies the huge changes that Iranian musical culture underwent in the 1960s and 70s. Finally, the study includes a detailed examination of the materials and creative processes of Shajarian's artistic craft, including his acquisition process and training, vocal technique, selection and treatment of poetry, use of traditional musical materials, and his balance of engaging preset materials with improvisation. The Art of Avaz and Mohammad Reza Shajarian is an impressively detailed study of the music, life, and environment of the most influential musician in Iranian classical music of the past three decades.

Ferdinand III played a crucial role both in helping to end the Thirty Years' War and in re-establishing Habsburg sovereignty within his hereditary lands, and yet he remains one of the most neglected of all Habsburg emperors. The underlying premise of Sacred Music as Public Image for Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III is that Ferdinand's accomplishments came not through diplomacy or strong leadership but primarily through a skillful manipulation of the arts, through which he communicated important messages to his subjects and secured their allegiance to the Catholic Church. An important locus for cultural activity at court, especially as related to the Habsburgs' political power, was the Emperor's public image. Ferdinand III offers a fascinating case study in monarchical representation, for the war necessitated that he revise the image he had cultivated at the beginning of his reign, that of a powerful, victorious warrior. Weaver argues that by focusing on the patronage of sacred music (rather than the more traditional visual and theatrical means of representation), Ferdinand III was able to uphold his reputation as a pious Catholic reformer and subtly revise his triumphant martial image without sacrificing his power, while also achieving his Counter-Reformation goal of unifying his hereditary lands under the Catholic church. Drawing upon recent methodological approaches to the representation of other early modern monarchs, as well as upon the theory of confessionalization, this book places the sacred vocal music composed by imperial musicians into the rich cultural, political, and religious contexts of mid-seventeenth-century Central Europe. The book incorporates dramatic productions such as opera, oratorio, and Jesuit drama (as well as works in other media), but the primary focus is the more numerous and more frequently performed Latin-texted paraliturgical genre of the motet, which has generally not been considered by scholars as a vehicle for monarchical representation. By examining the representation of this little-studied emperor during a crucial time in European history, this book opens a window into the unique world view of the Habsburgs, allowing for a previously untold narrative of the end of the Thirty Years' War as seen through the eyes of this important ruling family.

for soprano soloist, mixed choir, and orchestra or ensemble (with organ) This is one of the best-loved and most widely performed choral works of the twentieth century. The texts (in Latin and English) are from the Missa pro Defunctis, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Psalms. The seven sections form an arch-like meditation on the themes of life and death: prayers on behalf of all humanity, psalms, personal prayers to Christ, and in the central Sanctus an affirmation of divine glory. The full scores have been edited and engraved by the composer himself and are presented in handsome, cloth-bound editions. Vocal and orchestral material is available on hire.

Designed for both the practicing choral director and the choral methods student, this is a compact and comprehensive overview of the many teaching methods, strategies, materials, and assessments available for choral sight-singing instruction. Sight-singing is an important, if sometimes neglected, facet of choral music education that often inspires fear and uncertainty in student and teacher alike. Written in an accessible style, this book takes the mystery out of teaching music reading. Topics covered include the history of sight-singing pedagogy and research, prominent methods and materials, and practical strategies for teaching and assessment. This is the only book to provide such a wealth of information under one cover and will become an essential part of every choral conductor's library.

Psalms in the Early Modern World is the first book to explore the use, interpretation, development, translation, and influence of the Psalms in the Atlantic world, 1400-1800. In the age of Reformation, when religious concerns drove political, social, cultural, economic, and scientific discourse, the Bible was the supreme document, and the Psalms were arguably its most important book.The Psalms played a central role in arbitrating the salient debates of the day, including but scarcely limited to the nature of power and the legitimacy of rule; the proper role and purpose of nations; the justification for holy war and the godliness of peace; and the relationship of individual and community to God. Contributors to the collection follow these debates around the Atlantic world, to pre- and post-Hispanic translators in Latin America, colonists in New England, mystics in Spain, the French court during the religious wars, and both Protestants and Catholics in England. Psalms in the Early Modern World showcases essays by scholars from literature, history, music, and religious studies, all of whom have expertise in the use and influence of Psalms in the early modern world. The collection reaches beyond national and confessional boundaries and to look at the ways in which Psalms touched nearly every person living in early modern Europe and any place in the world that Europeans took their cultural practices.

The practices of singing and teaching singing are inextricable, joined to each other through the necessity of understanding the vocal art and craft. Just as singers must understand the physical functions of voice in order to become musically proficient and artistically mature, teachers too need to have a similar mastery of these ideas - and the ability to explain them to their students - in order to effectively guide their musical and artistic growth. With this singer-instructor relationship in mind, Richard and Ann Alderson's A New Handbook for Singers and Teachers presents a fresh, detailed guide about how to sing and how to teach singing. It systematically explores all aspects of the vocal technique - respiration, phonation, resonance, and articulation - with each chapter containing exercises aimed at applying and teaching these principles. Beyond basic vocal anatomy and singing fundamentals, the handbook also covers such understudied topics as the young voice, the changing voice, and the aging voice, along with helpful chapters for teachers about how to organize vocal lessons and training plans. Thoughtfully and comprehensively crafted by two authors with decades of singing and teaching experience between them, A New Handbook for Singers and Teachers will prove an invaluable resource for singers and teachers at all stages of their vocal and pedagogical careers.

This study explores a wide range of Victorian and Edwardian musical life including brass bands, choral societies, music hall and popular concerts, and analyzes the way in which popular cultural practice was shaped by, and in turn, helped shape social and economic structures. The text has been fully revised in order to consider recent work in the field.

for SATB and organ, or orchestra and organ This invigorating arrangement of a well-loved hymn is the ideal choice for services and concerts throughout the year. Opening with a strong unison melody, each verse is presented in a new vocal scoring, underpinned by a vibrant organ accompaniment. Cleverly balancing full harmonies with accessible vocal lines, Mack Wilberg offers a truly uplifting anthem ideal for the amateur and professional choir alike. Orchestral material is available on hire (3 fl, 2ob, 2cl, 2bsn, 4hn, 3tpt, 3tbn, tba, timp, perc, org, str).

(Beginning Piano Solo Songbook). 20 beloved hymns beautifully arranged by Phillip Keveren, including: All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name * Be Still My Soul * Be Thou My Vision * The Church's One Foundation * Faith of Our Fathers * How Firm a Foundation * I Surrender All * Nearer, My God, to Thee * Softly and Tenderly * 'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus * and more.