This is the only thoroughgoing study of the Monteverdi Vespers, vastly expanding on the author's 1978 set of essays on the subject, long since out of print. The volume studies the Vespers from the standpoint of its musical and liturgical origins and context, contains analytical essays on the music, and examines 17th-century performance practice as it pertains to the Vespers. Appendices include bibliographies and an analytical discography.

Margot E. Fassler's richly documented history-winner of the Otto Kinkeldey Award from the American Musicological Society and the John Nicholas Brown Prize from the Medieval Academy of America-demonstrates how the Augustinians of St. Victor, Paris, used an art of memory to build sonic models of the church. This musical art developed over time, inspired by the religious ideals of Hugh and Richard of St. Victor and their understandings of image and the spiritual journey. Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris demonstrates the centrality of sequences to western medieval Christian liturgical and artistic experience, and to our understanding of change and continuity in medieval culture. Fassler examines the figure of Adam of St. Victor and the possible layers within the repertories created at various churches in Paris, probes the ways the Victorine sequences worked musically and exegetically, and situates this repertory within the intellectual and spiritual ideals of the Augustinian canons regular, especially those of the Abbey of St. Victor. Originally published in hardover in 1993, this paperback edition includes a new introduction by Fassler, in which she reviews the state of scholarship on late sequences since the original publication of Gothic Song. Her notes to the introduction provide the bibliography necessary for situating the Victorine sequences, and the late sequences in general, in contemporary thought.

These four splendid anthems were composed for the coronation of George II in October 1727 and have since retained a position at the heart of the English choral tradition. The popular anthem Zadok the priest has been performed at all subsequent coronations, and Handel's other contributions to the royal occasion - Let thy hand be strengthened, The King shall rejoice, and My heart is inditing - have the same majestic grandeur, with affecting contrasts between different sections of the sacred texts. The editor, Clifford Bartlett, has corrected various inconsistencies in Handel's score, and complete details of sources and editorial method, additional performance notes, and a critical commentary can be viewed in the companion full score available on hire.

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825 1901) was a British theologian who held the position of Bishop of Durham from 1890 until his death. First published in 1912, as the second edition of an 1879 original, this volume presents the complete text of the Book of Psalms arranged by Westcott 'so as to ensure an intelligent musical rendering of each clause of the separate verses'. The text was revised and edited for its second edition by the British organist and composer of hymns Arthur Henry Mann (1850 1929). This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the Psalms, choral music and Church history."

The Sixteen have become a household name. They are the Voices of Classic FM, and stars of the BBC Four series Sacred Music, presented by Simon Russell Beale. Every year since the millennium, they have undertaken a Choral Pilgrimage, bringing a programme of a cappella vocal music to around thirty cathedrals the length and breadth of the country. They are prolific recording artists, and perform at festivals and venues all over the world. Harry Christophers is a unique figure in music. With The Sixteen, Christophers has succeeded in nurturing a choir of exceptional calibre, establishing a business model that includes a record label and extensive tours to capacity audiences, mining a rich variety of repertoire, and combining enormous popular appeal with the stamp of approval from experts. This book will be accessible to everyone, regardless of musical experience or knowledge. It will appeal to anyone interested in classical music, to those who sing in amateur or professional choirs, and those who love the sound of the human voice.

This is the last of three volumes designed, in the author's words, to tell 'the story of America's popular songs, the people who wrote them, and the business they created and sustained'. Volume III, covering the twentieth century, discusses vaudeville, music boxes, the relationship of Hollywood to the music business, the 'fall and rise' of the record business in the 1930s, new technology after the Second World War, the dominance of rock'n'roll and the huge increase in the music business in the 1950s and 1960s, and, finally, the changing scene from 1967 to 1984, especially regarding government regulations, music licensing, and the record business.

Cantique de Jean Racine was written in 1865 during Faure's final year at the Ecole Niedermeyer, winning him the first prize for composition, and this elegant work now holds a cherished place in the choral repertory for both sacred and secular occasions. Presented with an English singing translation in addition to the original French, John Rutter's edition includes an accompaniment for organ or piano, and the work may also be performed with the transcription for harp and strings (available separately), compatible with the instrumentation for the OUP edition of the Faure Requiem in its 1893 version. Complete orchestral and vocal material is available on hire/rental and on sale. In addition, an arrangement for upper voices (SSAA) with Faure's original keyboard accompaniment is available on sale.

for mezzo-soprano solo, mixed choir, and orchestra or chamber ensemble Feel the Spirit is a cycle of seven familiar spirituals, expertly arranged by John Rutter. Equally suitable for concert, school, or church use, the vivid and expressive arrangements can be performed individually, or as a complete cycle that showcases the rich heritage of the spiritual. The work brings new life to such well-loved titles as Steal away, I got a robe, and When the saints go marching in.

This book is an auto-ethnographic account of the development of a charismatic community choir leader. It brings together management literature and a survey of the community choir scene with the development of community choir leadership. It provides a useful introduction to the sustaining of community choirs, including the use of English folksong material in this context. Some useful arrangements of folk songs are included. Community singing events are described with helpful advice on setting up and managing these. It presents a useful model of the range of skills necessary for aspiring community choir leaders. This is linked with the formation of a community that contains spiritual elements; this is theorized in relation to the role of the parish church in communal singing. It also discusses the two aesthetics of choral singing and the relationship between oral and literate traditions. The book arises from the engagement of the University of Winchester in partnership with the local community, which is theorized.

The offertory has played a crucial role in recent vigorous debates about the origins of Gregorian chant. Its elaborate solo verses are among the most splendid of chant melodies, yet the verses ceased to be performed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, making them among the least known and studied members of the repertory. Rebecca Maloy now offers the first comprehensive investigation of the offertory, drawing upon its music, lyrics, and liturgical history to shed new light on its origins and chronology. Maloy addresses issues that are at the very heart of chant scholarship, such as the relationship between the Gregorian and Old Roman melodies, the nature of oral transmission, the presence of non-Roman pieces in the Gregorian repertory, and the influence of theoretical thought on the transmission of the melodies. Although the Old Roman chant versions were not recorded in writing until the eleventh century, it has long been assumed that they closely reflect the eighth-century state of the melodies. Maloy illustrates, however, that rather than preserving a pristine earlier version of the melodies, the prolonged period of oral transmission from the eighth to the eleventh centuries instead enforced a formulaic trend. Demonstrating that certain musical and textual traits of the offertory are distributed in distinct patterns by liturgical season, she outlines new chronological layers within the repertory, and along the way, explores the presence and implications of foreign imports into the Roman and Gregorian repertories. Carefully weighing questions surrounding the origins of elaborate verse melodies, Maloy deftly establishes that these melodies reached their final form at a relatively late date. Available for the first time as a complete critical edition, ninety-four Gregorian and Old Roman offertories are presented here in side-by-side transcriptions. A companion web site provides music examples and essays which elucidate these transcriptions with significant insights into their similarities and differences. Inside the Offertory will be an important and longstanding resource for all students and scholars of early liturgical music, as well as performers of early music and medievalists interested in music.

Sourindro Mohan Tagore (1840-1914), musicologist, educationist and patron of Indian music, was a member of a highly influential family in nineteenth-century Calcutta that was renowned for its support of the arts. His work to generate understanding in the West of music's role in Indian culture and heritage was recognised worldwide and he is remembered today through his extensive writings, donations of musical instruments to leading institutions, and the Royal College of Music's prestigious Tagore gold medal. His valuable compilation of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English writings on Indian music by learned Europeans was first printed for private circulation in 1875. It includes a catalogue of Indian musical instruments, illustrated notes by the orientalist William Ouseley (1767-1842), and a pioneering essay by Sir William Jones (1746-94), the Enlightenment polymath whose collected works are also reissued in this series.

This is the second of three volumes designed, in the author's words, to tell 'the story of America's popular songs, the people who wrote them, and the business they created and sustained'. Volume II concentrates on the 19th century, and among the topics discussed are: the effect of changing technology upon the printing of music; the growth of the American musical theatre; popular religious music; black music (including spirituals and ragtime); music during the Civil War; and 'music in the era of monopoly' (covering copyright, changing technology and distribution, the invention of the phonograph, and the establishment of Tin Pan Alley).

Musical culture in Jewish communities in early modern Italy was much more diverse than researchers originally thought. An interdisciplinary reassessment, Music and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Italy evaluates the social, cultural, political, economic, and religious circumstances that shaped this community, especially in light of the need to recognize individual experiences within minority populations. Contributors draw from rich materials, topics, and approaches as they explore the inherently diverse understandings of music in daily life, the many ways that Jewish communities conceived of music, and the reception of and responses to Jewish musical culture. Highlighting the multifaceted experience of music within Jewish communities, Music and Jewish Culture in Early Modern Italy sheds new light on the place of music in complex, previously misunderstood environments.

Contains two versions of the vocal parts - for SATB and piano or orchestra, or SS or SA and piano or orchestra.

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.

Providing a detailed analysis of Bach's Passions, this 2010 book represents an important contribution to the debate about the culture of 'classical music', its origins, priorities and survival. The angles from which each chapter proceeds differ from those of a traditional music guide, by examining the Passions in the light of the mindsets of modernity, and their interplay with earlier models of thought and belief. While the historical details of Bach's composition, performance and theological context remain crucial, the foremost concern of this study is to relate these works to a historical context that may, in some threads at least, still be relevant today. The central claim of the book is that the interplay of traditional imperatives and those of early modernity renders Bach's Passions particularly fascinating as artefacts that both reflect and constitute some of the priorities and conditions of the western world.

A third collection of 50 carols, mostly for SATB, some unaccompanied, and some having accompaniments for piano or organ or orchestra. The carols reflect a diversity of styles and periods, while remaining within the capacity of an average group of amateur performers. Includes compositions and arrangements by Britten, Holst, Howells, Hurford, Vaughan Williams, and Walton.
Orchestral and brass accompaniments for many of the items are available on hire.

First published in 1914, this book provides information on the Canticles of the Eastern and Western Church in early and medieval times. The text is divided into two broad sections: the first covers Greek and Eastern Canticles; the second covers Latin and Western Canticles. Additional material includes illustrative plates and an index of manuscripts. This is a highly informative book that will be of value to anyone with an interest in religious music and the history of Christianity.

This study investigates an almost unknown musical culture: that of cloistered nuns in one of the major cities of early modern Europe. These women were the most famous musicians of Milan, and the music composed for them opens up a hitherto unstudied musical repertory, which allows insight into the symbolic world of the city. Even more importantly, the music actually composed by four such nuns, Claudia Scossa, Claudia Rusca, Chiara Margarita Cozzollani, and Rosa Giacinta Badalla - reveals the musical expression of women's devotional life. The two centuries' worth of battles over nuns' singing of polyphony, studies here for the first time on the basis of massive archival documentation, also suggest that the implementation of reform in the major centre of post-Tridentine Catholic renewal was far more varied; incomplete, subject to local political pressure and individual interpretation, and short-lived than any religious historian has ever suggested. Other factors that marked nuns' musical lives and creative output - liturgical traditions of the religious orders, the problems of performance practice attendant upon all-female singing ensembles - are here addressed for the first time in the musicological literature.

The first part of Nicaea and its Legacy offers a narrative of the fourth-century trinitarian controversy. It does not assume that the controversy begins with Arius, but with tensions among existing theological strategies. Lewis Ayres argues that, just as we cannot speak of one `Arian' theology, so we cannot speak of one `Nicene' theology either, in 325 or in 381. The second part of the book offers an account of the theological practices and assumptions within which pro-Nicene theologians assumed their short formulae and creeds were to be understood. Ayres also argues that there is no fundamental division between eastern and western trinitarian theologies at the end of the fourth century. The last section of the book challenges modern post-Hegelian trinitarian theology to engage with Nicaea more deeply.

Performance is a forum for social action, embodied interaction and shared authority. Recently, as the various acts and agencies surrounding a performance have become the target of scholarly interest, the complex split between theory and practice has been challenged, as has the idea of a singular, disembodied authorial ownership of the socio-material meanings surrounding performance. The Embodiment of Authority approaches performance, issues of authority and negotiated knowledge production through multi-material research data and interdisciplinary methods. The book discusses the relationship between authorial questions and performances via the following topics: shared authorities, ontologies of art work, diverse roles of rehearsals in the performance process, and embodied knowledge.

for SATB and brass ensemble or full orchestra Gloria was written in 1974 in response to a commission from The Voices of Mel Olson, a choir based in the USA. The division of the work into three movements a respectively proclamatory, prayerful, and joyfully affirmative a corresponds to the divisions in the text. Most of the melodic material derives from a Gregorian chant associated with this text. An accompaniment for orchestra without organ is also available. Full scores, vocal scores, and instrumental parts are available on hire. The first movement of Gloria is available separately under the title Gloria 1.

for SATB unaccompanied Let all mortal flesh keep silence is a reflective, homophonic setting of text from the fourth-century Orthodox Liturgy of St James. Sheehan's setting, an original rather than the customary pairing with the hymn tune 'Picardy', is steeped in the Orthodox tradition, and has pure harmonies and a beautiful stillness.

for SSA and piano The Sun and Stars Are Mine is a lyrical setting of words by the metaphysical poet and clergyman Thomas Traherne (1637-74). With a rippling piano accompaniment, melodious vocal lines, and warm harmonies, Chilcott's setting captures the wonder in the text, as Traherne reflects with awe on the transient nature of life: 'When silent I so many thousand years, . . . how could I lips or hands or eyes or ears perceive?'

Nearly a half century after her death in 1972, Mahalia Jackson remains the most esteemed figure in black gospel music history. Born in the backstreets of New Orleans in 1911, Jackson during the Great Depression joined the Great Migration to Chicago, where she became an highly regarded church singer and, by the mid-fifties, a coveted recording artist for Apollo and Columbia Records, lauded as the "World's Greatest Gospel Singer." This "Louisiana Cinderella" narrative of Jackson's career during the decade following World War II carried important meanings for African Americans, though it remains a story half told. Jackson was gospel's first multi-mediated artist, with a nationally broadcast radio program, a Chicago-based television show, and early recordings that introduced straight-out-of-the-church black gospel to American and European audiences while also tapping the vogue for religious pop in the early Cold War. In some ways, Jackson's successes made her an exceptional case, though she is perhaps best understood as part of broader developments in the black gospel field. Built upon foundations laid by pioneering Chicago organizers in the 1930s, black gospel singing, with Jackson as its most visible representative, began to circulate in novel ways as a form of popular culture in the 1940s and 1950s, its practitioners accruing prestige not only through devout integrity but also from their charismatic artistry, public recognition, and pop-cultural cachet. These years also saw shifting strategies in the black freedom struggle that gave new cultural-political significance to African American vernacular culture. The first book on Jackson in 25 years, Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field draws on a trove of previously unexamined archival sources that illuminate Jackson's childhood in New Orleans and her negotiation of parallel careers as a singing Baptist evangelist and a mass media entertainer, documenting the unfolding material and symbolic influence of Jackson and black gospel music in postwar American society.