The fifteen studies assembled here grew out of research on south-Italian ordinary chants and tropes for the multi-volume series Beneventanum Troporum Corpus II, edited by John Boe in collaboration with Alejandro Planchart. In the present essays, clerical and ordinary chants and tropes of the Mass (especially when derived from paraliturgical hymns and poems), certain aspects of chant notation and particular facets of the old Beneventan and the old Roman chant repertories are examined in relation to the three main cultic centres of the Italian south - Benevento, Montecassino and Rome - and as they relate to their European context, namely Frankish and Norman chant and the varieties of chant sung in Italy north of Rome. The volume includes one previously unpublished study, on the Roman introit Salus Populi.

The first study of the performance practice, repertoire and context of the modern 'brass ensemble' in the musical world. Whereas the British 'brass band' originated in the nineteenth century and rapidly developed into a nationwide working-class movement, the perceived modern 'brass ensemble' has a less clear foundation and identity. This book is the first to focus exclusively on the performance, practice, repertoire and context of the 'brass ensemble' in the musical world. Following World War II, the brass quintet and other orchestral groupings emerged in the United States and Europe, with musical customs established by professional players playing orchestral instruments. These groups initially played a combination of the music of Gabrieli and his contemporaries as well as newly commissioned works. By the late twentieth century, however, repertory spanned works by Elliott Carter, Maxwell Davies and Lutoslawski, together with music that integrated jazz, commercial elements, and landmark transcriptions. At the book's heart is the story of the London-based, internationally acclaimed, Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. But this is not a story of one ensemble, as the 'brass ensemble' can be defined in several forms. The Modern Brass Ensemble in Twentieth-Century Britain offers a comprehensive account by an author and performer who was involved in many of the key developments of the modern 'brass ensemble'.

Traditional sacred favorites are arranged in progressive order to gradually develop the adult student's technique while providing hours of enjoyment. Selections include "Just a Closer Walk With Thee," "For the Beauty of the Earth" and many others.

This study of the Bach Choir provides a much-needed overview of one of the major choral societies in London. Dr Basil Keen examines the background that led to the formation of an ad hoc body to give the first performance in England of J.S. Bach's B minor Mass. The musical and organizational effects of a permanent choral society drawn from one social group are traced during the first twenty years, after such time the pressures of social change led to a complete review followed by a restructuring of the methods of recruitment and internal organization. The rebuilding of the choir at the opening of the twentieth century, the expansion of the repertoire, the upheaval resulting from the First World War and the impact of these events on preparation and performance, are all considered. The book is essentially structured around the tenure of successive Musical Directors: Otto Goldschmidt, Charles Villiers Stanford, Walford Davies, Hugh Allen, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Adrian Boult, Reginald Jacques and David Willcocks, since their varied tastes and interests inevitably had a decisive influence on policy. Keen draws upon previously unpublished material, including minutes and correspondence of the Bach Choir, interviews with relatives and descendants, and examination of family records and correspondence. To date, there has been no survey of a major London choir that encompasses the full history of the organization in context. In this study, Dr Basil Keen provides a thorough examination of the Bach Choir, including the response of the choir to social changes; the influence of conductors and officials; changes in musical taste; relationships with composers and composition; major national and international events; and the effect of these matters on organization and repertoire.

This is the first study to provide a systematic and thorough investigation of continuo realization styles appropriate to Restoration sacred music, an area of performance practice that has never previously been properly assessed. Rebecca Herissone undertakes detailed analysis of a group of organ books closely associated with the major Restoration composers Purcell, Blow and Humfrey, and the London institutions where they spent their professional lives. By investigating the relationship between the organ books' two-stave arrangements and full scores of the same pieces, Herissone demonstrates that the books are subtle sources of information to the accompanist, not just short or skeleton scores. Using this evidence, she formulates a model for continuo realization of this repertory based on the doubling of vocal parts, an approach that differs significantly from that adopted by most modern editors, and which throws into question much of the accepted continuo practice in modern performance of this repertory.

This collection of essays, edited by leading scholars in the field, focuses on how expressive genres such as music, dance and poetry are of enduring significance to social organization. Research from New Guinea, Indonesia and Taiwan is used to assess how historical changes modify these forms of expression to adjust to the social and political needs of the moment. The volume is unique in exploring the significance of expressive genres for the social processes of coping with and adjusting to change, either from outside forces or from internal ones. The contributions detail first-hand fieldwork, often conducted over a period of many years, and with each contributor bringing their experience to bear on both the aesthetic and the analytical aspects of their materials. Comparative in scope, the volume covers Austronesian and non-Austronesian speakers in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Originally published in 1948 and updated with a new introduction in 1970 this book is a classic study on the musical life of a Bantu people in Mozambique. It discusses the poetry on which the music and dances are based and provides, both in original and translation, 50 Chopi songs which are related to the social setting of Chopi life. It analyses some of the musical compositions and their structure with illustrations and transcriptions in score and describes the method of manufacture of the instruments. One chapter is devoted to full descriptions of the elaborate orchestral dances. The book is illustrated by numerous photographs and maps, and contains a glossary of musical terms, and extracts from early Portuguese accounts of the Chopi people and their music.

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.

Stephen Bonta's research on seventeenth-century Italian music, particularly for strings, spans more than 30 years. Included in this selection of his published articles is his seminal study of the early history of the bass violin which proved to be the foundation for his subsequent articles on the early history of the violoncello. In addition to the discussions of secular instrumental music, the volume features essays that explore Italian sacred music of the period, including Monteverdi's Marian Vespers.

Taking up questions and issues in early chant studies, this volume of essays addresses some of the topics raised in James McKinnon's The Advent Project: The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass, the last book before his untimely death in February 1999. A distinguished group of chant scholars examine the formation of the liturgy, issues of theory and notation, and Carolingian and post-Carolingian chant. Special studies include the origins of musical notations, nuances of early chant performance (with accompanying downloadable resources), musical style and liturgical structure in the early Divine Office, and new sources for Old-Roman chant. Western Plainchant in the First Millenium offers new information and new insights about a period of crucial importance in the growth of the liturgy and music of the Western Church.

As one of the foremost composers, conductors, and pianists of the nineteenth century, Felix Mendelssohn played a fundamental role in the shaping of modern musical tastes through his contributions to the early music revival and the formation of the Austro-German musical canon. His career allows for a remarkable meeting point for critical engagement with a host of crucial issues in the last two centuries of music history, including the relation between musical meaning and social function, programmatic and absolute music, notions of classicism and Romanticism, modernism and historicism. It also serves as a pertinent case-study of the roles political ideology, racism, and musical ignorance may play in creating and perpetuating a composer's posthumous reception. Fittingly, Rethinking Mendelssohn focuses on critical engagement with the composer's music and aesthetics, and on the interpretation of his works in relation to contemporaneous culture. Building on the renaissance in Mendelssohn scholarship of the last two decades, Rethinking Mendelssohn sets a fresh and exciting tone for research on the composer. Opening new ways of understanding Mendelssohn and setting the future direction of Mendelssohn studies, the contributing scholars pay particular attention to Mendelssohn's contested views on the relationship between art and religion, analysis of Mendelssohn's instrumental music in the wake of recent controversies in Formenlehre, and the burgeoning interest in his previously neglected contribution to the German song.

Classics of seventeenth-century Italian sacred music set in modern notation, this second part of Vesper and Compline Music for Multiple Choirs features works by Francesco Cavalli, Giovanni Legrenzi, Natale Monferrato, Agostino Steffani, Lorenzo Penna, Giovanni Paolo Colonna and Lodovico Viadana.

Choral Sight Reading 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. This volume includes basic and advanced music theory concepts to develop fluent sight-reading skills for reading standard choral repertoire, providing examples for the process outlined in Chapters 6-8 of Volume 1 (Choral Artistry). This guide provides choral directors with a choral curriculum and choral rehearsal models that place performance, audiation, partwork, music theory, and sight-signing skills at the heart of the choral experience, through a 'sound thinking' approach to teaching that results in greater efficiency in creating independent choral singers with a well-rounded repertoire.

for SATB chorus and orchestra This arrangement for choir and orchestra of a traditional American spiritual conjures a deep fervency, belying its simple appearance. The opening instruction is 'With hushed awe', and that encapsulates perfectly the gentle radiance of the tender lyrics and the music's highly singable lines.

Everyone loves a Christmas carol - in the end, even Scrooge. They have the power to summon up a special kind of midwinter mood, like the aroma of mince pies and mulled wine and the twinkle of lights on a tree. It's a kind of magic. But how did they get that magic? In Christmas Carols Andrew Gant tells the story of some twenty carols, each accompanied by lyrics and music, unravelling a captivating - and often surprising - tale of great musicians and thinkers, saints and pagans, shepherd boys, choirboys, monks and drunks. We delve into the history of such favourites as 'Good King Wenceslas', 'Away in a Manger' and 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', discovering along the way how 'Hark, the Herald angels sing' came to replace 'Hark, how all the welkin ring' and how Ralph Vaughan Williams bolted the tune of an English folk song about a dead ox to a poem by a nineteenth-century American pilgrim to make 'O little town of Bethlehem'. Christmas Carols brims with anecdote, expert knowledge and Christmas spirit. It is a fittingly joyous account of one of our best-loved musical traditions.

Celebrating the diversity of indigenous nations, cultures and religions, the essays which comprise this volume discuss the musics performed by a wide variety of peoples as an integral part of their cultural traditions. These include examinations of the various styles of Maori, Inuit and Australian Aboriginal musics, and the role of music in Korean Shaman rituals. Indeed, music forms a key component of many such rituals and belief systems and examples of these are explored amongst the peoples of Uganda, Amazonia and Africa. Through analysis of these rituals and the part music plays in them, the essays also open up further themes including social groupings and gender divisions, and engage with issues and debates on how we define and approach the study of indigeneity, religiosity and music. With downloadable resources featuring some of the music discussed in the book and further information on other available recordings, this is a book which gives readers the opportunity to gain a richer experience of the lived realities of indigenous religious musics.

Study of musical manuscripts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, opening a window on piety, liturgy and musical life in late medieval society. The musical culture of the Low Countries in the early modern period was a flourishing one, apparent beyond the big cathedrals and monasteries, and reaching down to smaller parish churches. Unfortunately, very few manuscripts containing the music have survived from the period, and what we know rests to a huge extent on six music books preserved from St Peter's Church, Leiden. This book describes the manuscripts, their provenance, history and repertory, and the zeven-getijdencollege, the ecclesiastical organisations which ordered the music books, in detail. These organisations have their roots in fifteenth-century piety, founded on the initiative of individuals and townadministrators throughout Holland, principally to ensure that prayers and Masses were said for those in the afterlife. Music, both chant and polyphony, played an important part in these commemorative practices; the volume also looks at the choristers and choirmasters, and how such services were organised. ERIC JAS is a lecturer in music at the university of Utrecht.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Edvard Grieg's choral music has remained little known outside Scandinavia. One of the chief aims of this book is to bring this body of work to the notice of a wider audience, in the hope that it may receive greater prominence in concert programmes. Choral pieces form a relatively small proportion of Grieg's total output, although works such as the Album for Male Voices and the Four Psalms represent significant developments in his compositional career. In this study Beryl Foster not only provides an in-depth examination of this music, but also presents a picture of Norwegian musical life in the second half of the nineteenth century. An overview of Norway's choral tradition from the Middle Ages provides the historical context from which Grieg came to the genre. Subsequent chapters discuss in detail the types of choral works that he wrote, such as occasional and commemorative pieces, dramatic works and solo song arrangements. A set of useful appendices, including a chronological list of works and a discography complete this original survey.

This volume brings together 79 sacred tunes by two Connecticut composers: Eliakim Doolittle, who wrote psalm and fuging tunes in an unpretentious, familiar idiom, and Timothy Olmsted, who wrote psalm tunes in a more sophisticated, florid musical style. This final edition in the Music of the New American Nation series includes a comprehensive index of tune names and first lines for all fifteen volumes.

The articles here deal with liturgical music. Two topics receive special attention: the curiously negative role that musical instruments play in ancient cult music and the development of ecclesiastical song in early Christianity. The first series of articles treats classical Greek ethical notions of instruments, the status of instruments in Temple and Synagogue, and the absence of instruments from early Christian and medieval church music. The next parts trace the psalmody and hymnody of the Christian tradition, from its roots in Judaism to the origins of Gregorian chant in 7th-century Rome. Throughout, the writings of the Christian Church fathers such as Augustine, Ambrose, Basil and John Chrysostom underpin the author's analysis and presentation.

This is the first comprehensive study of William Byrd's life (1540-1623) and works to appear for sixty years, and fully takes into consideration recent scholarship. The biographical section includes many newly discovered facts about Byrd and his family, while in the chapters dealing with his music an attempt is made for the first time to outline the chronology of all his compositions. The book begins with a detailed account of Byrd's life, based on a completely fresh examination of original documents, which are quoted extensively. Several previously known documents have now been identified as being in Byrd's hand, and some fresh holographs have been discovered. A number of questions such as his parentage and date of birth have been conclusively settled. The book continues with a survey of Byrd's music which pays particular attention to its chronological development, and links it where possible to the events and background of his life. A series of appendices includes additional texts of important documents, and a summary catalogue of works. A bibliography and index complete the book. Besides musical illustrations there is a series of plates illustrating documents and places associated with Byrd.

Lawrence Bennett provides a comprehensive study of the rich repertoire of accompanied vocal chamber music that entertained the imperial family in Vienna and their guests throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries. The cantata became a form of elite entertainment composed to amuse listeners during banquets or pay homage to members of the royal family during special occasions. Concentrating on Baroque cantatas composed in the Habsburg court, Bennett draws extensively on primary source material to explore the stylistic changes that occurred within the genre in the generations before Haydn and Mozart.The cantata became a form of elite entertainment composed to amuse listeners during banquets or pay homage to members of the royal family during special occasions. Concentrating on Baroque cantatas composed in the Habsburg court, Bennett draws extensively on primary source material to explore the stylistic changes that occurred within the genre in the generations before Haydn and Mozart.

How do the temporal features of sacred music affect social life in South Asia? Due to new time constraints in commercial contexts, devotional musicians in Bengal have adapted longstanding features of musical time linked with religious practice to promote their own musical careers. The Politics of Musical Time traces a lineage of singers performing a Hindu devotional song known as kirtan in the Bengal region of India over the past century to demonstrate the shifting meanings and practices of devotional performance. Focusing on padabali kirtan, a type of devotional sung poetry that uses long-duration forms and combines song and storytelling, Eben Graves examines how expressions of religious affect and political belonging linked with the genre become strained in contemporary, shortened performance time frames. To illustrate the political economy of performance in South Asia, Graves also explores how religious performances and texts interact with issues of nationalism, gender, and economic exchange. Combining ethnography, history, and performance analysis, including videos from the author's fieldwork, The Politics of Musical Time reveals how ideas about the sacred and the modern have been expressed and contested through features of musical time found in devotional performance.