In the late 1920s, Reverend A. W. Nix (1880-1949), an African American Baptist minister born in Texas, made fifty-four commercial recordings of his sermons on phonographs in Chicago. On these recordings, Nix presented vocal traditions and styles long associated with the southern, rural Black church as he preached about self-help, racial uplift, thrift, and Christian values. As southerners like Nix fled into cities in the North to escape the rampant racism in the South, they contested whether or not African American vocal styles of singing and preaching that had emerged during the slavery era were appropriate for uplifting the race. Specific vocal characteristics, like those on Nix's recordings, were linked to the image of the "Old Negro" by many African American leaders who favored adopting Europeanized vocal characteristics and musical repertoires into African American churches in order to uplift the modern "New Negro" citizen. Through interviews with family members, musical analyses of the sounds on Nix's recordings, and examination of historical documents and relevant scholarship, Terri Brinegar argues that the development of the phonograph in the 1920s afforded preachers like Nix the opportunity to present traditional Black vocal styles of the southern Black church as modern Black voices. These vocal styles also influenced musical styles. The "moaning voice" used by Nix and other ministers was a direct connection to the "blues moan" employed by many blues singers including Blind Willie, Blind Lemon, and Ma Rainey. Both Reverend A. W. Nix and his brother, W. M. Nix, were an influence on the "Father of Gospel Music," Thomas A. Dorsey. The success of Nix's recorded sermons demonstrates the enduring values African Americans placed on traditional vocal practices.

The only sourcebook that provides information necessary to make "Gospel Hymns Nos. 1 to 6 Complete" a useful research tool and an aid to the study of popular culture in the United States during the last half of the 19th century. For the first time, students and scholars will have access, in a single source, to biographical, historical, and bibliographical data concerning the writers of the hymn texts, the composers of the hymn tunes, and the various routes by which the hymns found their way onto the pages of that large collection of gospel and traditional hymnody. DEGREES"Gospel Hymns Nos. 1 to 6 Complete" contains 739 songs gathered from a series of six earlier published works.

The data in this volume will add to the breadth and depth of "Gospel Hymns Nos. 1 to 6 Complete" and thus, for the first time, identify the significance of its contributions to the history of American culture. A strong introduction establishes the historical significance of the collection of gospel hymns and songs. The entries for both the authors of the words and the composers of the music are arranged alphabetically, followed by the dates of birth and death (if known), a biographical sketch, and references to the number of the hymn, its title, first line, and accompanying tune. Dates of composition and initial publication are included where possible.

Originally published in 1927. This book recounts the story of the long development of Christian Hymnody, so far as it is illustrated by the contents of the revised Church Hymnary. It provides a continuous narrative setting out its contetnts in historical perspective. Contents include: The Church's First Heritage of Song: The Psalms - Hymns of The New Testament - Hymns From The Days of The Great Persecutions - A New Hymnody Is Born Of Controversy In The East - Ambrose Of Milan And The Pioneers of The West - Gregory of the Great And his Contemporaries - The Monasteries And Some Immortal Hymns We Owe To Them - Nameless Poets And Musicians Of The Cloisters - What The Friars Bequeathed to Us - How Martin Luther Started The Popular Hymn - How German Religious Life After Luther Is reflected In Its Hymns - Why The Reformed Church Did Not Use Hymns - The Battle of The Psalters In England - The Metrical Psalters Of Scotland - How The Psalters Led The Way To Paraphrases And Hymns - The Gathering Stream of English Hymnody - How Isaac Watts Opened the Sluice Gartes To Let The Stream Flow Free - The Great Revival: The Wesleys and Their New Song - The great Revival: The Hymns of the Calvinists - The Romantic Revival - The Oxford movement - Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Hymnody - The American Contribution - Some Distinctive Notes In Twentieth Century Hymnody.

The history of American church music is a particularly fascinating and challenging subject, if for no other reason than because of the variety of diverse religious groups that have immigrated and movements that have sprung up in American. Indeed, for the first time in modern history-possibly the only time since the rule of medieval Iberia under the Moors-different faiths have co-existed here with a measure of peace- sometimes ill-humored, occasionally hostile, but more often amicable or at least tolerant-influencing and even weaving their traditions into the fabric of one another's worship practices even as they competed for converts in the free market of American religion. This overview traces the musical practices of several of those groups from their arrival on these shores up to the present, and the way in which those practices and traditions influenced each other, leading to the diverse and multi-hued pattern that is American church music at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The tone is non-technical; there are no musical examples, and the musical descriptions are clear and concise. In short, it is a book for interested laymen as well as professional church musicians, for pastors and seminarians as well as students of American religious culture and its history.

The fourth volume in the Greenwood series providing a near-definitive survey on the output of sound recordings made in Europe by The Gramophone Company (1900-1929), this work covers the Dutch area and includes a good deal of Belgian material as well. Included in the contents are examples of the work from serious artists in classical music together with popular and comic songs and social comment dealing with an era that has nearly passed out of the range of living memory. Of interest to record collectors, music archivists, reference librarians, and music and social historians.

The Gramophone Company was the major producer of sound recordings from 1900 to 1929, besides having a virtual monopoly of the major talents. It was organized into ten geographical/ethnic divisions. Four of these areas have had discographies published on them; Kelly's previous Greenwood volumes cover Italy, France, and Germany. The fourth, on Scandinavia, was published by another company.

From the Jim Crow world of 1920s Greenville, South Carolina, to Greenwich Village's Café Society in the '40s, to their 1974 Grammy-winning collaboration on "Loves Me Like a Rock," the Dixie Hummingbirds have been one of gospel's most durable and inspiring groups. Now, Jerry Zolten tells the Hummingbirds' fascinating story and with it the story of a changing music industry and a changing nation. When James Davis and his high-school friends starting singing together in a rural South Carolina church they could not have foreseen the road that was about to unfold before them. They began a ten-year jaunt of "wildcatting," traveling from town to town, working local radio stations, schools, and churches, struggling to make a name for themselves. By 1939 the a cappella singers were recording their four-part harmony spirituals on the prestigious Decca label. By 1942 they had moved north to Philadelphia and then New York where, backed by Lester Young's band, they regularly brought the house down at the city's first integrated nightclub, Café Society. From there the group rode a wave of popularity that would propel them to nation-wide tours, major record contracts, collaborations with Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon, and a career still vibrant today as they approach their seventy-fifth anniversary. Drawing generously on interviews with Hank Ballard, Otis Williams, and other artists who worked with the Hummingbirds, as well as with members James Davis, Ira Tucker, Howard Carroll, and many others, The Dixie Hummingbirds brings vividly to life the growth of a gospel group and of gospel music itself.

Exploring the parallel development of the brass band movement and religious fervor in late 19th-century America, this work includes illustrations from original materials as well as scores for 22 works. While the choral tradition has remained strong in churches, in this earlier period both choral and instrumental forms were equally popular. This study begins with solo cornet parts, used by men like George Ives to lead the singing at revival meetings, and ends with an extensive band arrangement of Pleyel's Hymn. Extensive historical notes, old-time illustrations, and sacred music make this a most interesting and useful reference book. An enormous amount of music was written and arranged for the popular brasswinds at the time, some of which was sacred music for the church. Changing taste and secularism resulted in the loss of the entire body of written and arranged sacred music for brass, once as cherished in church performance as the choral tradition is today. For scholars and performers interested in the variety of music produced in the United States during the 19th century.

Tawa considers the musical and social ramifications influencing the American composer between 1950 and 1985. He draws information from composers, music reviewers, and from his own listening experiences. Tawa's common theme is the gulf between what the composer (or critic) says about the music and how the public experiences it. . . . More than 50 composers are considered. . . . Tawa . . . goes beyond biographical detail to help the reader to `understand the reasons for the deep abyss separating contemporary composer and listener'. Choice The decades following World War II witnessed an explosion of musical creativity in America. Unfortunately, they also witnessed a widening abyss between the contemporary composer and his or her audience. Confusion on the part of the modern listener is an all-too-frequent phenomenon when he or she is confronted by the extraordinary profusion of contemporary musical styles. This useful volume is intended to relieve some of that confusion. Insightful commentaries and a highly readable text combine to focus on all contemporary musical styles from the most traditional to the most experimental in relation to modern American life. Taking the position that music is a transaction between creator/composer and listener, the author considers ways in which each faction may become more aware of the other's imperatives, thereby sponsoring a new and mutually meaningful music.

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.