Johann Sebastian Bach's works are often classified as either sacred or secular. While this distinction is fraught, it seems to provide a useful way to distinguish between Bach's vocal works for the liturgy and those he wrote to honor courts and members of the nobility. But even so, the lines cannot be drawn clearly. The political and social systems of the time relied on religion as an ideological foundation, and public displays of political power almost always included religious rituals and thus required some form of sacred music. Social constructs, such as class and gender, were also embedded in religious frameworks. In Bach in the World, author Markus Rathey offers a new exploration of how Bach's music functioned as an agent of affective communication within rituals, such as the installation of the town council, and as a place where socio-political norms were perpetuated and sometimes even challenged. The book does so by analyzing public manifestations of the social order during Bach's time in large-scale celebrations, processions, public performances, and visual displays.

All the most popular sacred solos together in one volume. If you need to sing a solo at church this collection is all you need. Many of the pieces have been specially arranged for this book, and well-loved items traditionally viewed as only for higher voices are now available in the low voice volume in suitable keys.

From the introductory: Spiritualism, and Its General Teachings. Man, a thinking, reasoning, and morally responsible being, is the crowning glory of God. He is furthermore a trinity in structure, made up of the soul, of a spiritual and of an earthly body. The soul, the conscious innermost of man, is a potentialized portion of the deific life, incarnated in the material body for a more potent individualization, and for necessary experiences in the realm of matter. Death, just as natural in a ripe old age as birth, is the severing of the co-partnership existing between the spiritual and the earthly body. Man is naturally a religious being, and the seals of his manhood are consciousness and intuition, reason and aspiration. And further, man desires to live again; desires to meet his friends in the higher life; desires to know and love them, and with them progress through eternity.