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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Other types of music > Sacred & religious music
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.
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