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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Other types of music > Sacred & religious music
The 20th century, especially the latter decades, was a time of
explosive growth and importance in hymnody, and yet published
material about the hymnody of this period has been scattered and
difficult to come by. The present volume catalogues and categorizes
the available writings to guide students and scholars in their
research. Furthermore, this reference does not depend primarily on
the view of the author/compiler, but guides users toward a broad
spectrum of viewpoints about 20th-century hymnody. Listing the
principal writings on the repertory, language, practice, and people
of hymnody during the last century, this annotated bibliography
offers students and researchers alike a handy reference for a vast
and varied field.
Beginning with a unique introduction to and summary of hymnody
in the 20th century, Music arranges the entries by topic, dividing
each chapter by helpful subject headings. The repertory of the
twentieth century, and language issues are discussed. Practical
elements of hymnody are covered, while the final chapter lists
writings about individual hymn writers and other influential
persons in the field. Music provides a brief annotation for each
entry and uses numerous cross-references, guiding the reader to
relevant material in other sections of the book. A comprehensive
index concludes this essential reference.
for SATB (with divisions) and piano or organ The third movement of
McDowall's powerful Da Vinci Requiem, I obey thee, O Lord is a
compelling pairing of the 'Lacrimosa' text from the Latin Missa pro
defunctis with extracts from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,
and has a poignant, tender simplicity. The composer has reworked
the keyboard part from the parent work to facilitate performance by
piano or organ.
The influence of Rome on medieval plainsong and liturgy explored in
depth. Containing substantial new studies in music, liturgy,
history, art history, and palaeography from established and
emerging scholars, this volume takes a cross-disciplinary approach
to one of the most celebrated and vexing questions about plainsong
and liturgy in the Middle Ages: how to understand the influence of
Rome? Some essays address this question directly, examining Roman
sources, Roman liturgy, or Roman practice, whilst others consider
the sway ofRome more indirectly, by looking later sources, received
practices, or emerging traditions that owe a foundational debt to
Rome. Daniel J. DiCenso is Assistant Professor of Music at the
College of the Holy Cross; Rebecca Maloy is Professor of Musicology
at the University of Colorado Boulder. Contributors: Charles M.
Atkinson, Rebecca A. Baltzer, James Borders, Susan Boynton,
Catherine Carver, Daniel J. DiCenso, David Ganz, Barbara
Haggh-Huglo, David Hiley, Emma Hornby, Thomas Forrest Kelly,
William Mahrt, Charles B. McClendon, Luisa Nardini, Edward Nowacki
, Christopher Page, Susan Rankin, John F. Romano, Mary E. Wolinski
The flourishing of religious or spiritually-inspired music in the
late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries remains largely
unexplored. The engagement and tensions between modernism and
tradition, and institutionalized religion and spirituality are
inherent issues for many composers who have sought to invoke
spirituality and Otherness through contemporary music. Contemporary
Music and Spirituality provides a detailed exploration of the
recent and current state of contemporary spiritual music in its
religious, musical, cultural and conceptual-philosophical aspects.
At the heart of the book are issues that consider the role of
secularization, the claims of modernity concerning the status of
art, and subjective responses such as faith and experience. The
contributors provide a new critical lens through which it is
possible to see the music and thought of Cage, Ligeti, Messiaen,
Stockhausen as spiritual music. The book surrounds these composers
with studies of and by other composers directly associated with the
idea of spiritual music (Harvey, Gubaidulina, MacMillan, Part,
Pott, and Tavener), and others (Adams, Birtwistle, Ton de Leeuw,
Ferneyhough, Ustvolskaya, and Vivier) who have created original
engagements with the idea of spirituality. Contemporary Music and
Spirituality is essential reading for humanities scholars and
students working in the areas of musicology, music theory,
theology, religious studies, philosophy of culture, and the history
of twentieth-century culture.
This book studies the Jesuit culture in Silesia and Klodzko (Glatz)
County by focusing on its musical works and traditions. The
strategies adopted by the Jesuits achieved notable results in the
artistic traditions they cultivated, first of all a creative
redefinition of musical culture itself, at various levels of its
organization. While allowing music to exert influence on human
activity, the Jesuits had to accept that its impact would depend on
the peculiarities of local possibilities and conditions. This is
why they analysed the qualities of music and its culture-forming
potential in such detail and precisely defined its norms and modes
of functioning. The impact of music can be observed in the
transformations that the cultivation of musical culture brought
about in the model of the Order itself, as well as in individuals,
communities, and the time and space that defined them.
The area whose capital was the southern Lombard city of Benevento
developed a culture identified with the characteristic form of
writing known as the Beneventan script, which was used throughout
the area and was brought to perfection at the abbey of Montecassino
in the late eleventh century. This repertory, along with other
now-vanished or suppressed local varieties of music, give a far
richer picture of the variety of musical practice in early medieval
Europe than was formerly available. Thomas Forrest Kelly has
identified and collected the surviving sources of an important
repertory of early medieval music; this is the so-called Beneventan
Chant, used in southern Italy in the early middle ages, before the
adoption there of the now-universal music known as Gregorian chant.
Because it was deliberately suppressed in the course of the
eleventh century, this music survives mostly in fragments and
palimpsests, and the fascinating process of restoring the repertory
piece by piece is told in the studies in this book. A companion
volume to this collection also by Professor Kelly details the
practice of Medieval music.
The study is the first monograph devoted to the musical culture of
a female order in Poland. It is a result of in-depth research into
musical, narrative, economic, and prosopographic sources surviving
in libraries and archives. Focused on the musical practice of nuns,
the book also points to the context of spirituality, morality, and
culture of the post-Trident era. The author indicates the
transformation of the musical activity of the nuns during the 17th
and 18th century and discusses its various kinds: plainsong, Latin
and Polish polyphonic song, polichoral, keyboard,
vocal-instrumental and chamber music. She reflects on the role of
music in liturgy and monastic events and in everyday life of
cloistered women, describes the recruitment of musically gifted
candidates, and the scriptorial activity of nuns.
Music, Piety, and Propaganda: The Soundscapes of
Counter-Reformation Bavaria explores the nature of sound as a
powerful yet ambivalent force in the religious struggles that
permeated Germany during the Counter-Reformation. Author Alexander
J. Fisher goes beyond a musicological treatment of composers,
styles, and genres to examine how music, and more broadly sound
itself, shaped the aural landscape of Bavaria as the duchy emerged
as a militant Catholic bulwark. Fisher focuses particularly on the
ways in which sound-including bell-ringing, gunfire, and popular
song, as well as cultivated polyphony-not only was deployed by
Catholic secular and clerical elites to shape the religious
identities of Bavarian subjects, but also carried the potential to
challenge and undermine confessional boundaries. Surviving
literature, archival documents, and music illustrate the ways in
which Bavarian authorities and their allies in the Catholic clergy
and orders deployed sound to underline crucial theological
differences with their Protestant antagonists, notably the cults of
the Virgin Mary, the Eucharist, and the saints. Official and
popular rituals like divine worship, processions, and pilgrimages
all featured distinctive sounds and music that shaped and reflected
an emerging Catholic identity. Although officials imposed a severe
regime of religious surveillance, the Catholic state's dominance of
the soundscape was hardly assured. Fisher traces archival sources
that show the resilience of Protestant vernacular song in Bavaria,
the dissemination and performance of forbidden, anti-Catholic
songs, the presence of Lutheran chorales in nominally Catholic
church services into the late 16th century, and the persistence of
popular "noise" more generally. Music, Piety, and Propaganda thus
reveals historical, theological, and cultural issues of the period
through the piercing dimension of its sounds, bringing into focus
the import of sound as a strategic cultural tool with significant
impact on the flow of history.
for SATB and organ This radiant anthem explores the theme of light,
with luminescent harmonies, a virtuosic organ part, and soaring
vocal lines. The text is by Dr Marcus Tomalin, after Dante's
Paradiso, and Bednall's word painting is highly effective. A
compelling climax as the singers tell of the 'pure living light
shining' falls away to a powerful unaccompanied moment, before the
organ picks up a motif and develops it in a majestic interlude.
This is a highly rewarding anthem for performer and audience alike.
Pure Living Light was recorded by The Epiphoni Consort on the CD
David Bednall: Sudden Light (Delphian, DCD34189).
Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach
collects seventeen essays by leading Bach scholars. The authors
each address in some way such questions of meaning in J. S. Bach's
vocal compositions-including his Passions, Masses, Magnificat, and
cantatas-with particular attention to how such meaning arises out
of the intentionality of Bach's own compositional choices or (in
Part IV in particular) how meaning is discovered, and created,
through the reception of Bach's vocal works. And the authors do not
consider such compositional choices in a vacuum, but rather discuss
Bach's artistic intentions within the framework of broader cultural
trends-social, historical, theological, musical, etc. Such
questions of compositional choice and meaning frame the four
primary approaches to Bach's vocal music taken by the authors in
this volume, as seen across the book's four parts: Part I: How
might the study of historical theology inform our understanding of
Bach's compositional choices in his music for the church (cantatas,
Passions, masses)? Part II: How can we apply traditional analytical
tools to understand better how Bach's compositions were created and
how they might have been heard by his contemporaries? Part III:
What we can understand anew through the study of Bach's
self-borrowing (i.e., parody), which always changed the earlier
meaning of a composition through changes in textual content,
compositional characteristics, the work's context within a larger
composition, and often the performance context (from court to
church, for example)? Part IV: What can the study of reception
teach us about a work's meaning(s) in Bach's time, during the time
of his immediate successors, and at various points since then
(including our present)? The chapters in this volume thus reflect
the breadth of current Bach research in its attention not only to
source study and analysis, but also to meanings and contexts for
understanding Bach's compositions.
Holy Chord Within Sacred Walls examines musical culture both inside and outside seventeenth-century Sienese convents. In contrast to earlier studies of Italian convent music, this book draws upon archival sources to reconstruct an ecclesiastical culture that celebrated music internally and shared music freely with the community outside the convent walls. Colleen Reardon argues that cloistered women in Siena enjoyed a significant degree of freedom to engage in musical pursuits. The nuns produced a remarkable body of work including motets, lamentations, theatrical plays and even an opera. As a result, the convent became an important cultural centre in Siena that enjoyed the support and encouragement of its clergy and lay community.
This book represents the most thorough study to date of Handel's compositional procedures in his English oratorios and musical dramas. Exploring the composer's sketches and autograph scores, it offers fresh insights into the creative mind of one of the leading figures in Baroque music.
Social Functions of Synagogue Song: A Durkheimian Approach by
Jonathan L. Friedmann paints a detailed picture of the important
role sacred music plays in Jewish religious communities. This study
explores one possible way to approach the subject of music s
intimate connection with public worship: applying sociologist Emile
Durkeim s understanding of ceremonial ritual to synagogue music.
Durkheim observed that religious ceremonies serve disciplinary,
cohesive, revitalizing, and euphoric functions within religious
communities. Drawing upon musical examples from different
composers, regions, periods, rites, and services, Friedmann
demonstrates how Jewish sacred music performs these functions.
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