This book is an auto-ethnographic account of the development of a charismatic community choir leader. It brings together management literature and a survey of the community choir scene with the development of community choir leadership. It provides a useful introduction to the sustaining of community choirs, including the use of English folksong material in this context. Some useful arrangements of folk songs are included. Community singing events are described with helpful advice on setting up and managing these. It presents a useful model of the range of skills necessary for aspiring community choir leaders. This is linked with the formation of a community that contains spiritual elements; this is theorized in relation to the role of the parish church in communal singing. It also discusses the two aesthetics of choral singing and the relationship between oral and literate traditions. The book arises from the engagement of the University of Winchester in partnership with the local community, which is theorized.

Proceedings from The Nordic Festival and Conference of Gregorian Chant

This book surveys North German church music from the period of one of the most well-known of J.S. Bach's immediate German predecessors, Dietrich Buxtehude (c.1637-1707). Particular emphasis is placed on composers whose work has suffered unjust neglect, and on the influence of contemporary Italian church music. As well as providing a detailed study of the music itself, Geoffrey Webber also examines the religious and social background, and aspects of performance practice.

The normative edition for all who sing, choir and congregation alike, containing all hymns and service music.

Five hundred years ago a monk nailed his theses to a church gate in Wittenberg. The sound of Luther's mythical hammer, however, was by no means the only aural manifestation of the religious Reformations. This book describes the birth of Lutheran Chorales and Calvinist Psalmody; of how music was practised by Catholic nuns, Lutheran schoolchildren, battling Huguenots, missionaries and martyrs, cardinals at Trent and heretics in hiding, at a time when Palestrina, Lasso and Tallis were composing their masterpieces, and forbidden songs were concealed, smuggled and sung in taverns and princely courts alike. Music expressed faith in the Evangelicals' emerging worships and in the Catholics' ancient rites; through it new beliefs were spread and heresy countered; analysed by humanist theorists, it comforted and consoled miners, housewives and persecuted preachers; it was both the symbol of new, conflicting identities and the only surviving trace of a lost unity of faith. The music of the Reformations, thus, was music reformed, music reforming and the reform of music: this book shows what the Reformations sounded like, and how music became one of the protagonists in the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century.

Ecologies of Resonance in Christian Musicking Rexplores a diverse range of Christian musical activity through the conceptual lens of resonance, a concept rooted in the physical, vibrational, and sonic realm that carries with it an expansive ability to simultaneously describe personal, social, and spiritual realities. In this book, Mark Porter proposes that attention to patterns of back-and-forth interaction that exist in and alongside sonic activity can help to understand the dynamics of religious musicking in new ways and, at the same time, can provide a means for bringing diverse traditions into conversation. The book focuses on different questions arising out of human experience in the moment of worship. What happens if we take the entry point of a human being experiencing certain patterns of (more than) sonic interaction with the world around them as a focus for exploration? What different ecologies of interaction can be encountered? What kinds of patterns can be traced through different Christian worshiping environments? And how do these operate across multiple dimensions of experience? Chapters covering ascetic sounding, noisy congregations, and Internet live-streaming, among others, serve to highlight the diverse ecologies of resonance that surround Christian musicking, suggesting the potential to develop new perspectives on devotional musical activity that focus not primarily on compositions or theological ideals but on changing patterns of interaction across multiple dimensions between individuals, spaces, communities, and God.

The Oxford Choral Classics gathers together over three hundred of the world's choral masterpieces into a unique series of seven volumes that span the whole of Western choral literature. Each volume contains all of the established classics of its genre under a single cover, in authoritative new editions and at a budget price. European Sacred Music is the second volume in the series and a fabulous value for money. From the Allegri Misereri to the Victora O vos omnes, John Rutter and co-editor Clifford Bartlett have researched the best available sources and provided excellent new English singing translations and sensible, practical keyboard reductions.

La musica napoletana conosce uno straordinario successo europeo fin dai primi decenni del Settecento. I contributi raccolti in questo volume presentano le fonti e la fortuna dei Napoletani, e di Pergolesi in particolare, a Dresda, in Boemia e in Slesia. Le fonti pergolesiane vengono esaminate fin nei dettagli di scrittura, tanto in vista della nuova edizione critica quanto nella prospettiva della prassi esecutiva storicamente informata. La corrispondenza diplomatica tra Dresda e Napoli si rivela un canale ricchissimo di scambi di informazioni e di partiture. Lontano dalla corte sassone, per la diffusione della musica napoletana giocano un ruolo essenziale alcune famiglie nobiliari boeme. Le case di ordini religiosi (cistercensi, gesuiti) si scambiano tra Boemia e Slesia moltissime composizioni sacre, variamente adattate secondo i bisogni locali. Le opere napoletane sono popolarizzate dalle compagnie girovaghe di cantanti, che solitamente provengono dall'Italia settentrionale. Nuovi elementi biografici e analisi di opere arricchiscono la nostra conoscenza di conterranei o contemporanei di Pergolesi come Giovanni Alberto Ristori, Nicola Porpora, Domenico de Micco e Leonardo Leo. Neapolitan music enjoyed an extraordinary European success starting with the first decades of the 18th century. The contributions to the present volume illustrate the sources and the reception of the Neapolitans, and foremost of Pergolesi, in Dresden, in Bohemia and in Silesia. Pergolesi sources are described down to details of writing, with an eye both to the new critical edition and to historically informed performing practice. Diplomatical correspondence between Dresden and Naples was widely used as a source of musical information and a means of exchanging scores. Far from the Saxon court, the Neapolitan music is encouraged by some prominent Bohemian aristocrats. Different religious houses (cistercians, jesuits) exchange sacred music, variously adapted to local needs. Neapolitan opera is popularised through wandering troupes, coming mostly from Northern Italy. New biographical data and work analyses enrich our knowledge of contemporaries or fellow countrymen of Pergolesi's such as Giovanni Alberto Ristori, Nicola Porpora, Domenico de Micco and Leonardo Leo.

Urban God Talk: Constructing a Hip Hop Spirituality, edited by Andre Johnson, is a collection of essays that examine the religious and spiritual in hip hop. The contributors argue that the prevailing narrative that hip hop offers nothing in the way of religion and spirituality is false. From its beginning, hip hop has had a profound spirituality and advocates religious views-and while not orthodox or systemic, nevertheless, many in traditional orthodox religions would find the theological and spiritual underpinnings in hip hop comforting, empowering, and liberating. In addition, this volume demonstrates how scholars in different disciplines approach the study of hip hop, religion, and spirituality. Whether it is a close reading of a hip hop text, ethnography, a critical studies approach or even a mixed method approach, this study is a pedagogical tool for students and scholars in various disciplines to use and appropriate for their own research and understanding. Urban God Talk will inspire not only scholars to further their research, but will also encourage publishers to print more in this field. The contributors to this in-depth study show how this subject is an underrepresented area within hip hop studies, and that the field is broad enough for numerous monographs, edited works, and journal publications in the future.

The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture examines the powerful but often overlooked presence of the organ in synagogue music and the musical life of German-speaking Jewish communities. Tina Fruhauf expertly chronicles the history of the organ in Jewish culture from the earliest references in the Talmud through the 19th century, when it had established a firm and lasting presence in Jewish sacred and secular spaces in central Europe. Fruhauf demonstrates how the introduction of the organ into German synagogues was part of the significant changes which took place in Judaism after the Enlightenment, and posits the organ as a symbol of the division of the Jewish community into Orthodox and Reform congregations. Newly composed organ music for Jewish liturgy after this division became part of a cross-cultural music tradition in 19th and 20th century Germany, when a specific style of organ music developed which combined elements of Western and Jewish cultures. Concluding with a discussion of the organ in Jewish communities in Israel and the USA, the book presents in-depth case studies which illustrate how the organ has been utilized in the musical life of specific Jewish communities in the 20th century.
Based on extensive research in the archives of organ builders and Jewish musicians, The Organ and Its Music in German-Jewish Culture offers comprehensive and detailed descriptions of specific organs as well as fascinating portraits of Jewish organists and composers. With an extensive companion website featuring full color illustrations and over 200 organ dispositions, this book will be eagerly read by performers, students, and scholars of the organ, as well as students and scholarsin historical musicology and Jewish music.

The sweetness of music is something that has puzzled Christian theologians for centuries. In this study, Luther's theology of music is approached from the point of view of pleasure. It examines the significance of joy, beauty and pleasure in relationship with music and Luther's theology. The notion of music as the supreme gift of God requires also a discussion about the idea of 'gift'. Music opens up new perspectives into Luther's thinking. Luther has seldom been reckoned among aesthetic theologians. Nevertheless, Luther has a peculiar view on beauty, understanding faith as a kind of aesthetic contemplation.

A diverse collection of seasonal organ music for manuals only, covering the church's year from Advent to Epiphany. The pieces are drawn internationally from across the centuries and include a mixture of established repertoire, attractive new arrangements, and four newly commissioned pieces. The collection is technically accessible and provides approachable repertoire for all church musicians, making it an attractive companion to The Oxford Book of Christmas Organ Music.

This is the only thoroughgoing study of the Monteverdi Vespers, vastly expanding on the author's 1978 set of essays on the subject, long since out of print. The volume studies the Vespers from the standpoint of its musical and liturgical origins and context, contains analytical essays on the music, and examines 17th-century performance practice as it pertains to the Vespers. Appendices include bibliographies and an analytical discography.

for soprano soloist, mixed choir, and orchestra or ensemble (with organ) This is one of the best-loved and most widely performed choral works of the twentieth century. The texts (in Latin and English) are from the Missa pro Defunctis, the Book of Common Prayer, and the Psalms. The seven sections form an arch-like meditation on the themes of life and death: prayers on behalf of all humanity, psalms, personal prayers to Christ, and in the central Sanctus an affirmation of divine glory. The full scores have been edited and engraved by the composer himself and are presented in handsome, cloth-bound editions. Vocal and orchestral material is available on hire.

Singing God's Words is the first in-depth study of the experience and meaning of chanting or "reading" Torah among contemporary American Jews. This experience has been transformed dramatically in recent years by the impact of digital technology, feminism, the empowerment of lay people and a search for self-fulfillment through involvement with community. At a time when worshippers seek deeper spiritual experience, many Jews have found new meaning in the experience of reading Torah, an act that is broadly accessible to Jewish adults even as it requires intensive immersion with the text of the Bible in Hebrew. This book examines why and how growing numbers of American Jews in all denominations see the public chanting of Biblical texts during the synagogue service as one of the most authentic and personal expressions of their religious identity. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with men and women, both professionals and congregants, Jeffrey A. Summit describes how the reading of Torah embodies their understanding of historical religious practice, even as it is shaped by contemporary views of spiritual experience. Through this act, holiness becomes manifest at the intersection of Biblical chant, sacred text, the individual, and the community.

Tonal consciousness, in the sense of a clear intuition about which note or chord a piece of music will finish on, is as much a part of our everyday experience of music as it is of contemporary music theory. This book asks to what extent such tonal consciousness might have operated in the minds of musicians of the Middle Ages, given the different tone world found in the modes of Gregorian chant, in troubadour and trouvere music, in Minnesang and in the early polyphony based upon chant. The author's approach is analytical, focusing on modality and balancing up-to-date concepts and methods of music analysis with those insights into their own compositional needs and processes that the people of the Middle Ages provided themselves through their writings about music. The book examines a range of both music sources and theoretical sources from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. This is a ground-breaking contribution both to the study of medieval music and to music analysis.

The offertory has played a crucial role in recent vigorous debates about the origins of Gregorian chant. Its elaborate solo verses are among the most splendid of chant melodies, yet the verses ceased to be performed in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, making them among the least known and studied members of the repertory. Rebecca Maloy now offers the first comprehensive investigation of the offertory, drawing upon its music, lyrics, and liturgical history to shed new light on its origins and chronology. Maloy addresses issues that are at the very heart of chant scholarship, such as the relationship between the Gregorian and Old Roman melodies, the nature of oral transmission, the presence of non-Roman pieces in the Gregorian repertory, and the influence of theoretical thought on the transmission of the melodies. Although the Old Roman chant versions were not recorded in writing until the eleventh century, it has long been assumed that they closely reflect the eighth-century state of the melodies. Maloy illustrates, however, that rather than preserving a pristine earlier version of the melodies, the prolonged period of oral transmission from the eighth to the eleventh centuries instead enforced a formulaic trend. Demonstrating that certain musical and textual traits of the offertory are distributed in distinct patterns by liturgical season, she outlines new chronological layers within the repertory, and along the way, explores the presence and implications of foreign imports into the Roman and Gregorian repertories. Carefully weighing questions surrounding the origins of elaborate verse melodies, Maloy deftly establishes that these melodies reached their final form at a relatively late date. Available for the first time as a complete critical edition, ninety-four Gregorian and Old Roman offertories are presented here in side-by-side transcriptions. A companion web site provides music examples and essays which elucidate these transcriptions with significant insights into their similarities and differences. Inside the Offertory will be an important and longstanding resource for all students and scholars of early liturgical music, as well as performers of early music and medievalists interested in music.

John Milsom's selection of 17 of Tallis's shorter anthems and motets includes new editions by Alan Brown and Jason Smart as well as many by himself. The collection is designed to give singers and students alike a useful cross-section of Tallis's output, and includes some of his best-known pieces (freshly edited or revised) together with others that are less familiar. All have general-purpose texts. Critical commentaries are included for each piece, and there is an introduction by the editor.

This collection of studies presents unpublished material from the book Isobel Woods Preece was planning at the time of her death. It contains articles published by her and extracts from her dissertation on the Carvor Choirbook. There are also newly written chapters on medieval chant and polyphony by Warwick Edwards and on the music of the Reformed Church by Gordon Munro. Both scholarly and accessible, this work will be of importance to all with an interest in Scotland's Christian musical heritage. ISOBEL WOODS PREECE (1956-1997) was a major pioneer within Scottish music research. A graduate of the University of Glasgow, she subsequently become a Rotary International Graduate Fellow at Princeton University, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Margaret Bent. She held the posts of lecturer, and later senior lecturer, in the Music Department at the University of Newcastle, where she was greatly respected as a scholar, teacher, administrator, conductor and performer.

This study investigates an almost unknown musical culture: that of cloistered nuns in one of the major cities of early modern Europe. These women were the most famous musicians of Milan, and the music composed for them opens up a hitherto unstudied musical repertory, which allows insight into the symbolic world of the city. Even more importantly, the music actually composed by four such nuns, Claudia Scossa, Claudia Rusca, Chiara Margarita Cozzollani, and Rosa Giacinta Badalla - reveals the musical expression of women's devotional life. The two centuries' worth of battles over nuns' singing of polyphony, studies here for the first time on the basis of massive archival documentation, also suggest that the implementation of reform in the major centre of post-Tridentine Catholic renewal was far more varied; incomplete, subject to local political pressure and individual interpretation, and short-lived than any religious historian has ever suggested. Other factors that marked nuns' musical lives and creative output - liturgical traditions of the religious orders, the problems of performance practice attendant upon all-female singing ensembles - are here addressed for the first time in the musicological literature.

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt offers an illuminating study of Narsinha Mehta, one of the most renowned saint-poets of medieval India and the most celebrated bhakti (devotion) poet from Gujarat, whose songs and sacred biography formed a vital source of moral inspiration for Gandhi. Exploring manuscripts, medieval texts, Gandhi's more obscure writings, and performances in multiple religious and non-religious contexts, including modern popular media, Shukla-Bhatt shows that the songs and sacred narratives associated with the saint-poet have been sculpted by performers and audiences into a popular source of moral inspiration.
Drawing on the Indian concept of bhakti-rasa (devotion as nectar), Narasinha Mehta of Gujarat reveals that the sustained popularity of the songs and narratives over five centuries, often across religious boundaries and now beyond devotional contexts in modern media, is the result of their combination of inclusive religious messages and aesthetic appeal in performance. Taking as an example Gandhi's perception of the songs and stories as vital cultural resources for social reconstruction, the book suggests that when religion acquires the form of popular culture, it becomes a widely accessible platform for communication among diverse groups. Shukla-Bhatt expands upon the scholarship on the embodied and public dimension of bhakti through detailed analysis of multiple public venues of performance and commentary, including YouTube videos.
This study provides a vivid picture of the Narasinha tradition, and will be a crucial resource for anyone seeking to understand the power of religious performative traditions in popular media.

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.