Gregorian chant, the Catholic Church's very own music, is proper to the Roman liturgy, but during the course of its long history it has experienced periods of ascendancy and decline. A century ago, Pope Pius X called for a restoration of the sacred melodies, and the result was the Vatican Edition. This book presents for the first time in English the fully documented history of the Gregorian chant restoration. The original French edition was published by the Abbey of Solesmes in 1969.This book describes in careful, vivid detail the strenuous efforts of personalities like Dom Joseph Pothier, Dom Andre Mocquereau, Fr. Angelo de Santi, and Peter Wagner to carry out the wishes of the pope. The attentive reader will not fail to note that many of the questions so fervidly debated long ago are still current and topical today. Robert A. Skeris' introduction to this edition illuminates the current discussion with documentation, including the Preface to the Vatican Gradual and the ""Last Will and Testament"" written by Dom Eugene Cardine.

Edited by early music experts Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott, this anthology of Christmas carols is the most comprehensive collection ever made, spanning seven centuries of caroling in Britain, continental Europe, and North America. Containing music and text of 201 carols, many in more than one setting, the book is organized in two sections: composed carols, ranging from medieval Gregorian chants to modern compositions, and folk carols, including not only traditional Anglo-American songs but Irish, Welsh, German, Czech, Polish, French, Basque, Catalan, Sicilian, and West Indian songs as well. Each carol is set in four-part harmony, with lyrics in both the original language and English. Accompanying each song are detailed scholarly notes on the history of the carol and on performance of the setting presented. The introduction to the volume offers a general history of carols and caroling, and appendices provide scholarly essays on such topics as fifteenth-century pronunciation, English country and United States primitive traditions, and the revival of the English folk carol. The Oxford Book of Carols, published in 1928, is still one of Oxford's best-loved books among scholars, church choristers, and the vast number of people who enjoy singing carols. This volume is not intended to replace this classic but to supplement it. Reflecting significant developments in musicology over the past sixty years, it embodies a radical reappraisal of the repertory and a fresh approach to it. The wealth of information it contains will make it essential for musicologists and other scholars, while the beauty of the carols themselves will enchant general readers and amateur songsters alike.

Contemporary worship music shapes the way evangelical Christians understand worship itself. Author Monique M. Ingalls argues that participatory worship music performances have brought into being new religious social constellations, or "modes of congregating". Through exploration of five of these modes-concert, conference, church, public, and networked congregations-Singing the Congregation reinvigorates the analytic categories of "congregation" and "congregational music." Drawing from theoretical models in ethnomusicology and congregational studies, Singing the Congregation reconceives the congregation as a fluid, contingent social constellation that is actively performed into being through communal practice-in this case, the musically-structured participatory activity known as "worship." "Congregational music-making" is thereby recast as a practice capable of weaving together a religious community both inside and outside local institutional churches. Congregational music-making is not only a means of expressing local concerns and constituting the local religious community; it is also a powerful way to identify with far-flung individuals, institutions, and networks that comprise this global religious community. The interactions among the congregations reveal widespread conflicts over religious authority, carrying far-ranging implications for how evangelicals position themselves relative to other groups in North America and beyond.

The Conductus repertory is the body of monophonic and polyphonic non-liturgical Latin song that dominated European culture from the middle of the twelfth century to the beginning of the fourteenth. In this book, Mark Everist demonstrates how the poetry and music interact, explores how musical structures are created, and discusses the geographical and temporal reach of the genre, including its significance for performance today. The volume studies what medieval society thought of the Conductus, its function in medieval society - whether paraliturgical or in other contexts - and how it fitted into patristic and secular Latin cultures. The Conductus emerges as a genre of great poetic and musical sophistication that brought the skills of poets and musicians into alignment. This book provides an all-encompassing view of an important but unexplored repertory of medieval music, engaging with both poetry and music even-handedly to present new and up-to-date perspectives on the genre.

BBC Songs of Praise is a compilation of the greatest traditional hymns, the best hymns from today's writers, and the finest examples of contemporary worship songs. It offers to churches and schools the core music required for worship in a wide range of situations. The breadth and diversity of the material ensures that BBC Songs of Praise can be the key resource for any worshipping community.

This fascinating book brings more than one hundred previously unpublished Shaker songs to the attention of scholars, performers, and aficionados of folk music. A Shaker Musical Legacy introduces Shaker songs and dances that Brother Ricardo Belden, the last male member of the Hancock Shakers, gave in original manuscript form to Jerry and Sybil Count, the first directors of the Shaker Village Camp. The Opdahls have selected from and transcribed this music and included dance directions to honor Brother Ricardo's hope that doing so would keep alive a part of the Shaker heritage.
The songs are transcribed as modern musical scores for use by contemporary musicians and singers. Many examples are also shown in their original Shaker musical notation. Step-by-step instructions show how to perform the dances as the Shakers themselves danced them. Explanatory notes introduce each of nine musical sections.

Handel's Israelite oratorios are today little known among non-specialists, but in their own day they were unique, pioneering and extremely popular. Dating from the period 1732-1752, they combine the musical conventions of Italian opera with dramatic plots in English that are adaptations of Old Testament narratives. They constitute a form of biblical interpretation, but to date, there has been no thoroughgoing study of the theological ideas or the attitudes towards the biblical text that might be conveyed in the oratorios' libretti. This book aims to fill that gap from an interdisciplinary perspective. Combining the insights of present-day biblical studies with those of Handelian studies, Deborah W. Rooke examines the libretti of ten oratorios - Esther, Deborah, Athalia, Saul, Samson, Joseph and his Brethren, Judas Macchabaeus, Solomon, Susanna and Jephtha - and evaluates the relationship between each libretto and the biblical story on which it is based. Rooke comments on each biblical text from a modern scholarly perspective, and then compares the modern interpretation with the version of the biblical narrative that appears in the relevant libretto. Where the libretto is based on a prior dramatic or literary adaptation of the biblical narrative, she also discusses the prior adaptation and how it relates to both the biblical text and the corresponding oratorio libretto. In this way the distinctive nuances of the oratorio libretti are highlighted, and each libretto is then analysed and interpreted in the light of eighteenth-century religion, scholarship, culture and politics. The result is a fascinating exploration not only of the oratorio libretti but also of how culture and context determines the nature of biblical interpretation.

This album contains thirty useful, practical, popular and immediately appealing pieces of a clearly defined character.

Popular music in the twenty-first century is increasingly divided into niche markets. How do fans, musicians, and music industry executives define their markets' boundaries? What happens when musicians cross those boundaries? What can Christian music teach us about commercial popular music? In God Rock, Inc., Andrew Mall considers the aesthetic, commercial, ethical, and social boundaries of Christian popular music, from the late 1960s, when it emerged, through the 2010s. Drawing on ethnographic research, historical archives, interviews with music industry executives, and critical analyses of recordings, concerts, and music festival performances, Mall explores the tensions that have shaped this evolving market and frames broader questions about commerce, ethics, resistance, and crossover in music that defines itself as outside the mainstream.

Messa da Requiem is the fourth work to be published in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi. Following the strict requirements of the series, this edition is based on Verdi's autograph and other authentic sources, and has been reviewed by a distinguished editorial board--Philip Gossett (general editor), Julian Budden, Martin Chusid, Francesco Degrada, Ursula Gunther, Giorgio Pestelli, and Pierluigi Petrobelli. It is available as a two-volume set: a full orchestral score and a critical commentary. The appendixes include two pieces from the compositional history of the Requiem: an early version of the Libera me, composed in 1869 as part of a collaborative work planned as a memorial to Rossini; and the Liber scriptus, which in the original score of the Manzoni memorial Requiem was composed as a fugue in G minor. The score, which has been beautifully bound and autographed, is printed on high-grade paper in an oversized format. The introduction to the score discusses the work's genesis, instrumentation, and problems of notation. The critical commentary, printed in a smaller format, discusses the editorial decisions and traces the complex compositional history of the Requiem.

Peter Hurford is one of the most acclaimed and influential organists of our time. In this book he records the ideas which underpin his performance and teaching. As well as discussing interpretation and the place of the organ in classical music for the general reader, there is advice for the student on technical problems, and a useful description of the workings of the instrument itself.

This book is an edition, with commentary, of Handel's exercises for continuo playing, which he wrote for the daughters of George II. The exercises, which until now have not been readily available, are supplemented by clear and concise commentary. Remaining faithful to his source, Ledbetter, who lectures in keyboard studies, has prepared an edition that will prove invaluable to students and performers of the music of Handel and his contemporaries.

The musical achievements of the so-called `Franco-Flemish School' have attracted many writers, yet Bruges itself has still to be put back on the map of European music history. This book describes how the people of Bruges shaped their acoustic environment and gave musical expression to their spiritual needs. It is based on a scrutiny of musical sources, stylistic trends in music, composers' achievements, and the function of musical genres; all these are seen against a reconstruction, from archival sources, of the socio-economic context of the art of music - an art which, in all its various manifestations, `high' and `low', sacred and secular, courtly and civic, polyphonic and monophonic, mirrors later medieval urban culture as a whole.

Rod Ismay has a passion (some would say obsession) for the Tour de France. If you think you know someone who is obsessed, think again, but fortunately Rod's issues found their natural home when his native Yorkshire became the host for the 2014 Grand Depart. Rod also has another passion - as well as cycling he is quite keen on bell-ringing, so why not combine the two? Why not get all the bells ringing along the Tour route, why not organise countless events, countless meetings, why not drag in churches far and wide, why not involve your employer, your friends, your family, why not photo-bomb five-time Tour winner Bernard Hinault? Rod threw himself, his King of the Mountains jersey and his endless enthusiasm head first into making this Grand Depart about as good and memorable as it could be. Rod has written with passion about Yorkshire, its people, those two stages of the world's greatest cycle race and the churches, ringing their bells all along the race route. If you like cycling then you will love this book. If you know Yorkshire then you will read this book with pride. If you are thinking of marrying a Tour de France obsessive then you need to read this book first.

Includes hymnody from medieval plain chant to the early twentieth-century classics. This work includes hymns that are grouped according to theme and contains material suitable for any festival or occasion in the life of a church.