This volume examines the stories of Genesis in music, showing how musical settings can illuminate many of the Bible's most noted tales. Helen Leneman studies oratorios, operas and songs (as well as their librettos) to shed light on how Genesis has been understood and experienced over time. Examining an extensive range of musical settings of stories from the book of Genesis, Leneman offers an overview of chiefly 19th and 20th century musical engagements with this biblical text. Leneman first discusses how Eve's inner thoughts are explored by noted French composers Jules Massenet and Gabriel Faure. The text then enters the deep waters of Noah's flood in examination of several compositions, including two unusual settings by Igor Stravinsky and Benjamin Britten, as well as more conventional settings by Saint-Saens and Donizetti. Two major 19th century oratorio settings of Abraham's story by lesserknown German composers Martin Blumner and Karl Mangold provide fascinating illuminations of the Abraham narratives, whereas parts of Rebecca's story are found in works by Cesar Franck, Ferdinand Hiller, and most unusually, by a French woman composer, Celanie Carissan. Finally, Leneman shows how Joseph's story was set in numerous oratorios (including by Handel) but that one of the most important works based on his story is an opera by 18th century French composer Etienne Mehul. In addition to discussing these larger 19th century works, Leneman also examines several interesting atonal 20th century works based on the stories of Eve and the Flood, shedding new light on the history of the interpretation of the Book of Genesis.

Top music writer Steve Turner traces the biography of 'Amazing Grace', the world's most recorded song. Versions of this hymn have been performed by artists as diverse as Elvis Presley, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Johnny Cash, Rod Stewart and Destiny's Child. The book begins with the dramatic story of John Newton and his participation in the African slave trade through to his writing of 'Amazing Grace' and his campaigning against slavery. The second part of the book - picking up the thread in the years following Newton's death - tells the story of the song itself as it has spread and developed over the past 280 years and its recordings by artists from a wide variety of musical backgrounds. This includes the aftermath of September 11th when the hymn became an international anthem of hope and solidarity.

Christian metal has always defined itself in contrast to its non-Christian, secular counterpart, yet it stands out from nearly all other forms of contemporary Christian music through its unreserved use of metal's main musical, visual, and aesthetic traits. Christian metal is a rare example of a direct combination between evangelical Christianity and an aggressive and highly controversial form of popular music and its culture."Christian Metal: History, Ideology, Scene" is the first full exploration of the phenomenon of Christian metal music, its history, main characteristics, development, diversification, and key ideological traits from its formative years in the early 1980s to the present day. Marcus Moberg situates it in a wider international evangelical cultural environment, accounts for its diffusion on a transnational scale, and explores what religious meanings and functions Christian metal holds for its own musicians and followers. Engaging with wider debates on religion, media and popular culture, "Christian Metal: History, Ideology and Scene" is a much-needed resource in the study of religion and popular music.

Music does not make itself. It is made by people: professionals and amateurs, singers and instrumentalists, composers and publishers, performers and audiences, entrepreneurs and consumers. In turn, making music shapes those who make it-spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally, socially, politically, economically-for good or ill, harming and healing. This volume considers the social practice of music from a Christian point of view. Using a variety of methodological perspectives, the essays explore the ethical and doctrinal implications of music-making. The reflections are grouped according to the traditional threefold ministry of Christ: prophet, priest, and shepherd: the prophetic role of music, as a means of articulating protest against injustice, offering consolation, and embodying a harmonious order; the pastoral role of music: creating and sustaining community, building peace, fostering harmony with the whole of creation; and the priestly role of music: in service of reconciliation and restoration, for individuals and communities, offering prayers of praise and intercession to God. Using music in priestly, prophetic, and pastoral ways, Christians pray for and rehearse the coming of God's kingdom-whether in formal worship, social protest, concert performance, interfaith sharing, or peacebuilding. Whereas temperance was of prime importance in relation to the ethics of music from antiquity to the early modern period, justice has become central to contemporary debates. This book seeks to contribute to those debates by means of Christian theological reflection on a wide range of musics: including monastic chant, death metal, protest songs, psalms and worship music, punk rock, musical drama, interfaith choral singing, Sting, and Daft Punk.

For nearly eight centuries - from the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711 to the final expulsion of the Jews in 1492 - Muslims, Jews and Christians shared a common Andalusian culture under alternating Muslim and Christian rule. Following their expulsion, the Spanish and Arabic- speaking Jews joined pre-existing diasporic communities and established new ones across the Mediterranean and beyond. In the twentieth century, radical social and political upheavals in the former Ottoman and European-occupied territories led to the mass exodus of Jews from Turkey and the Arab Mediterranean, with the majority settling in Israel. Following a trajectory from medieval Al-Andalus to present-day Israel via North Africa, Italy, Turkey and Syria, pausing for perspectives from Enlightenment Europe, Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas tells of diverse song and instrumental traditions born of the multiple musical encounters between Jews and their Muslim and Christian neighbors in different Mediterranean diasporas, and the revival and renewal of those traditions in present-day Israel. In this collection of essays from Philip V. Bohlman, Daniel Jutte, Tony Langlois, Piergabriele Mancuso, John O'Connell, Vanessa Paloma, Carmel Raz, Dwight Reynolds, Edwin Seroussi, and Jonathan Shannon, with opening and closing contributions by Ruth F. Davis and Stephen Blum, distinguished ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, linguists and performers explore from multidisciplinary perspectives the complex and diverse processes and conditions of intercultural and intracultural musical encounters. The authors consider how musical traditions acquired new functions and meanings in different social, political and diasporic contexts; explore the historical role of Jewish musicians as cultural intermediaries between the different faith communities; and examine how music is implicated in projects of remembering and forgetting as societies come to terms with mass exodus by reconstructing their narratives of the past. The essays in Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas extend beyond the music of medieval Iberia and its Mediterranean Jewish diasporas to wider aspects of Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim relations. The authors offer new perspectives on theories of musical interaction, hybridization, and the cultural meaning of musical expression in diasporic and minority communities. The essays address how music is implicated in constructions of ethnicity and nationhood and of myth and history, while also examining the resurgence of Al-Andalus as a symbol in musical projects that claim to promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. The diverse scholarship in Musical Exodus makes a vital contribution to scholars of music and European and Jewish history.

Sacred music is a universal phenomenon of humanity. Where there is faith, there is music to express it. Every major religious tradition and most minor ones have music and have it in abundance and variety. There is music to accompany ritual and music purely for devotion, music for large congregations and music for trained soloists, music that sets holy words and music without words at all. In some traditions-Islamic and many Native American, to name just two--the relation between music and religious ritual is so intimate that it is inaccurate to speak of the music accompanying the ritual. Rather, to perform the ritual is to sing, and to sing the ritual is to perform it. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Sacred Music contains a chronology, an introduction, appendixes, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 800 cross-referenced entries on major types of music, composers, key religious figures, specialized positions, genres of composition, technical terms, instruments, fundamental documents and sources, significant places, and important musical compositions. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about sacred music.

There have been numerous publications in the last decades on the Bible in literature, film, and art. But until now, no reference work has yet appeared on the Bible as it appears in Western music. In The Bible in Music: A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More, scholars Siobhan Dowling Long and John F. A. Sawyer correct this gap in Biblical reference literature, providing for the first time a convenient guide to musical interpretations of the Bible. Alongside examples of classical music from the Middle Ages through modern times, Dowling Long and Sawyer also bring attention to the Bible's impact on popular culture with numerous entries on hymns, spirituals, musicals, film music, and contemporary popular music. Each entry contains essential information about the original context of the work (date, composer, etc.) and, where relevant, its afterlife in literature, film, politics, and liturgy. It includes an index of biblical references and an index of biblical names, as well as a detailed timeline that brings to the fore key events, works, and publications, placing them in their historical context. There is also a bibliography, a glossary of technical terms, and an index of artists, authors, and composers. The Bible in Music will fascinate anyone familiar with the Bible, but it is also designed to encourage choirs, musicians, musicologists, lecturers, teachers, and students of music and religious education to discover and perform some less well-known pieces, as well as helping them to listen to familiar music with a fresh awareness of what it is about.

Among the writers of the Syriac Christian tradition, none is as renowned as St. Ephrem of Nisibis (ca. 307-373), known to much of the later Christian world simply as "the Syrian." The great majority of Ephrem's works are poetry, with the madrase ("teaching songs") especially prominent. This volume presents English translations of four complete madrase cycles of Ephrem: On the Fast, On the Unleavened Bread, On the Crucifixion, and On the Resurrection. These collections include some of the most liturgically oriented songs in Ephrem's corpus, and, as such, provide a window into the celebration of Lent and Easter in the Syriac-speaking churches of northern Mesopotamia in the fourth century. Even more significantly, they represent some of the oldest surviving poetry composed for these liturgical seasons in the entire Christian tradition. Not only are the liturgical occasions of the springtime months a source of colorful imagery in these texts, but Ephrem also employs traditional motifs of warm weather, spring rainstorms, and revived vegetation, which likely reflect Hellenistic literary influences. Like all of Ephrem's poetry, these songs express early Christian theology in language that is symbolic, terse, and vibrant. They are rich with biblical allusions and references, especially to the Exodus and Passion narratives. They also reveal a contested religious environment in which Ephrem strove to promote the Christian Pascha and Christian interpretations of Scripture over and against those of Jewish communities in the region, thus maintaining firm boundaries around the identity and practices of the churches.

A collection of 230 hymns, with music, drawn from a wide range of liberal religious sources, all written in the 20th or 21st century; many were composed by Unitarian and Unitarian Universalist writers, often drawing their imagery from other faith traditions. The collection includes songs for blessing partnerships and relationships. The compilers have drawn on a wide range of musical styles, using keys in keeping with current group vocal range.

The purpose of this book is to bring together in one convenient volume some of the best devotional verse the English language affords, and thus to make available to present day Christians a rich spiritual heritage which the greater number of them for various reasons do not now enjoy. I have not hesitated to apply the term "mystical" to the material I have collected here, though I readily admit that fewer than half a dozen of the men and women who would be called true mystics in the strict classical sense will be found here. Such names as Eckhart, Ruysbroeck, John of the Cross, Teresa, Rolle, Tauler, Hilton, Francis of Assisi, for instance, are not represented in this volume at all. On the other hand the frequent appearance of such a man as Watts might cause the reader to lift a questioning eyebrow and ask, "Is Watts also among the mystics?" Well, the answer must be, Of course he is, and so are John Newton and James Montgomery and Reginald Heber and Charles Wesley, as well as many others who might have balked at being called mystics but whose writings, nevertheless, reveal unmistakable traces of purest mysticism and are the better for it. And for that matter the same thing may be said of the inspired writings of such men as Moses and David and Isaiah and Daniel and Paul and John, the works of the latter showing more than traces of the mystical spirit, being indeed charged full with it. Wilder Publications is a green publisher. All of our books are printed to order. This reduces waste and helps us keep prices low while greatly reducing our impact on the environment.

In the late 1920s, Reverend A. W. Nix (1880-1949), an African American Baptist minister born in Texas, made fifty-four commercial recordings of his sermons on phonographs in Chicago. On these recordings, Nix presented vocal traditions and styles long associated with the southern, rural Black church as he preached about self-help, racial uplift, thrift, and Christian values. As southerners like Nix fled into cities in the North to escape the rampant racism in the South, they contested whether or not African American vocal styles of singing and preaching that had emerged during the slavery era were appropriate for uplifting the race. Specific vocal characteristics, like those on Nix's recordings, were linked to the image of the "Old Negro" by many African American leaders who favored adopting Europeanized vocal characteristics and musical repertoires into African American churches in order to uplift the modern "New Negro" citizen. Through interviews with family members, musical analyses of the sounds on Nix's recordings, and examination of historical documents and relevant scholarship, Terri Brinegar argues that the development of the phonograph in the 1920s afforded preachers like Nix the opportunity to present traditional Black vocal styles of the southern Black church as modern Black voices. These vocal styles also influenced musical styles. The "moaning voice" used by Nix and other ministers was a direct connection to the "blues moan" employed by many blues singers including Blind Willie, Blind Lemon, and Ma Rainey. Both Reverend A. W. Nix and his brother, W. M. Nix, were an influence on the "Father of Gospel Music," Thomas A. Dorsey. The success of Nix's recorded sermons demonstrates the enduring values African Americans placed on traditional vocal practices.