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Books > Music > Other types of music > Sacred & religious music
Book of Common Prayer, French Language edition. (736 pp)
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.
The book examines from various viewpoints Britten's War Requiem, written in 1962 to celebrate the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and uniting the famous anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass. Britten's and Owen's pacifist beliefs are compared, and the chronology of the compositional process unraveled from documentary and manuscript sources. The musical language is analyzed in detail, and the fluctuating critical responses to the score are assessed.
Book & DVD. This book presents for the first time the complete
chant repertory of an orally transmitted repertory of church hymns
for the celebration of the Byzantine Rite in Sicily. This body of
chant has been cultivated by the Albanian-speaking minorities since
their predecessors from Albania and northern Greece arrived in
Sicily as refugees in the late fifteenth century, as a result of
the Turkish invasion of the Balkan region. Bartolomeo di Salvo
(19161986), a Basilean monk from the monastery of Grottaferrata,
prepared the transcriptions for the series Monumenta Musicae
Byzantinae in the 1950s, but they were never published. Girolamo
Garofalo, ethnomusicologist from Palermo, and Christian Troelsgard,
secretary of the Monumenta Musicae Byzantinae, Copenhagen, have
discovered the transcriptions and related documents in archives in
Sicily, Grottaferrata, Rome and Copenhagen. As a result of their
findings, this unique chant collection is now being made available
for the first time. The languages used in the book are English /
Italian (front matter and indices) and Greek (the chant texts).
Dr. Howard Thurman explores how protest and resistance are
expressed in spirituals as well as how these songs have been a
"spiritual watering hole" in his life..
This is a fascinating and thoroughly researched exploration of the
best-selling gospel album of all time. For two days in January
1972, Aretha Franklin sang at the New Temple Missionary Baptist
Church in Los Angeles while tape recorders and film cameras rolled.
Everyone there knew the event had the potential to be historic:
five years after ascending to soul royalty and commercial success,
Franklin was publicly returning to her religious roots. Her
influential minister father stood by her on the pulpit. Her mentor,
Clara Ward, sat in the pews. Franklin responded to the occasion
with the performance of her life and the resulting double album
became a multi-million seller - even without any trademark hit
singles. But that was just one part of the story. Franklin's warm
inimitable voice, virtuoso jazz-soul instrumental group and Rev.
James Cleveland's inventive choral arrangements transformed the
course of gospel. Through new interviews, musical and theological
analyses as well as archival discoveries, this book sets the scene,
traces the recording's traditional origins and pop infusions and
describes the album's enduring impact. "33 1/3" is a series of
short books about a wide variety of albums, by artists ranging from
James Brown to the Beastie Boys. Launched in September 2003, the
series now contains over 60 titles and is acclaimed and loved by
fans, musicians and scholars alike. "It was only a matter of time
before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for
whom "Exile on Main Street" or "Electric Ladyland" are as
significant and worthy of study as "The Catcher in the Rye" or
"Middlemarch"...The series, which now comprises 29 titles with more
in the works, is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute
rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration." ("The
New York Times Book Review", 2006).
The liturgical chant sung in the churches of Southern Italy between
the ninth and thirteenth centuries reflects the multiculturalism of
a territory in which Romans, Franks, Lombards, Byzantines, Normans,
Jews, and Muslims were all present with various titles and
political roles. Chants, Hypertext, and Prosulas examines a
specific genre, the prosulas that were composed to embellish and
expand pre-existing liturgical chants. Widespread in medieval
Europe, prosulas were highly cultivated in southern Italy,
especially by the nuns, monks, and clerics of the city of
Benevento. These texts shed light on the creativity of local
cantors to provide new meanings to the liturgy in accordance with
contemporary waves of religious spirituality, and to experiment
with a novel musical style in which a syllabic setting is paired
with the free-flowing melody of the parent chant. In their
representing an epistemological 'beyond', and in their
interconnectedness with the parent chant, these prosulas can be
likened to modern hypertexts. In this book, author Luisa Nardini
presents the first comprehensive study to integrate textual and
musical analyses of liturgical prosulas as they were recorded in
Beneventan manuscripts. Discussing general features of prosulas in
southern Italy and their relation to contemporary liturgical genres
(e.g., tropes, sequences, hymns), Nardini firmly situates
Beneventan prosulas within the broader context of European musical
history. An invaluable reference for the field, Chants, Hypertext,
and Prosulas provides a new understanding of the phonetic and
morphological transformations of the Latin language in medieval
Italy, and clarifies the use of perennially puzzling features of
Beneventan notation.
Discussion of original performance conventions of Bach's sacred
works - cantatas, Passions, masses - by practising musician and
director of Taverner choir. What type of choir did Bach have in
mind as he created his cantatas, Passions and Masses? How many
singers were at his disposal in Leipzig, and in what ways did he
deploy them in his own music? Seeking to understand the verymedium
of Bach's incomparable choral output, Andrew Parrott investigates a
wide range of sources: Bach's own writings, and the scores and
parts he used in performance, but also a variety of theoretical,
pictorial and archival documents, together with the musical
testimony of the composer's forerunners and contemporaries. Many of
the findings shed a surprising, even disturbing, light on
conventions we have long taken for granted. A whole world away
from, say, the typical oratorio choir of Handel's London with which
we are reasonably familiar, the essential Bach choir was in fact an
expert vocal quartet (or quintet), whose members were also
responsible for all solos and duets. (In a mere handful of Bach's
works, this solo team was selectively supported by a second rank of
singers - also one per part - whose contribution was all but
optional). Parrott shows that this use of aone-per-part choir was
mainstream practice in the Lutheran Germany of Bach's time: Bach
chose to use single voices not because a larger group was
unavailable, but because they were the natural vehicle of elaborate
concerted music. As one of several valuable appendices, this book
includes the text of Joshua Rifkin's explosive 1981 lecture, never
before published, which first set out this line of thinking and
launched a controversy that is long overduefor resolution. ANDREW
PARROTT has made a close study of historical performing practices
in the music of six centuries, and for over twenty-five years he
has been putting research into practice with his own professional
ensembles, the Taverner Consort, Taverner Players and Taverner
Choir.
This is the standard Book of Common Prayer (BCP) and Administration
of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church
together with The Psalter or Psalms of David according to use in
the Episcopal Church in the United States as authorized in 1979.
Included is the normative edition of The Hymnal 1982 for all who
sing -choir and congregation alike -containing all hymns and
service music. Genuine leather, gold edges, ribbon markers, gift
box. IMPRINTABLE BUT NOT BY PUBLISHER"
This sensitive study is a historical, cultural, and musical
exploration of Christian religious music among the Logooli of
Western Kenya. It describes how new musical styles developed
through contact with popular radio and other media from abroad and
became markers of the Logooli identity and culture. Jean Ngoya
Kidula narrates this history of a community through music and
religious expression in local, national, and global settings. The
book is generously enhanced by audiovisual material on the
Ethnomusicology Multimedia website.
This popular collection of 280 musical pieces from both the
African American and Gospel traditions has been compiled under the
supervision of the Office of Black Ministries of the Episcopal
Church. It includes service music and several psalm settings in
addition to the Negro spirituals, Gospel songs, and hymns."
A "contemplative" ethnographic study of a Benedictine monastery in
Vermont known for its folk-inspired music. Far from being a
long-silent echo of medieval religion, modern monastery music is
instead a resounding, living illustration of the role of music in
religious life. Benedictine monks gather for communal prayer
upwards of five timesper day, every day. Their prayers, called the
Divine Office, are almost entirely sung. Benedictines are famous
for Gregorian Chant, but the original folk-inspired music of the
monks of Weston Priory in Vermont is amongthe most familiar in
post-Vatican II American Catholicism. Using the ethnomusicological
methods of fieldwork and taking inspiration from the monks' own way
of encountering the world, this book offers a contemplative
engagement with music, prayer, and everyday life. The rich
narrative evokes the rhythms of learning among Benedictines to show
how monastic ways of being, knowing, and musicking resonate with
humanistic inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge andunderstanding.
Maria S. Guarino received her PhD in critical and comparative
studies in music from the University of Virginia. She specializes
in ethnography, religious life, Benedictine monasticism, and
contemplativepractices. Support for this publication was provided
by the Howard Hanson Institute for American Music of the Eastman
School of Music at the University of Rochester.
In the 1960s, Jewish music in America began to evolve. Traditional
liturgical tunes developed into a blend of secular and sacred sound
that became known in the 1980s as "American Nusach." Chief among
these developments was the growth of feminist Jewish songwriting.
In this lively study, Sarah M. Ross brings together scholarship on
Jewish liturgy, U.S. history, and musical ethnology to describe the
multiple roots and development of feminist Jewish music in the last
quarter of the twentieth century. Focusing on the work of prolific
songwriters such as Debbie Friedman, Rabbi Geela Rayzel Raphael,
Rabbi Hanna Tiferet Siegel, and Linda Hirschhorn, this volume
illuminates the biographies and oeuvres of innovators in the field,
and shows how this new musical form arose from the rich contexts of
feminism, identity politics, folk music, and Judaism. In addition
to providing deep content analysis of individual songs, Ross
examines the feminist Jewish music scene across the United States,
the reception of this music, challenges to disseminating the music
beyond informal settings, and the state of Jewish music publishing.
Rounding out the picture of the transformation of Jewish music, the
volume contains appendixes of songs and songwriters a selection of
musical transcriptions of feminist Jewish songs, and a
comprehensive discography. This book will interest scholars and
students in the fields of American Jewish history, women's studies,
feminism, ethnomusicology, and contemporary popular and folk music.
A vivid picture of the public and private life of a professional
musician in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century London.
This well-documented life of Samuel Wesley gives a vivid picture of
the life of a professional musician in late eighteenth and early
nineteenth-century London. Wesley was born in 1766, the son of the
Methodist hymn-writer CharlesWesley and nephew of the preacher John
Wesley. He was the finest composer and organist of his generation,
but his unconventional behaviour makes him of more than ordinary
interest. He lived through a crucial stage of English musicfrom the
immediately post-Handel generation to the early Romantic period,
and his large output includes piano and organ music, orchestral
music, church music, glees, and songs. He also taught and lectured
on music, and was involved in journalism, publishing, and promoting
the music of J. S. Bach. This book draws on letters, family papers,
and other contemporary documents to offer a full study of Wesley,
his music, and his life and times. PHILIP OLLESON is Professor of
Historical Musicology at the University of Nottingham. He has
edited The Letters of Samuel Wesley: Professional and Social
Correspondence, 1797-1837, is the joint author (with Michael
Kassler) of Samuel Wesley (1766-1837): A Source Book, and has
written extensively about other aspects of music in England in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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.
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