for SATB choir (with soprano solo) and strings or keyboard This beautiful and moving piece in seven sections combines text from the Ave maris stella antiphon and Psalms 26 and 106. Starting and finishing in a mood of peace and certainty, the work is structured around a turbulent middle section anticipating the gathering storm. Orchestral material and vocal scores are available on hire/rental.

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.

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.

Experience a gentle yet profound stirring in the heart as Robert J. Boyd takes you on a divine musical journey into the realm of the Goddess within. Ideal as an accompaniment to meditation or healing treatments, this beautiful composition will quieten the mind, nurture the soul and reconnect you with the divinity at the core of your being. (57 mins)

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, most Americans probably encountered European classical music primarily through hymn tunes. Hymnody was the most popular and commercially successful genre of the antebellum period in the United States, and the unquenchable thirst for new tunes to sing led to a phenomenon largely forgotten today: in their search for fresh material, editors lifted hundreds of tunes from the works of major classical composers to use as settings of psalms and hymns. The few that remain popular today - millions have sung "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" to Beethoven and "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing" to Mendelssohn - are vestiges of one of the most distinctive trends in antebellum music-making. Gems of Exquisite Beauty is the first in-depth study of the historical rise and fall of this adaptation practice, its artistic achievements, and its place in nineteenth-century American musical life. It traces the contributions of pioneering figures like Arthur Clifton and the impact of bestsellers like the Handel and Haydn Society Collection, which helped turn Lowell Mason into America's most influential musician. By telling the tales of these hymns and those who brought them into the world, author Peter Mercer-Taylor reveals a central part of the history of how the American public first came to meet and creatively engage with Europe's rich musical practices.

An innovative study of the ways in which theological themes related to earthly and heavenly 'treasures' and Bach's own apparent attentiveness to the spiritual values related to money intertwined in his sacred music. In Johann Sebastian Bach's Lutheran church setting, various biblical ideas were communicated through sermons and songs to encourage parishioners to emulate Christian doctrine in their own lives. Such narratives are based on an understanding that one's lifetime on earth is a temporal passageway to eternity after death, where souls are sent either to heaven or hell based on one's belief or unbelief. Throughout J. S. Bach's Material and Spiritual Treasures, Bach scholar Noelle M. Heber explores theological themes related to earthly and heavenly 'treasures' in Bach's sacred music through an examination of selected texts from Bach's personal theological library. The book's storyline is organised around biblical concepts that are accented in Lutheran thought and in Bach's church compositions, such as the poverty and treasure of Christ and parables that contrast material and spiritual riches. While focused primarily on the greater theological framework, Heber presents an updated survey of Bach's own financial situation and considers his apparent attentiveness to spiritual values related to money. This multifaceted study investigates intertwining biblical ideologies and practical everyday matters in a way that features both Bach's religious context and his humanity. This book will appeal to musicologists, theologians, musicians, students, and Bach enthusiasts.

Musical experience intersects with religious experience, posing challenging questions about the ways in which Americans, historical communities and new immigrants, and racial and ethnic groups, construct their sense of self. This book studies the ways in which music shapes the distinctive presence of religion in the United States. The twenty contributors address the fullness of music's presence in American religion and religious history.

Since the appearance of The Bay Psalm Book in 1640, music has served as a defining factor for American religious experience and has been of fundamental importance in the development of American identity and psyche. The essays in this long-awaited volume explore the diverse ways in which music shapes the distinctive presence of religion in the United States and address the fullness of music's presence in American religious history.
Timely, challenging, and stimulating, this collection will appeal to students and scholars of American history, American studies, religious studies, theology, musicology, and ethnomusicology, as well as to practicing sacred musicians.

The standard of congregational singing in mid-eighteenth-century parish churches was often in a parlous state, a situation viewed with alarm by many influential clergy and social commentators. In this authoritative study, Maggie Kilbey explores attempts to improve parochial music-making over the following century and the factors that played a part in their success or failure. Using Hertfordshire as a basis, original research by this respected author and historian uses a wide range of documentary evidence to reveal a complicated picture of influence and interaction between the gentry, clergymen and their parishioners. Her innovative approach to the social history of church music-making sheds light on interactions between militia and church bands, singers, organists, the role of charity school children and the use of barrel organs. Because of its proximity to London, Hertfordshire was particularly attractive to elites with an interest in the capital, and fell under the influence of metropolitan music-making more readily than less accessible parts of England. The involvement of both fashion-conscious and socially aware gentry was mirrored by those further down the social scale, and formed part of a complex pattern of support for church music-making. Unsurprisingly, this support was not universal, and often short-lived once initial enthusiasm or funding ran out. Consequently, although many attempts were made to 'improve' music-making in parish churches, sooner or later these were considered to be failures, swiftly forgotten - and then tried again. To make matters worse, church rate disputes hampered efforts to improve or sustain parish music-making during the nineteenth century, resulting in financial hardship for organists and other church musicians. Yet this was followed by an 1850s 'singing craze' which led to the formation of many church choirs, alterations to the church fabric, and installation of organs. This investigation into patterns of parochial music-making will appeal to both those with an interest in the history of music-making, and also those with a general interest in the social history of Hertfordshire.

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.

The performance and composition of liturgical music at El Escorial re-examined. Philip II of Spain founded the great Spanish monastery and royal palace of El Escorial in 1563, promoting within it a musical foundation whose dual function as royal chapel and monastery in the service of a Counter Reformation monarch was unique; this volume explores the performance and composition of liturgical music there from its beginnings to the death of Charles II in 1700. It traces the ways in which music styles and practices responded to the the changing functions of the institution, challenging notions about Spanish musical patronage, scrutinising musical manuscripts, uncovering the biographical details of hundreds of musicians, and examining musical practices. Michael Noone is Professor of Musicology at the University of Hong Kong.

The B-minor Mass has always represented a fascinating challenge to musical scholarship. Composed over the course of Johann Sebastian Bach's life, it is considered by many to be the composer's greatest and most complex work. The fourteen essays assembled in this volume originate from the International Symposium 'Understanding Bach's B-minor mass' at which scholars from eighteen countries gathered to debate the latest topics in the field. In revised and updated form, they comprise a thorough and systematic study of Bach's Opus Ultimum, including a wide range of discussions relating to the Mass's historical background and contexts, structure and proportion, sources and editions, and the reception of the work in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In the light of important new developments in the study of the piece, this collection demonstrates the innovation and rigour for which Bach scholarship has become known.

This essay collection, devoted to exploring the richness of Christian musical traditions in the Americas, reflects the distinctive critical perspectives of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music, an association of scholars dedicated to exploring the intersections of Christian faith and musical scholarship. Now in our sixteenth year, we seek to celebrate our work in the world and bring it to a larger audience by offering a cross- section of the most outstanding scholarship from an international array of writers. The proposed collection follows a first collection published to celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of the Society (Exploring Christian Song, M. Jennifer Bloxam and AndrewShenton, editors, Lexington Books, 2017). That first volume focused on Christian song in a variety of different contexts. Our proposed collection surveys a broad geographical areaand demonstrates the enormous diversity of music-making and scholarship within that area. While there are some studies that focus on a single country or region and its sacred music (see the literature survey below), this will be the first collection to present a representative cross-section of the range of sacred music in the Americas and the approaches to studying them in context. The essays in this collection are ecumenical, reflecting the breadth of Christian traditions. The essays include several by distinguished senior scholars in the field (including David Music, Baylor University; and Jeff Warren, Quest University, Canada). Several essays are by noted specialists in the field (including Jesse Karlsberg, Emory University; and Cathy Ann Elias, DePaul University), and several by younger scholars (including Hannah Denecke, Florida State University; and Natasha Walsh, York University, Canada). SCSM is particularly keen to promote the work of students. The work of these rising stars thus appears alongside the work of veteran scholars working in the area of Christian sacred music, ensuring a stimulating mix of subjects, viewpoints, and methodologies.

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.

The first part of Nicaea and its Legacy offers a narrative of the fourth-century trinitarian controversy. It does not assume that the controversy begins with Arius, but with tensions among existing theological strategies. Lewis Ayres argues that, just as we cannot speak of one `Arian' theology, so we cannot speak of one `Nicene' theology either, in 325 or in 381. The second part of the book offers an account of the theological practices and assumptions within which pro-Nicene theologians assumed their short formulae and creeds were to be understood. Ayres also argues that there is no fundamental division between eastern and western trinitarian theologies at the end of the fourth century. The last section of the book challenges modern post-Hegelian trinitarian theology to engage with Nicaea more deeply.

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.

Everyone loves a Christmas carol - in the end, even Scrooge. They have the power to summon up a special kind of midwinter mood, like the aroma of mince pies and mulled wine and the twinkle of lights on a tree. It's a kind of magic. But how did they get that magic? In Christmas Carols Andrew Gant tells the story of some twenty carols, each accompanied by lyrics and music, unravelling a captivating - and often surprising - tale of great musicians and thinkers, saints and pagans, shepherd boys, choirboys, monks and drunks. We delve into the history of such favourites as 'Good King Wenceslas', 'Away in a Manger' and 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', discovering along the way how 'Hark, the Herald angels sing' came to replace 'Hark, how all the welkin ring' and how Ralph Vaughan Williams bolted the tune of an English folk song about a dead ox to a poem by a nineteenth-century American pilgrim to make 'O little town of Bethlehem'. Christmas Carols brims with anecdote, expert knowledge and Christmas spirit. It is a fittingly joyous account of one of our best-loved musical traditions.

In this volume fifteen musicologists from five countries present new findings and observations concerning the production, distribution and use of music manuscripts and prints in seventeenth-century Europe. A special emphasis is laid on the Duben Collection, one of the largest music collections of seventeenth-century Europe, preserved at the Uppsala University Library. The papers in this volume were initially presented at an international conference at Uppsala University in September 2006, held on the occasion of the launching of The Duben Collection Database Catalogue on the Internet. For the first time, the entire collection had been made acessible worldwide, covering a vast number of musical and philological aspects of all items in the collection.

An examination of interactions between sight and hearing in Italian church decoration from 1260-1320. Giotto and other artists used naturalism to activate worshipers' spiritual listening, a source of anxiety for authorities in this "age of vision." This book has received the Weiss-Brown Publication Subvention Award from the Newberry Library, supporting the publication of outstanding works on European civilization before 1700 in the areas of music, theater, French or Italian literature, and cultural studies.

CHRIST IN SONG: Hymns of Immanuel from all ages is a unique compilation of the best hymns from every branch of the Christian Faith. Philip Schaff, best known for his massive History of the Christian Church, has compiled hymns that center upon the Person and Work of Jesus Christ. Charles Hodge said, "After all, apart from the Bible, the best antidote to all these false theories of the person and work of Christ, is such a book as Dr. Schaff's "Christ in Song." The hymns contained in that volume are of all ages and from all churches. They set forth Christ as truly God, as truly man, as one person, as the expiation for our sins, as our intercessor, saviour, and king, as the supreme object of love, as the ultimate ground of confidence, as the all-sufficient portion of the soul. We want no better theology and no better religion than are set forth in these hymns. They were indited by the Holy Spirit in the sense that the thoughts and feelings which they express, are due to his operations on the hearts of his people."

The Kumulipo (1897) is a traditional chant translated by Lili'uokalani. Published in 1897, the translation was written in the aftermath of Lili'uokalani's attempt to appeal on behalf of her people to President Grover Cleveland, a personal friend. Although she inspired Cleveland to demand her reinstatement, the United States Congress published the Morgan Report in 1894, which denied U.S. involvement in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The Kumulipo, written during the Queen's imprisonment in Iolani Palace, is a genealogical and historical epic that describes the creation of the cosmos and the emergence of humans, plants, and animals from "the slime which established the earth." "At the time that turned the heat of the earth, / At the time when the heavens turned and changed, / At the time when the light of the sun was subdued / To cause light to break forth, / At the time of the night of Makalii (winter) / Then began the slime which established the earth, / The source of deepest darkness." Traditionally recited during the makahiki season to celebrate the god Lono, the chant was passed down through Hawaiian oral tradition and contains the history of their people and the emergence of life from chaos. A testament to Lili'uokalani's intellect and skill as a poet and songwriter, her translation of The Kumulipo is also an artifact of colonization, produced while the Queen was living in captivity in her own palace. Although her attempt to advocate for Hawaiian sovereignty and the restoration of the monarchy was unsuccessful, Lili'uokalani, Hawaii's first and only queen, has been recognized as a beloved monarch who never stopped fighting for the rights of her people. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Lili'uokalani's The Kumulipo is a classic of Hawaiian literature reimagined for modern readers.