The two lead choir mentors from BBC's The Naked Choir. which airs autumn 2015, provide a practical dip-in book of tips and techniques to get choirs to excel. Perfect for all choral leaders, enthusiasts and singers, Dominic and Mark explain how to raise your game and take your choir to the next level, with advice on technical excellence, creating a good working environment, and managing people. The two lead choir mentors from BBC's The Naked Choir. which airs autumn 2015, provide a practical dip-in book of tips and techniques to get choirs to excel. Perfect for all choral leaders, enthusiasts and singers, Dominic and Mark explain how to raise your game and take your choir to the next level, with advice on technical excellence, creating a good working environment, and managing people. With over 25,000 choirs in the UK and the numbers growing, Mark De-Lisser (vocal coach on BBC's 'The Voice' and mentor on 'The Naked Choir') and Dominic Peckham (leading choral director & ambassador and mentor on 'The Naked Choir') provide 100 ideas on how to take choirs to the next level. Sharing their wealth of knowledge and experience, Dominic and Mark's advice will get great groups started, keep choirs moving forward and encourage the best from individual singers, keeping it fun along the way. With advice on how to start a choir from scratch, develop your own musicianship, rehearse effectively, and excel in performance, this pocket-sized guide is an essential resource and its practical guidance will get all choirs on the right track!

These four splendid anthems were composed for the coronation of George II in October 1727 and have since retained a position at the heart of the English choral tradition. The popular anthem Zadok the priest has been performed at all subsequent coronations, and Handel's other contributions to the royal occasion - Let thy hand be strengthened, The King shall rejoice, and My heart is inditing - have the same majestic grandeur, with affecting contrasts between different sections of the sacred texts. The editor, Clifford Bartlett, has corrected various inconsistencies in Handel's score, and complete details of sources and editorial method, additional performance notes, and a critical commentary can be viewed in the companion full score available on hire.

This study of the Bach Choir provides a much-needed overview of one of the major choral societies in London. Dr Basil Keen examines the background that led to the formation of an ad hoc body to give the first performance in England of J.S. Bach's B minor Mass. The musical and organizational effects of a permanent choral society drawn from one social group are traced during the first twenty years, after such time the pressures of social change led to a complete review followed by a restructuring of the methods of recruitment and internal organization. The rebuilding of the choir at the opening of the twentieth century, the expansion of the repertoire, the upheaval resulting from the First World War and the impact of these events on preparation and performance, are all considered. The book is essentially structured around the tenure of successive Musical Directors: Otto Goldschmidt, Charles Villiers Stanford, Walford Davies, Hugh Allen, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Adrian Boult, Reginald Jacques and David Willcocks, since their varied tastes and interests inevitably had a decisive influence on policy. Keen draws upon previously unpublished material, including minutes and correspondence of the Bach Choir, interviews with relatives and descendants, and examination of family records and correspondence. To date, there has been no survey of a major London choir that encompasses the full history of the organization in context. In this study, Dr Basil Keen provides a thorough examination of the Bach Choir, including the response of the choir to social changes; the influence of conductors and officials; changes in musical taste; relationships with composers and composition; major national and international events; and the effect of these matters on organization and repertoire.

Taking up questions and issues in early chant studies, this volume of essays addresses some of the topics raised in James McKinnon's The Advent Project: The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass, the last book before his untimely death in February 1999. A distinguished group of chant scholars examine the formation of the liturgy, issues of theory and notation, and Carolingian and post-Carolingian chant. Special studies include the origins of musical notations, nuances of early chant performance (with accompanying downloadable resources), musical style and liturgical structure in the early Divine Office, and new sources for Old-Roman chant. Western Plainchant in the First Millenium offers new information and new insights about a period of crucial importance in the growth of the liturgy and music of the Western Church.

Choral Sight Reading provides a practical and organic approach to teaching choral singing and sight-reading. The text is grounded in current research from the fields of choral pedagogy, music theory, music perception and cognition. Topics include framing a choral curriculum based on the Kodaly concept; launching the academic year for beginning, intermediate, and advanced choirs; building partwork skills; sight-reading; progressive music theory sequences for middle to college level choirs; teaching strategies; choral rehearsal plans as well as samples of how to teach specific repertoire from medieval to contemporary choral composers. This volume includes basic and advanced music theory concepts to develop fluent sight-reading skills for reading standard choral repertoire, providing examples for the process outlined in Chapters 6-8 of Volume 1 (Choral Artistry). This guide provides choral directors with a choral curriculum and choral rehearsal models that place performance, audiation, partwork, music theory, and sight-signing skills at the heart of the choral experience, through a 'sound thinking' approach to teaching that results in greater efficiency in creating independent choral singers with a well-rounded repertoire.

for SATB chorus and orchestra This arrangement for choir and orchestra of a traditional American spiritual conjures a deep fervency, belying its simple appearance. The opening instruction is 'With hushed awe', and that encapsulates perfectly the gentle radiance of the tender lyrics and the music's highly singable lines.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Study of musical manuscripts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, opening a window on piety, liturgy and musical life in late medieval society. The musical culture of the Low Countries in the early modern period was a flourishing one, apparent beyond the big cathedrals and monasteries, and reaching down to smaller parish churches. Unfortunately, very few manuscripts containing the music have survived from the period, and what we know rests to a huge extent on six music books preserved from St Peter's Church, Leiden. This book describes the manuscripts, their provenance, history and repertory, and the zeven-getijdencollege, the ecclesiastical organisations which ordered the music books, in detail. These organisations have their roots in fifteenth-century piety, founded on the initiative of individuals and townadministrators throughout Holland, principally to ensure that prayers and Masses were said for those in the afterlife. Music, both chant and polyphony, played an important part in these commemorative practices; the volume also looks at the choristers and choirmasters, and how such services were organised. ERIC JAS is a lecturer in music at the university of Utrecht.

Edvard Grieg's choral music has remained little known outside Scandinavia. One of the chief aims of this book is to bring this body of work to the notice of a wider audience, in the hope that it may receive greater prominence in concert programmes. Choral pieces form a relatively small proportion of Grieg's total output, although works such as the Album for Male Voices and the Four Psalms represent significant developments in his compositional career. In this study Beryl Foster not only provides an in-depth examination of this music, but also presents a picture of Norwegian musical life in the second half of the nineteenth century. An overview of Norway's choral tradition from the Middle Ages provides the historical context from which Grieg came to the genre. Subsequent chapters discuss in detail the types of choral works that he wrote, such as occasional and commemorative pieces, dramatic works and solo song arrangements. A set of useful appendices, including a chronological list of works and a discography complete this original survey.

Lawrence Bennett provides a comprehensive study of the rich repertoire of accompanied vocal chamber music that entertained the imperial family in Vienna and their guests throughout the 17th and early 18th centuries. The cantata became a form of elite entertainment composed to amuse listeners during banquets or pay homage to members of the royal family during special occasions. Concentrating on Baroque cantatas composed in the Habsburg court, Bennett draws extensively on primary source material to explore the stylistic changes that occurred within the genre in the generations before Haydn and Mozart.The cantata became a form of elite entertainment composed to amuse listeners during banquets or pay homage to members of the royal family during special occasions. Concentrating on Baroque cantatas composed in the Habsburg court, Bennett draws extensively on primary source material to explore the stylistic changes that occurred within the genre in the generations before Haydn and Mozart.

Music played an exceptionally important role in the late Middle Ages - articulating people's social, psychological and eschatological needs. The process began with the training of choirboys whose skill was key to institutional identity. That skill was closely cultivated and directly sought by kings and emperors, who intervened directly in recruitment of choirboys and older singers in order to build and articulate their self-image and perceived status. Using the documentation of an exceptionally well preserved archive, this book focuses on music's functioning in an important church in late Medieval Northern France. It explores a period when musicians from this region set the agenda across Europe, developing what is still some of the most sophisticated music in the Western musical tradition. The book allows a close focus not on the great achievements of those who cultivated this music, but on the personal motivations that shaped their life and work.

The first thorough examination of the most renowned and influential organist in early twentieth-century Germany and of his complex relationship to his country's tumultuous and shifting sociopolitical landscape. In the course of a multifaceted career, Karl Straube (1873-1950) rose to positions of immense cultural authority in a German musical world caught in unprecedented artistic and sociopolitical upheaval. Son of a German harmonium-builder and an intellectually inclined English mother, Straube established himself as Germany's iconic organ virtuoso by the turn of the century. His upbringing in Bismarck's Berlin encouraged him to develop intensive interests in world history and politics. He quickly became a sought-after teacher, editor, and confidante to composers and intellectuals, whose work he often significantly influenced. As the eleventh successor to J. S. Bach in the cantorate of St. Thomas School, Leipzig, he focused the choir's mission as curator of Bach's works and, in the unstable political climate of the interwar years, as international emissary for German art. His fraught exit from the cantorate in 1939 bore the scars of his Nazi affiliations and issued in a final decade of struggle and disillusionment as German society collapsed. Christopher Anderson's book presents the first richly detailed examination of Karl Straube's remarkable life, situated against the background of the dynamic and sometimes sinister nationalism that informed it. Through extensive examination of primary sources, Anderson reveals a brilliant yet deeply conflicted musician whose influence until now has been recognized, even hailed, but little understood.

This is the first ever book-length study of the a cappella masses which appeared in France in choirbook layout during the baroque era. Though the musical settings of the Ordinarium missae and of the Missa pro defunctis have been the subject of countless studies, the stylistic evolution of the polyphonic masses composed in France during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been neglected owing to the labor involved in creating scores from the surviving individual parts. Jean-Paul C. Montagnier has examined closely the printed, engraved and stenciled choirbooks containing this repertoire, and his book focuses mainly on the music as it stands in them. After tracing the choirbooks' publishing history, the author places these mass settings in their social, liturgical and musical context. He shows that their style did not all adhere strictly to the stile antico, but could also employ the most up-to-date musical language of the period.

Late medieval motet texts are brimming with chimeras, centaurs and other strange creatures. In The Monstrous New Art, Anna Zayaruznaya explores the musical ramifications of this menagerie in the works of composers Guillaume de Machaut, Philippe de Vitry, and their contemporaries. Aligning the larger forms of motets with the broad sacred and secular themes of their texts, Zayaruznaya shows how monstrous or hybrid exempla are musically sculpted by rhythmic and textural means. These divisive musical procedures point to the contradictory aspects not only of explicitly monstrous bodies, but of such apparently unified entities as the body politic, the courtly lady, and the Holy Trinity. Zayaruznaya casts a new light on medieval modes of musical representation, with profound implications for broader disciplinary narratives about the history of text-music relations, the emergence of musical unity, and the ontology of the musical work.

(Piano Method). The great Baroque master composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote music for every combination of instruments and voices. His simplest and purest work are four-part chorale compositions and settings, so perfectly constructed that they evoke meditative spirituality. "Figured bass" was a Baroque system of notating harmony. In addition 371 chorales, this collection includes 69 melodies with figured bass. This classic Schirmer edition, edited by Albert Riemenschneider, has sold over 1,000,000 copies since its release in the early 20th century. Primarily for keyboard, the chorales can also be played by other instruments.

Most histories of nineteenth-century music portray 'the people' merely as an audience, a passive spectator to the music performed around it. Yet, in this reappraisal of choral singing and public culture, Minor shows how a burgeoning German bourgeoisie sang of its own collective aspirations, mediated through the voice of celebrity composers. As both performer and idealized community, the chorus embodied the possibilities and limitations of a participatory, national identity. Starting with the many public festivals at which the chorus was a featured participant, Minor's account of the music written for these occasions breaks new ground not only by taking seriously these often-neglected works, but also by showing how the contested ideals of German nationhood suffused the music itself. In situating both music and festive culture within the milieu of German bourgeois liberals, this study uncovers new connections between music and politics during a century that sought to redefine both spheres.

Late medieval motet texts are brimming with chimeras, centaurs and other strange creatures. In The Monstrous New Art, Anna Zayaruznaya explores the musical ramifications of this menagerie in the works of composers Guillaume de Machaut, Philippe de Vitry, and their contemporaries. Aligning the larger forms of motets with the broad sacred and secular themes of their texts, Zayaruznaya shows how monstrous or hybrid exempla are musically sculpted by rhythmic and textural means. These divisive musical procedures point to the contradictory aspects not only of explicitly monstrous bodies, but of such apparently unified entities as the body politic, the courtly lady, and the Holy Trinity. Zayaruznaya casts a new light on medieval modes of musical representation, with profound implications for broader disciplinary narratives about the history of text-music relations, the emergence of musical unity, and the ontology of the musical work.

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825 1901) was a British theologian who held the position of Bishop of Durham from 1890 until his death. First published in 1912, as the second edition of an 1879 original, this volume presents the complete text of the Book of Psalms arranged by Westcott 'so as to ensure an intelligent musical rendering of each clause of the separate verses'. The text was revised and edited for its second edition by the British organist and composer of hymns Arthur Henry Mann (1850 1929). This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the Psalms, choral music and Church history."

World Music Pedagogy, Volume V: Choral Music Education explores specific applications of the World Music Pedagogy process to choral music education in elementary, middle, and high school contexts, as well as within community settings. The text provides clear and accessible information to help choral music educators select, rehearse, and perform a diverse global repertoire. It also guides directors in creating a rich cultural context for learners, emphasizing listening, moving, and playing activities as meaningful music-making experiences. Commentary on quality, commercially available world music repertoire bridges the gap between the philosophy of World Music Pedagogy and the realities of the performance-based choral classroom. All chapters open with a series of vignettes that illuminate the variety of possibilities within multiple K-12 contexts, providing the reader with a sense of how the ideas presented might look "on the ground." Ready-to-integrate activities serve as concrete and pedagogically sound examples to guide directors as they develop their own instructional materials according to the needs of their choir. Content features choral and vocal music-making traditions from South and West Africa; Latin America; Southeast, East, and South Asia; the Pacific Islands; Australia; New Zealand; Scandinavia; and the Baltics.

Choral music is now undoubtedly the foremost genre of participatory music making, with more people singing in choirs than ever before. Written by a team of leading international practitioners and scholars, this Companion addresses the history of choral music, its emergence and growth worldwide and its professional practice. The volume sets out a historical survey of the genre and follows with a kaleidoscopic bird's eye view of choral music from all over the world. Chapters vividly portray the emergence and growth of choral music from its Quranic antecedents in West and Central Asia to the baroque churches of Latin America, representing its global diversity. Uniquely, the book includes a pedagogical section where several leading choral musicians write about the voice and the inner workings of a choir and give their professional insights into choral practice. This Companion will appeal to choral scholars, directors and performers alike.

The Oxford Book of Easy Flexible Anthems caters for church choirs of all types and sizes, enabling them to have at their fingertips easy music for every occasion. The collection presents flexibility of scoring in a constructive and realistic way, with particular provision for unison or two-part singing, while not forgetting SATB choirs, and a focus on ease of learning and performance. With complete coverage of the Church's year, and a fabulous range of accessible, quality material, this is a vital resource for all church choirs. Also available as a spiral-bound paperback.

Providing a detailed analysis of Bach's Passions, this 2010 book represents an important contribution to the debate about the culture of 'classical music', its origins, priorities and survival. The angles from which each chapter proceeds differ from those of a traditional music guide, by examining the Passions in the light of the mindsets of modernity, and their interplay with earlier models of thought and belief. While the historical details of Bach's composition, performance and theological context remain crucial, the foremost concern of this study is to relate these works to a historical context that may, in some threads at least, still be relevant today. The central claim of the book is that the interplay of traditional imperatives and those of early modernity renders Bach's Passions particularly fascinating as artefacts that both reflect and constitute some of the priorities and conditions of the western world.

Providing a detailed analysis of Bach's Passions, this 2010 book represents an important contribution to the debate about the culture of 'classical music', its origins, priorities and survival. The angles from which each chapter proceeds differ from those of a traditional music guide, by examining the Passions in the light of the mindsets of modernity, and their interplay with earlier models of thought and belief. While the historical details of Bach's composition, performance and theological context remain crucial, the foremost concern of this study is to relate these works to a historical context that may, in some threads at least, still be relevant today. The central claim of the book is that the interplay of traditional imperatives and those of early modernity renders Bach's Passions particularly fascinating as artefacts that both reflect and constitute some of the priorities and conditions of the western world.

Cori Spezzati deals with polychoral church music from its beginnings in the first few decades of the sixteenth century to its climax in the work of Giovanni Gabrieli and Heinrich Schutz. In polychoral music the singers, sometimes with instrumentalists also, were split into two (or more) groups that often engaged in lively dialogue and joined in majestic tutti climaxes. The book draws on contemporary descriptions of the idiom, especially from the writings of Vicentino and Zarlino, but concentrates in the main on musical analysis, showing how antiphonal chanting (such as that of the psalms), dialogue and canon influenced the phenomenon. Polychoral music has often been considered synonymous not only with Venetian music, but with impressive pomp. Anthony Carver's study shows that it was cultivated by many composers outside Venice - in Rome, all over northern Italy, in Catholic and Protestant areas of Germany, in Spain and the New World - and that it was as capable of quiet devotion or mannerist expressionism as of outgoing pomp. Perhaps most important, music by several major composers about which there is still surprisingly little in the literature is treated in depth: the Gabrielis, Lasso, Palestrina, Victoria, and several German masters. The book is illustrated with many musical examples. A companion volume offers an anthology of seventeen complete pieces, most of which are analysed in the text of Volume I.