The Glagolitic Mass, written between 1926 and 1927, is not only one of Janacek's most important works: it is also a masterpiece of the twentieth-century choral repertoire. In this fascinating account of the work and its history, Paul Wingfield brings together material from early articles and reviews, letters and manuscripts which form a comprehensive account of the work's genesis and performance history. The author also provides a thorough revision of the Old Church Slavonic text along with English translation, and reconstructs Janacek's 'ideal' version of the work - far more exciting than the less adventurous rearrangement currently performed. Chapters on the music itself offer a full synopsis of the Glagolitic Mass, an in-depth discussion of its musical organisation and a selection of key interpretations of the piece by Janacek and others.

for SATB unaccompanied Well suited to beginners, This is the House of God is a piece of elegant simplicity that remains in rhythmic unison throughout, with focus placed on the dynamic range. Its text, written by the composer, emphasizes the communal significance of religious spaces, making the piece an ideal choice for a reflective moment in any worship service.

for SATB, piano, and optional saxophone, bass, and drum kit Ophelia, Caliban, and Miranda puts a jazzy twist on three Shakespearean characters. With newly written texts by Charles Bennett, each of the three movements focuses in on Ophelia from Hamlet and Caliban and Miranda from The Tempest. In the funky opener, 'River Bride', the upper voices take the part of Ophelia, while the tenors and basses play a lover figure. Caliban's song, 'Ariel taught me how to play', is a reflective ballad in which the slave tells Miranda, who has escaped his advances, about the spirit helper Ariel teaching him to play the saxophone. The final movement, 'All good things come to an end', is a sassy yet tender number, where Miranda bids farewell to her beloved husband Ferdinand, declaring: 'I've gone back to the island to remember who I am'. The saxophone, bass, piano, and drum kit parts may be played as written or serve as a guide.

for SA and piano or orchestra With a simple, appealing melody and a flowing accompaniment, The Colours of Christmas evokes a touching sense of longing for the joys of the festive season. An accompaniment for orchestra is available on hire/rental.

for SATB and small orchestra Full score for Rutter's arrangement of this buoyant Cornish carol. With its combination of pagan and Christian imagery and references to the Crucifixion and Resurrection, this carol is well suited to performance at Passiontide and Easter, as well as at Christmas.

for SATB and piano or small ensemble This celebratory work sees Bob Chilcott collaborate with poet Charles Bennett to explore all that we can learn from the natural world. The first movement, 'Follow the music', leads us on a journey through the woods that is artfully reflected in the music through resonant repeated notes in the piano that take us on our own musical trail. The second movement, 'A Gift so in Tune', is more reflective, with a real potential for storytelling as we're reminded to listen to and learn from the prompts that nature gives us. Finally, the titular movement brings us a mood of bright positivity, with energetic semiquavers in the piano underpinning the singers' powerful message of how, whatever the season, we should follow the birds' example and spread our wings and find our voices. The work may be accompanied by piano, playing from the vocal score, or a small ensemble of flute, oboe, clarinet in A, horn in F, timpani, and organ, using the materials available separately.

for SATB and piano or orchestra Jonathan Wikeley's choral arrangement of Vaughan Williams's Four Last Songs offers a new way to engage with these beautiful late works. The texts are by Ursula Vaughan Williams, and the set begins and ends with two poems that were inspired by Greek mythology. The opening song, 'Procris', and the closing song, 'Menelaus', have flowing piano accompaniments that remain unchanged from the original solo voice versions. The two songs in the middle, 'Tired' and 'Hands, Eyes, and Heart', are unaccompanied in this arrangement, with a double-choir texture that incorporates the original chordal piano line in a way that is consistent with Vaughan Williams's own double-choir writing. The songs are available in their original form, for solo voice and piano accompaniment, in the first volume of Collected Songs by Vaughan Williams.

This is a substantial setting of the canticles of Mary and Simeon, suitable for performance in both concert and liturgical settings. The choral writing features fugal counterpoint and a chromatic soundworld rooted around the octatonic scale. The text is in English throughout, with occasional Latin interjections in the Magnificat. Bringing a fresh voice to an established genre, this setting presents a rewarding challenge for singers and the opportunity for congregations or audiences to appreciate familiar words in a new way. A version for SATB with piano and organ (ISBN 978-0-19-356329-2) is also available.

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.

Choral Artistry 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. As part of the Kodaly philosophy's practical approach, authors Micheal Houlahan and Philip Tacka employ two models for learning choral literature: Performance Through Sound Analysis Pedagogy (PTSA) and Performance through Sound Analysis and Notation (PTSAN). Both models delineate an approach to teaching a choral work that significantly improves students' musicianship while engaging the ensemble in learning the overall composition in partnership with the conductor. The final chapter of the book includes rubrics to assess the effectiveness of a choral program. This book does not purport to be a comprehensive choral pedagogy text. It is a detailed guide to helping choral directors at all levels improve the choral singing and musicianship of their students from a Kodaly perspective.

What should we consider when thinking about the relationship between an onstage performance and the story the performance tells? A Poetics of Handel's Operas explores this question by analyzing the narratives of Handel's operas in relation to the rich representational fabric of performance used to convey them. Nathan Link notes that in most storytelling genres, the audience can naturally discern between a story and the way that story is represented: with film, for example, the viewer would recognize that a character hears neither her own voiceover nor the ambient music that accompanies it, whereas in discussions of opera, some audiences may be distracted by the seemingly artificial nature of such conventions as characters singing their dialogue. Link proposes that when engaging with opera, distinguishing between the performance we see and hear on the stage and the story represented offers a meaningful approach to engaging with and interpreting the work. Handel's operas are today the most-performed works in the Baroque opera seria tradition. This genre, with its intricate dramaturgy and esoteric conventions, stands to gain much from an investigation into the relationships between the onstage performance and the story to which that performance directs us. In his analysis, Link offers theoretical studies on opera and narratological theories of literature, drama, and film, providing rich engagement with Handel's work and what it conveys about the relationship between text, story, and performance.

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.

Contains two versions of the vocal parts - for SATB and piano or orchestra, or SS or SA and piano or orchestra.

The writing of a requiem is a special challenge for any composer. The great requiems of the past by composers such as Mozart, Verdi and Berlioz interpret the sacred requiem text literally, offering prayers of salvation for the departed, whose souls are assumed to be in purgatory facing a terrible judgment.
Eternal Light: A Requiem, by the Emmy Award winning British composer and internationally acclaimed broadcaster Howard Goodall is a stunning new requiem for the modern day. In contrast it is intended to provide solace to the grieving, reflecting on the words of the Latin Mass by juxtaposing them with poems in English. Speaking about the work, Howard Goodall said, "For me, a modern requiem is one that acknowledges the unbearable loss and emptiness that accompanies the death of loved ones, a loss that is not easily ameliorated with platitudes about the joy awaiting us in the afterlife. This, like Brahms', is a requiem for the living, addressing their suffering and endurance, a requiem focusing on the consequences of interrupted lives."
Also available in single octavo format, is Lead, Kindly Light (057153323X).
Buy digital tracks from iTunes.
Complete CD also available from Amazon.com.

for SATB and organ This superb Latin mass setting for choir and organ demonstrates the composer's strong melodic sense and innate feeling for the sound of choral worship. The atmospheric Kyrie leads to a Gloria that contrasts vibrantly rhythmic passages with smoother, expressive sections. The mysterious harmonies of the Sanctus pave the way for a tender Benedictus, and the Agnus Dei is a haunting and powerful prayer for peace.

for TTBB and piano or organ, or unaccompanied This collection of nine of John Rutter's most popular choral works, arranged by the composer for tenors and basses, has been carefully compiled to reflect a wide variety of texts and styles. Encompassing both sacred and secular pieces, the collection provides a valuable and attractive body of repertoire for TTBB choirs.

for SATB chorus and orchestra This joyous arrangement of a traditional spiritual for choir and orchestra is propelled by a light swing tempo. The mood grows more and more euphoric with each succeeding stanza of text, and the uplifting music surges towards an opulent conclusion.

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.

The Confident Choir is an exploration of conditions affecting the confidence levels in singers of all levels to create an accessible synthesis of the psychological models and offer practical confidence-building strategies for conductors, teachers, community musicians, and workshop leaders. Michael Bonshor combines his experience as a singing teacher and choral director with a series of in-depth interviews that give an intimate depiction of the challenges faced by the contemporary choral singer. These insights provide the basis for a range of suggested techniques to bolster confidence and reduce anxiety in the group-singing context. This book is primarily designed as a guide for leaders of amateur group singing activities and is relevant to choirs of all sizes and genres. The content will appeal to singers, teachers, and choir leaders; students and scholars in the fields of choral research, community music, music psychology, and adult education; and educators training the musical leaders of the future.

This book presents a comprehensive view of children's musical artistry and how to develop it in both the music classroom and children's chorus. Presenting the musical mind as the gateway to children's artistry, and addressing the power of movement in its embodiment and advancement, author Mary Ellen Pinzino shows how song-rhythm, melody, and text, independently and together-influence children's developing artistry musically, expressively, and vocally at every level. Accordingly, she also offers a multitude of specific songs that inspire children's artistry, all in various tonalities and meters and on a continuum of increasing difficulty. Keeping the need for practical application in mind, Pinzino offers materials for implementation with children from kindergarten through seventh grade, as well as guidance for professional development. Content can be applied alongside any pedagogical methodology, as well as with older singers in the process of developing their own artistry. In short, this book makes the intangibles of children's artistry more tangible. It enables music teachers and choral conductors to draw artistry out of every child and draw every child into the choral art. It summons music teachers and choral conductors to bring artistry to the forefront of every music class and choral rehearsal-and to the forefront of the field of music education as a whole.

for T. solo, SATB (with divisions), and orchestra The World Imagined explores themes around the smallness of man, the apprehension of the divine in everything around us, and our ecstatic communion within that vastness. The powerfully evocative texts invite deep spiritual contemplation, and are drawn from diverse sources ranging from an early Latin hymn by St Ambrose to contemporary poems by Doris Kareva and Kenneth White. The work is structured in five continuous movements, with a tenor soloist joining the choir in the second, fourth (where they have a melismatic extended solo passage), and fifth. Profound words by Wallace Stevens-'How high that highest candle lights the dark. Out of this same light, out of the central mind, We make a dwelling in the evening air, In which being there together is enough.'-draw this monumental work to a close, with wind and strings leading us to a final chord that resounds with quiet, hopeful optimism at the end of this transformative musical experience.

for SATB and organ. A work of thanksgiving, The Song of Harvest is an artfully crafted celebration of the earth and its riches. The piece is structured around five well-known hymns of praise, for which Chilcott has composed striking original melodies that may be easily learnt by an audience or congregation, who are invited to join in with the choir. In keeping with tradition, the hymns feature soprano descants for the final verses, and the organ is used to great effect throughout the work in providing characterful introductions and interludes, as well as supporting the choir. The choral movements explore words from the psalms and poems by writers such as Henry van Dyke and Christina Rossetti, whose famous poem 'Consider' provides a moment of solemn reflection before the rousing closing hymn 'Now thank we all our God'.

The Sarah Quartel Songbook brings together a selection of the composer's best-loved pieces for mixed voices, including favourites such as Sing, my Child, Voice on the Wind, and Swept Away. This is an invaluable resource both for choirs looking to explore the work of this fine choral composer for the first time and for admirers of Quartel's style hoping to find staple repertoire conveniently gathered together in one volume.

The Power of Song shows how the people of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania confronted a military superpower and achieved independence in the Baltic "Singing Revolution." When attacked by Soviet soldiers in public displays of violent force, singing Balts maintained faith in nonviolent political action. More than 110 choral, rock, and folk songs are translated and interpreted in poetic, cultural, and historical context. Watch the trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh7vFFjK0rc