Church Music

James Garratt explores the revival of sixteenth-century music in nineteenth-century Germany, focusing on the reception of Palestrina by critics, historians, performers and composers. He demonstrates that the Palestrina revival was just as significant for nineteenth-century culture as parallel movements in the other arts. This study is of relevance to scholars, students and devotees of nineteenth-century music, as well as those with interests in nineteenth-century culture, art, architecture, literature and aesthetics, the history of church music and the early music revival.

This book addresses a highly complex and elusive matter: why the Christian Church was able to contribute so generously to music from its earliest days through the 18th century and why it has suffered since that time from a creeping artistic paralysis. Modern attitudes and assumptions often find the values and accomplishments of the Christian worldview enigmatic, even repellant, and church music has come to be one of the primary arenas in which the tension between conflicting worldviews continues to be worked out on a daily basis. This thoughtful work investigates the historical interaction of theology, philosophy and music, and will be of interest to church musicians, theologians, music historians and cultural anthropologists.

This study provides a general introduction to the sources of the plainchant revival in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. Part I examines the eighteenth-century Catholic revival, in particular the work of John Frances Wade, a Roman Catholic plainchant scribe and publisher. His work centred on the Roman Catholic foreign embassy chapels in London during the waning years of the recusancy period, and his collaboration with contemporary publishers and musicians is evidenced in numerous contemporary letters, music manuscripts, and printed works. In Part II the starting point for the Roman Catholic revival is Novello's A Collection of Sacred Music and for the Anglican revival, Reinagle's A Collection of Psalm & Hymn Tunes. Pro-Gregorian enthusiasts monitored the progress of the revival well into the nineteenth century, but it was not until the late 1830s that plainchant became a cause célèbre in Anglican and Catholic worship alike. A multiplicity of plainchant publications followed well into the 1870s, with Thomas Helmores ranking first among them. By this time plainchant had become an integral, albeit controversial, part of musical worship in both churches. Bennett Zon brings together a host of previously undiscovered or unknown eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, drawing mainly upon printed and manuscript works. Contemporary periodical and occasional literature provide further insight into their musical and social contexts. This is as much a source book for ecclesiastical history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as it is a chronicling of the plainchant revival, and it will be of interest to ecclesiastical historians, plainchant enthusiasts, church musicians, and bibliographers.

This book presents, for the first time, a history of English liturgical chant as performed in the Church of England and its transmission to churches in Scotland and the United States. In the mid-sixteenth century Reformation, the complex ritual of the latin rite was replaced by a one-volume Book of Common Prayer, in English. The general nature of the new rubrics, expecially for music, left many of the details of performance to be worked out in traditional ways. Thus the music evolved from its Latin roots in oral, and later, written practice. The body of music that makes up the chanting practice of Anglican and related churches around the world is indeed diversified. Some texts of the liturgy are harmonized in four or more voive parts, often with organ accompaniment, and others are sung in plainsong. The largest group of chants, those for the psalms and canticles, has an idiosyncratic written form and a performance practice that continues to evolve in oral tradition. This music is commonly known as Anglican chant. Its origins in the seventeenth century and its codification in the eighteenth are explored in the choral establishments of the Church of England and parish churches in England, Scotland, and the United States.

This volume examines musical culture both inside and outside seventeenth-century Sienese convents. In contrast to earlier studies of Italian convent music, this book draws upon archival sources to reconstruct an ecclesiastical culture that celebrated music internally and shared music freely with the community outside convent walls. Colleen Reardon argues that cloistered women in Siena enjoyed a significant degree of freedom to engage in musical pursuits. The nuns produced a remarkable body of work including motets, lamentations, theatrical plays and even an opera. As a result, the convent became an important cultural center in Siena that enjoyed the support and encouragement of its clergy and lay community.

"In this study in 'musical archeology, ' James McKinnon reveals one of the most important layers in the early development of Gregorian chant. With equal attention to musical and ritual practicalities, McKinnon applies an unusual combination of scholary skill and sensitivity to reconstruct how words and melodies might have been assigned to the whole church year, beginning with Advent. If liturgy is 'people doing things for which they have forgotten the reasons, ' McKinnon shows us some of the reasons for the creation of the Gregorgian Proper chants of the mass."--Richard Crocker, author of "An Introduction to Gregorian Chant

"[It] is so richly imagined and so well supported with facts and argument that the reader is compelled by its plausibility even while remembering that (s)he is peering behind what has often been depicted as an impenetrable curtain. McKinnon uses his exceptional knowledge of the sources of late antiquity, common sense, imagination and persistent belief that the story ought to make sense to piece together the history of Christian chant from 200 to 800 as one might piece together the shards of a hopelessly smashed ancient artifact. The results are simply stunning."--Edward Nowacki, University of Cincinnati

"Simply one of the half-dozen most important works of chant scholarship in the entire twentieth century. The scholarship in the book is not just superior. It borders on the inspired."--Alejandro Planchart, editor of the "Beneventanum Troporum Corpus"

Holy Brotherhood: Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church is a musical ethnography of a religious community. After the end of socialism, different ethnic groups in Hungary harbored antagonism toward one another. In one Pentecostal church in Pecs, Hungary, however, both Hungarians and Roma (Gypsies) worshipped and made music together. Three musical repertoires coexisted, each with a separate historical background and complex social meanings: Romani religious song; nineteenth-century gospel hymns originally from the United States; and contemporary Christian pop from the United States. Church members accommodated cultural and musical differences by developing several distinct performance styles.