The Bible in Music

The Bible in Music
Author: Siobhán Dowling Long
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 373
Release: 2015-09-03
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0810884526

There have been numerous publications in the last decades on the Bible in literature, film, and art. But until now, no reference work has yet appeared on the Bible as it appears in Western music. In The Bible in Music: A Dictionary of Songs, Works, and More, scholars Siobhán Dowling Long and John F. A. Sawyer correct this gap in Biblical reference literature, providing for the first time a convenient guide to musical interpretations of the Bible. Alongside examples of classical music from the Middle Ages through modern times, Dowling Long and Sawyer also bring attention to the Bible’s impact on popular culture with numerous entries on hymns, spirituals, musicals, film music, and contemporary popular music. Each entry contains essential information about the original context of the work (date, composer, etc.) and, where relevant, its afterlife in literature, film, politics, and liturgy. It includes an index of biblical references and an index of biblical names, as well as a detailed timeline that brings to the fore key events, works, and publications, placing them in their historical context. There is also a bibliography, a glossary of technical terms, and an index of artists, authors, and composers. The Bible in Music will fascinate anyone familiar with the Bible, but it is also designed to encourage choirs, musicians, musicologists, lecturers, teachers, and students of music and religious education to discover and perform some less well-known pieces, as well as helping them to listen to familiar music with a fresh awareness of what it is about.

Viderunt omnes and Sederunt

Viderunt omnes and Sederunt
Author: Perotin (Perotinus)
Publisher: Alfred Music
Total Pages: 76
Release: 1999-08-26
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9781457468773

Perotin (Latin Perotinus) was a most gifted composer of the Notre Dame school, which, during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, was the first school to produce polyphony of international acclaim. Four of the works included in this collection are organa. A Perotin organum consists of a liturgical chant melody and text, which forms the tenor or cantus firmus. Its rhythm is altered. In approximately the same vocal range, the composer added one, two or three other voices, the duplum, triplum and quadruplum, all of them in one of the six rhythmic patterns known as modi. Seven of the works included in this collection are motets. These originated throug the tradition of troping, which consisted of the addition of a text to a melismatic piece of music. In motets, it was the duplum of an organum or clausula which was troped. When this happend the duplum was called motetus, and this name was adapted for the entire composition.