O Sing unto the Lord

O Sing unto the Lord
Author: Andrew Gant
Publisher: Profile Books
Total Pages: 605
Release: 2015-09-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1782830502

Andrew Gant's compelling account traces English church music from Anglo-Saxon origins to the present. It is a history of the music and of the people who made, sang and listened to it. It shows the role church music has played in ordinary lives and how it reflects those lives back to us. The author considers why church music remains so popular and frequently tops the classical charts and why the BBC's Choral Evensong remains the longest-running radio series ever. He shows how England's church music follows the contours of its history and is the soundtrack of its changing politics and culture, from the mysteries of the Mass to the elegant decorum of the Restoration anthem, from stern Puritanism to Victorian bombast, and thence to the fractured worlds of the twentieth century as heard in the music of Vaughan Williams and Britten. This is a book for everyone interested in the history of English music, culture and society.

Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England

Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England
Author: Dr Jonathan Willis
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2013-06-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 140948081X

'Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England' breaks new ground in the religious history of Elizabethan England, through a closely focused study of the relationship between the practice of religious music and the complex process of Protestant identity formation. Hearing was of vital importance in the early modern period, and music was one of the most prominent, powerful and emotive elements of religious worship. But in large part, traditional historical narratives of the English Reformation have been distinctly tone deaf. Recent scholarship has begun to take increasing notice of some elements of Reformed musical practice, such as the congregational singing of psalms in meter. This book marks a significant advance in that area, combining an understanding of theory as expressed in contemporary religious and musical discourse, with a detailed study of the practice of church music in key sites of religious worship. Divided into three sections - 'Discourses', 'Sites', and 'Identities' - the book begins with an exploration of the classical and religious discourses which underpinned sixteenth-century understandings of music, and its use in religious worship. It then moves on to an investigation of the actual practice of church music in parish and cathedral churches, before shifting its attention to the people of Elizabethan England, and the ways in which music both served and shaped the difficult process of Protestantisation. Through an exploration of these issues, and by reintegrating music back into the Elizabethan church, we gain an expanded and enriched understanding of the complex evolution of religious identities, and of what it actually meant to be Protestant in post-Reformation England.

Roman Catholic Church Music in England, 1791-1914

Roman Catholic Church Music in England, 1791-1914
Author: T.E. Muir
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2008
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780754661054

Roman Catholic church music in England served the needs of a vigorous, vibrant and multi-faceted community that grew from about 70,000 to 1.7 million people during the long nineteenth century. This book provides a framework of the main aspects of Catholic church music in this period showing how and why it developed in the way it did. Dr Muir sets the music in its proper historical, liturgical and legal context pointing to the ways in which the music itself can be used as evidence to throw light on the changing character of English Catholicism.

Evensong

Evensong
Author: Richard Morris
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2021-11-25
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1474614248

Parish churches have been at the heart of communities for more than a thousand years. But now, fewer than two in one hundred people regularly attend services in an Anglican church, and many have never been inside one. Since the idea of 'church' is its people, the buildings are becoming husks - staples of our landscapes, but without meaning or purpose. Some churches are finding vigorous community roles with which to carry on, but the institutional decline is widely seen as terminal. Yet for Richard Morris, post-war parsonages were the happy backdrop of his childhood. In Evensong he searches for what it was that drew his father and hundreds like him towards ordination as they came home from war in 1945. Along the way we meet all kinds of people - archbishops, chaplains, campaigners, bell-ringers, bureaucrats, archaeologists, gravediggers, architects, scroungers - and follow some of them to dark places. Part personal odyssey, part lyrical history, Evensong asks what churches stand for and what they can tell us; it explores why Anglicanism has often been fractious, and why it has become so diffuse. Spanning over two thousand years, it draws on new discoveries, reflects on the current state of the Church in England and ends amid the messy legacies of colonialism and empire.

Music in the History of the Western Church; With an Introduction on Religious Music Among Primitive and Ancient Peoples

Music in the History of the Western Church; With an Introduction on Religious Music Among Primitive and Ancient Peoples
Author: Edward Dickinson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-05-10
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9789357954198

Music in the History of the Western Church; With an Introduction on Religious Music Among Primitive and Ancient Peoples, a classical book, has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and designed. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work and hence the text is clear and readable.

English Sacred Music

English Sacred Music
Author:
Publisher: Faber Edition: Choral Programm
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780571522996

The sixteenth century was a time of religious upheaval in England. From Henry VIII's protestant reformation through Queen Mary's staunch but short-lived Catholic revival to the return of Anglicanism in Elizabethan times, it would have required careful diplomacy for a Roman Catholic like Thomas Tallis simply to stay alive. In fact he became the most respected composer of his generation and is now recognised as one of the country's greatest composers. 2005 was the five hundredth anniversary of Thomas Tallis' birth and his genius is celebrated in this collection of English-texted sacred music, selected and edited by Jeremy Summerly to provide an invaluable source of introits and anthems for choirs. The volume contains: If You Love Me * Hear the Voice and Prayer * A New Commandment * O Lord, Give They Holy Spirit * I Call and Cry to Thee, O Lord * With All Our Heart * Discomfit Them, O Lord * Why Fumeth in Sight (the theme upon which Ralph Vaughan Williams based his Fantasia). If you are interested in this volume why not look at these other titles in the choral programme series: Fair Oriana (ed. Jeremy Summerly), Musicke's Praier (ed. Tim Brown) and Passetime with good company! (ed. Jeremy Summerley).

A Little History Of The English Country Church

A Little History Of The English Country Church
Author: Roy Strong
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2012-05-31
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1448138795

Beautifully illustrated narrative history of the English country church In his engaging account, Sir Roy Strong celebrates the life of the English parish church From the arrival of the missionaries from Ireland and Rome, to the beautiful architecture and rich spirituality of medieval Catholicism; from the cataclysm of the Reformation, to the gentrified cleric we meet in Jane Austen novels, Roy Strong takes us on a journey - historical, social and spiritual - to explore what men and women experienced through the age when they went to church on Sunday. ‘Anyone with the slightest interest in the English parish church, of its life today, or its history will be intrigued, informed and enchanted by this lucid, and occasionally provocative, account’ Country Life