Studies in English Church Music, 1550-1900
Studies in English Church Music, 1550-1900

Author: Nicholas Temperley

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-06-14

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 100094767X

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Nicholas Temperley has pioneered the history of popular church music in England, as expounded in his classic 1979 study, The Music of the English Parish Church; his Hymn Tune Index of 1998; and his magisterial articles in The New Grove. This volume brings together fourteen shorter essays from various journals and symposia, both British and American, that are often hard to find and may be less familiar to many scholars and students in the field. Here we have studies of how singing in church strayed from artistic control during its neglect in the 16th and 17th centuries, how the vernacular 'fuging tune' of West Gallery choirs grew up, and how individuals like Playford, Croft, Madan, and Stainer set about raising artistic standards. There are also assessments of the part played by charity in the improvement of church music, the effect of the English organ and the reasons why it never inspired anything resembling the German organ chorale, and the origins of congregational psalm chanting in late Georgian York. Whatever the topic, Temperley takes a fresh approach based on careful research, while refusing to adopt artistic or religious preconceptions.

Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England
Women Writing Music in Late Eighteenth-Century England

Author: Leslie Ritchie

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1351536621

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Combining new musicology trends, formal musical analysis, and literary feminist recovery work, Leslie Ritchie examines rare poetic, didactic, fictional, and musical texts written by women in late eighteenth-century Britain. She finds instances of and resistance to contemporary perceptions of music as a form of social control in works by Maria Barth mon, Harriett Abrams, Mary Worgan, Susanna Rowson, Hannah Cowley, and Amelia Opie, among others. Relating women's musical compositions and writings about music to theories of music's function in the formation of female subjectivities during the latter half of the eighteenth century, Ritchie draws on the work of cultural theorists and cultural historians, as well as feminist scholars who have explored the connection between femininity and performance. Whether crafting works consonant with societal ideals of charitable, natural, and national order, or re-imagining their participation in these musical aids to social harmony, women contributed significantly to the formation of British cultural identity. Ritchie's interdisciplinary book will interest scholars working in a range of fields, including gender studies, musicology, eighteenth-century British literature, and cultural studies.