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Our contemporary culture is communicating ever-increasingly through the visual, through film, and through music. This makes it ever more urgent for theologians to explore the resources of art for enriching our understanding and experience of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Annunciations: Sacred Music for the twenty-First Century, edited by George Corbett, answers this need, evaluating the relationship between the sacred and the composition, performance, and appreciation of music. Through the theme of ‘annunciations’, this volume interrogates how, when, why, through and to whom God communicates in the Old and New Testaments. In doing so, it tackles the intimate relationship between Scriptural reflection and musical practice in the past, its present condition, and what the future might hold. Annunciations comprises three parts. Part I sets out flexible theological and compositional frameworks for a constructive relationship between the sacred and music. Part II presents the reflections of theologians and composers involved in collaborating on new pieces of sacred choral music, alongside the six new scores and links to the recordings. Part III considers the reality of programming and performing sacred works today. This volume provides an indispensable resource for scholars and artists working at the interface between theology and the arts, and for those involved in sacred music. However, it will also be of interest to anyone concerned with the ways in which the Divine communicates through word and artistry to humanity.
Christian Sacred Music in the Americas explores the richness of Christian musical traditions and reflects the distinctive critical perspectives of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music. This volume, edited by Andrew Shenton and Joanna Smolko, is a follow-up to SCSM’s Exploring Christian Song and offers a cross-section of the most current and outstanding scholarship from an international array of writers. The essays survey a broad geographical area and demonstrate the enormous diversity of music-making and scholarship within that area. Contributors utilize interdisciplinary methodologies including media studies, cultural studies, theological studies, and different analytical and ethnographical approaches to music. While there are some studies that focus on a single country, musical figure, or region, this is the first collection to represent the vast range of sacred music in the Americas and the different approaches to studying them in context.
Hymns are a form of worship and prayer that are capable of expressing what mere words alone cannot. Many favorite Christian hymns and their authors have incredible stories that will make you listen to and sing these songs in an entirely different way. Our team spent thousands of hours researching and finding the most inspiring stories that will uplift those who take time to read or listen.
In Sacred Song in America, Stephen A. Marini explores the full range of American sacred music and demonstrates how an understanding of the meanings and functions of this musical expression can contribute to a greater understanding of religious culture.Marini examines the role of sacred song across the United States, from the musical traditions of Native Americans and the Hispanic peoples of the Southwest, to the Sacred Harp singers of the rural South and the Jewish music revival to the music of the Mormon, Catholic, and Black churches. Including chapters on New Age and Neo-Pagan music, gospel music, and hymnals as well as interviews with iconic composers of religious music, Sacred Song in America pursues a historical, musicological, and theoretical inquiry into the complex roles of ritual music in the public religious culture of contemporary America.
This essay collection celebrates the richness of Christian musical tradition across its two thousand year history and across the globe. Opening with a consideration of the fourth-century lamp-lighting hymn Phos hilaron and closing with reflections on contemporary efforts of Ghanaian composers to create Christian worship music in African idioms, the ten contributors engage with a broad ecumenical array of sacred music. Topics encompass Roman Catholic sacred music in medieval and Renaissance Europe, German Lutheran song in the eighteenth century, English hymnody in colonial America, Methodist hymnody adopted by Southern Baptists in the nineteenth century, and Genevan psalmody adapted to respond to the post-war tribulations of the Hungarian Reformed Church. The scope of the volume is further diversified by the inclusion of contemporary Christian topics that address the evangelical methods of a unique Orthodox Christian composer’s language, the shared aims and methods of African-American preaching and gospel music, and the affective didactic power of American evangelical “praise and worship” music. New material on several key composers, including Jacob Obrecht, J.S. Bach, George Philipp Telemann, C.P.E. Bach, Zoltan Kodály, and Arvo Pärt, appears within the book. Taken together, these essays embrace a stimulating variety of interdisciplinary analytical and methodological approaches, drawing on cultural, literary critical, theological, ritual, ethnographical, and media studies. The collection contributes to discussions of spirituality in music and, in particular, to the unifying aspects of Christian sacred music across time, space, and faith traditions. This collection celebrates the fifteenth anniversary of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music.
(Vocal Collection). Contents: Bach: Prepare thyself, Zion * Slumber, beloved, and take thy repose Benedict: Father, whose blessing we entreat * O Thou afflicted Bennett: O Lord, Thou hast searched me out Blumner: My warning heed..Thine, O Saviour, is love unending Costa: Lord, from my bed again I rise * It is a good thing to give thanks..This night I lift my heart to Thee Cowen: Like as a father pitieth his children Dvorak: Within what gloomy depths forest..Thy leading would had not followed Gade: O, with pure devotion * When onward I am gazing Gaul: Eye hath not seen * Now go your ways, my daughters well- beloved..O gracious Lord, cast down Thine eyes * Thou art the guide of our youth Handel: O Judah, Judah! chosen seed!..O Lord, whom we adore * Great Prophetess! my soul's on fire..In the battle, fame pursuing * The smiling hours, a joyful train * Thou shalt bring them in * But who is this? tremendous to behold..Awful, pleasing being, say * Now give the army breath..Heroes, when with glory burning * Father of heav'n! From Thy eternal throne * Behold a virgin shall conceive..O thou that tellest good tidings to Zion * He was despised and rejected * Return, O God of Hosts * O Lord, whose mercies numberless * What tho' I trace each herb and flower * A love like mine, so faithful..When first I saw my lovely maid * Lord, to Thee, each night and day Kiel: He was oppress'd and afflicted sore * For my soul is athirst for God * Turn again to thy rest Mackenzie: Gladness is taken away Marechal: He is dead the child I cherish!..One would say, he reposes Mendelssohn: O rest in the Lord * And he journeyed with companions..But the Lord is mindful of His own Parry: The Lord is long-suffering and merciful Raff: Thrust in Thy sickle, and reap..Great and wonderful are all Thy works * Behold, the House of God is with men Reinthaler: The Lord will not be ever wroth Saint-Saens: Patiently have I waited for the Lord * Thou, O Lord, art my protector Sullivan: The Lord is risen * Love is not the world Vierling: From swarming Highways I now have escaped..Lord, for whom my soul is burning Williams: As Thou wilt, Father.
Nearly all religious traditions have reserved a special place for sacred music. Whether it is music accompanying a ritual or purely for devotional purposes, music composed for entire congregations or for the trained soloist, or music set to holy words or purely instrumental, in some form or another, music is present. In fact, in some traditions the relation between the music and the ritual is so intimate that to distinguish between them would be inaccurate. The A to Z of Sacred Music covers the most important aspects of the sacred music of Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and other smaller religious groups. It provides useful information on all the significant traditions of this music through the use of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on major types of music, composers, key religious figures, specialized positions, genres of composition, technical terms, instruments, fundamental documents and sources, significant places, and important musical compositions.
