This book includes thirty-three provocative essays on corporate worship, hymnody and psalmody, issues, and composers and composition. It explores scripture teaching on the role of music in the church. This volume exists because it contains ideas that every worshiper (pastor and layperson) and Christian musician (performer and academic) may benefit from reading, since it is entirely possible to live in the subculture of the evangelical church without encountering some of them. - Publisher.
Sing! has grown from Keith and Kristyn Getty’s passion for congregational singing; it’s been formed by their traveling and playing and listening and discussing and learning and teaching all over the world. And in writing it, they have five key aims: • to discover why we sing and the overwhelming joy and holy privilege that comes with singing • to consider how singing impacts our hearts and minds and all of our lives • to cultivate a culture of family singing in our daily home life • to equip our churches for wholeheartedly singing to the Lord and one another as an expression of unity • to inspire us to see congregational singing as a radical witness to the world They have also added a few “bonus tracks” at the end with some more practical suggestions for different groups who are more deeply involved with church singing. God intends for this compelling vision of His people singing—a people joyfully joining together in song with brothers and sisters around the world and around his heavenly throne—to include you. He wants you,he wants us, to sing.
This book is an investigation into church music through the lens of performance theory, both as a discipline and as a theoretical framework. Scholars who address religious music making in general, and Christian church music in particular, use "performance" in a variety of ways, creating confusion around the term. A systematized performance vocabulary for the study of church music can support interdisciplinary investigations of Christian congregational music making in today’s complex, interconnected world. From the perspective of performance theory, all those involved in church musicking are performing, be it from platform or pew. The book employs a hybrid methodology that combines ethnographic research and theory from ritual studies, ethnomusicology, theology, and church music scholarship to establish performance studies as a possible "next step" in church music studies. It demonstrates the feasibility of studying church music as performance by analyzing ethnographic case studies using a developmental framework based on the concepts of ritual, embodiment, and play/change. This book offers a fresh perspective on Christian congregational music making. It will, therefore, be a key reference work for scholars working in Congregational Music Studies, Ethnomusicology, Ritual Studies and Performance Studies, as well as practitioners interested in examining their own church music practices.
"The Church has always sought a dynamic balance between the expressive and the formative attributes of liturgical music. (This book) traces the development of the Church's music through the ages and is a chronicle of the music we have used in the earthly Liturgy of the Church. .... " [from back cover]
Musicians and congregations can join in the worship of our great God through the music of Saints of Zion. The Saints of Zion Songbook features fourteen hymns from the album arranged for piano and SATB choir as well as eleven shorter hymnal arrangements that are suitable for congregational singing or family worship.
Besides offering practical suggestions, Westermeyer discusses music in the worship life of a congregation and introduces the concept of cantor as leader of the people's song. More than a "how-to" manual for musicians, this book is an interdisciplinary study of worship, music, and theology accessible to everyone.
