The Morning And Evening Service Together With The Office For The Holy Communion Set To Music In The Key Of B

Originally published in 2003 and selected from papers given at the third biennial conference on Music in Nineteenth-Century Britain, this volume, in common with its two predecessors, reflects the interdisciplinary character of the topic. The introductory essay by Julian Rushton considers some of the questions that are key to this area of study: what is the nineteenth century, what is British music, and did London influence the continent? The essays that follow are divided into broad thematic groups covering aspects of gender, church music, national identity, and local and national institutions. This collection illustrates that while nineteenth-century British music studies is still in its infancy as a field of research, it is one that is burgeoning and contributing to our understanding of British social and cultural life of the period.

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.