Oxford Studies in British Church Music – serie

Born into one of England's best-known families, Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-76) was not only the foremost organist and church musician of his generation, but a vigorous campaigner for higher standards in cathedral music. He was also a troubled, difficult character, and accounts of his abrasive personality or anecdotes about his fishing exploits have tended to obscure his very real achievements as a composer.Peter Horton has drawn on a wide range of source material to produce a detailed account of Wesley's life and career as he moved from cathedral to cathedral in search of an unattainable ideal, his youthful idealism gradually giving way to the cynicism and disillusion familiar to those who encountered him late in life. He also examines his development as a composer and presents a study of his complete output (including the many non-church works) against the background of his restless career and in a wider European context. The book is illustrated by a generous selection of musical examples and plates, and includes the most detailed list of works to appear in print.

The Restoration of Charles II stimulated one of the greatest triumphs of Anglican cathedral music. A group of gifted men, led by Henry Purcell, succeeded in transforming the carefully preserved and revived traditions of the Golden Age of Tudor and earlier Stuart periods into a contemporary style that vigorously embraces the idioms of the French and Italian Baroque. But although perhaps a dozen masterpieces of the period remain in the cathedral repertory, few of us can have had any idea of the riches and variety of music awaiting rediscovery.Ian Spink, a leading authority on seventeenth-century English music, has carried out a remarkable new investigation of the musical sources of the period and of the archives of every cathedral and choral foundation. The result is not only a largely unfamiliar picture of the musical life and circumstance of choral foundations, from the Chapel Royal to remote Carlisle, but also a fresh assessment of the music taking in not only the work of the great men of the age - Purcell, Locke, Handel - but also many lesser masters such as Humfrey, Blow, Clarke, Weldon, and Croft. For the first time, perhaps, the true character and shape of the Restoration period of musical history is revealed.

Since Britten's death in 1976, numerous articles and books have been written about his life and work. Much has been made of the strong influences of his pacifism and his homosexuality. It is often suggested that Britten felt himself to be an outsider from 'normal' society, and that this accounts for the his concern to portray the 'outsider' in his operas. There is no doubt that this is an important aspect of Britten's art, but the present work attempts to show that his music embraces much wider and more universal concerns, and in addressing those concerns there is a clearly defined pattern of spiritual influence.Part One of the book examines Britten's early life, and the strong presence which the Church had in his childhood and adolescence. It explores the way in which certain spiritual influences were first manifested, and how, like the more specifically musical 'themes' which Donald Mitchell has noted, they can be traced throughout Britten's life and work. The author was privileged to have conversations with two clergymen who were influential in Britten's life, as well as gathering valuable insights through a long series of conversations with Sir Peter Pears.Part Two examines a wide range of the composer's music in which a spiritual dimension can be traced. The specifically liturgical music has received rather less critical notice than Britten's larger works. The music is discussed here, and shown to possess musical characteristics in common with the larger works.Britten could not be described as a conventional Christian; still less is it true to describe him, as Eric Walter White has done, as 'keen, wherever possible, to work within the framework of the Church of England'. Nevertheless, his spirituality was rooted in the religious experience of his childhood. This book seeks to demonstrate that Britten retained a sense of the Christian values absorbed in childhood and adolescence, and that these - along with the specifically Christian heritage of plainsong - were strongly influential in his choice and treatment of themes.

This book presents, for the first time, a history of English liturgical chant as performed in the Church of England and its transmission to churches in Scotland and the United States. In the mid-sixteenth century Reformation, the complex ritual of the Latin rite was replaced by a one-volume Book of Common Prayer in English. The general nature of the new rubrics, expecially for music, left many of the details of performance to be worked out in traditional ways. Thus the music evolved from its Latin roots in oral, and later written practice. The body of music that makes up the chanting practice of Anglican and related churches around the world is indeed diversified. Some texts of the liturgy are harmonized in four or more voice parts, often with organ accompaniment, and others are sung in plainsong. The largest group of chants, those for the psalms and canticles, has an idiosyncratic written form and a performance practice that continues to evolve in oral tradition. This music is commonly known as Anglican chant. Its origins in the seventeenth century and its codification in the eighteenth are explored in the choral establishments of the Church of England and parish churches in England, Scotland, and the United States.

This study provides a general introduction to the sources of the plainchant revival in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England. Part I examines the eighteenth-century Catholic revival, in particular the work of John Frances Wade, a Roman Catholic plainchant scribe and publisher. His work centred on the Roman Catholic foreign embassy chapels in London during the waning years of the recusancy period, and his collaboration with contemporary publishers and musicians is evidenced in numerous contemporary letters, music manuscripts, and printed works. In Part II the starting point for the Roman Catholic revival is Novello's A Collection of Sacred Music and for the Anglican revival, Reinagle's A Collection of Psalm & Hymn Tunes. Pro-Gregorian enthusiasts monitored the progress of the revival well into the nineteenth century, but it was not until the late 1830s that plainchant became a cause célèbre in Anglican and Catholic worship alike. A multiplicity of plainchant publications followed well into the 1870s, with Thomas Helmores ranking first among them. By this time plainchant had become an integral, albeit controversial, part of musical worship in both churches. Bennett Zon brings together a host of previously undiscovered or unknown eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, drawing mainly upon printed and manuscript works. Contemporary periodical and occasional literature provide further insight into their musical and social contexts. This is as much a source book for ecclesiastical history of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as it is a chronicling of the plainchant revival, and it will be of interest to ecclesiastical historians, plainchant enthusiasts, church musicians, and bibliographers.

Handel's English church music spans the complete period of his active career in London: his first anthem and the Utrecht Te Deum were composed soon after his arrival in London, and his last works nearly 40 years later. The repertory, which includes the Coronation Anthem Zadok the Priest, forms one of the most impressive and engaging areas of Baroque church music. Most of it was stimulated by Handel's creative contact with the English Chapel Royal, a group of professional singers in a different tradition from the opera stars with whom he worked in the theatre.This is the first full-length study of Handel's English Church music. As well as dealing with the many aspects of the compositions themselves, it traces the background to the diverse items in the repertory, which relates directly to Handel's constant but changing relationship with the Hanoverian British royal family, and was affected by political and dynastic events. It also examines the circumstances of Handel's performances, the building which (unlike his theatres) still survives in London today.