O Sing unto the Lord: A History of English Church Music

by Andrew Gant, Andrew Gant (Preface by)

Overview

For as long as people have worshipped together, music has played a key role in church life. With O Sing unto the Lord, Andrew Gant offers a fascinating history of English church music, from the Latin chant of late antiquity to the great proliferation of styles seen in contemporary repertoires.

The ornate complexity of pre-Reformation Catholic liturgies revealed the exclusive nature of this form of worship. By contrast, simple English psalms, set to well-known folk songs, summed up the aims of the Reformation with its music for everyone. The Enlightenment brought hymns, the Methodists and Victorians a new delight in the beauty and emotion of worship. Today, church music mirrors our multifaceted worldview, embracing the sounds of pop and jazz along with the more traditional music of choir and organ. And reflecting its truly global reach, the influence of English church music can be found in everything from masses sung in Korean to American Sacred Harp singing.

From medieval chorales to “Amazing Grace,” West Gallery music to Christmas carols, English church music has broken through the boundaries of time, place, and denomination to remain familiar and cherished everywhere. Expansive and sure to appeal to all music lovers, O Sing unto the Lord is the biography of a tradition, a book about people, and a celebration of one of the most important sides to our cultural heritage.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226469621
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	03/22/2017
Pages:	464
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Andrew Gant is a lecturer at St Peter’s College at the University of Oxford. A church musician, author, and composer, he was the organist, choirmaster, and composer at Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal from 2000 to 2013. He is the author of Christmas Carols: From Village Green to Church Choir.

Table of Contents

Preface to the American Edition vii

1 In the Beginning 1

2 Music for a New Millennium 15

3 The Fifteenth Century: Possibilities and Promise 37

4 Keeping Your Head: The Approach of the Reformation, 1509-1547 57

5 The Children of Henry VTEI: Reformation and Counter-Reformation, 1547-1558 77

6 Church Music and Society in Elizabeth's England, 1558-1603 105

7 Plots, Scots, Politics and the Beauty of Holiness, 1603-1645 151

8 Interregnum, 1644-1660 180

9 Restoration, 1660-1714 188

10 The Enlightenment, 1712-1760 223

11 West Galleries and Wesleys, Methodists and Mendelssohn, 1760-1850 249

12 Renewal, 1837-1901 285

13 Composers from S. S. Wesley to Elgar? 1830-1934 311

14 The Splintering of the Tradition, 1914-2015 332

Epilogue 373

Notes 378

Further Investigations 404

Acknowledgements 412

Illustration Credits 413

Index 415

Editorial Reviews

05/08/2017
Gant (Christmas Carols), lecturer at St. Peter’s College at the University of Oxford, shows readers that church music in England has always reflected larger theological, political, and social contexts, and explores how church music reaches deep into collective folk memory. Accessible to the general reader yet suited to those with a particular interest in music history or the history of England, the book examines the arguments that weave their way in and out of the history of English church music: Who gets to sing, the priests or the congregation? Should popular music be allowed to influence church music? What, fundamentally, is the function of church music, and why have clerical authorities often been suspicious of how much attention music receives? Gant engages these questions in intelligent, energetic prose. He sweeps from the Gregorian plainsong from the very earliest years of the church in England, through the complexities of the pre-Reformation Catholic liturgies, the drastic (and lasting) changes wrought by the Reformation, the moderation of Elizabethans, and the accessibility of Puritan songs, to the church music still being sung today. Yet because he focuses on representative composers and works, Gant’s work feels more intimate than broad. It’s a book about people and the songs that many of us don’t even know that we know. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

"The whole time I was reading O Sing Unto the Lord, I was making copious notes to go and rediscover some forgotten anthem. Time after time, passing references to pieces I’ve sung and loved brought me sharp pangs of nostalgia, followed by a sense of gratitude that this tradition has been such an important part of my musical world."

New York Times Nico Muhly

"There are other histories of English church music but few, if any, were written with the insight, depth, and humor of this one. . . . This is a very informative and engaging work. Gant clearly knows his subject and is very comfortable discussing it. He humanizes the giants of English church music with interesting stories about their personal lives without sacrificing their musical genius. He presents this history as someone who sees both sides of the story clearly—the parts that are less than ideal as well as those worth celebrating—and loves it for both."

Anglican and Episcopal History - Nancy Saultz Radloff

Gant’s book is particularly fascinating for a former suburban choirboy like myself because it explains a lot of things that at the time seemed either rather mysterious or just to be taken for granted. . . . Reading O Sing unto the Lord set me thinking about the hymns I love—these tunes that according to Gant ‘did for the English what opera did for the Italians.’

New York Review of Books

"Gant’s approach to church history via music works. With hindsight, it becomes easy to see how developments in monastic plainsong gave way to the spark of the Reformation, or to imagine how adding flourishes to cathedral choirs led to further exploration in religious art. The beauty of relating Christian history this way is that it broadens the focus to include the listening laity, not just the clergy or the church establishment."

Foreword Reviews

The book’s 400 pages should not deter readers: this is one of the wittiest and most whimsically irreverent works of scholarship in recent memory. . . . Sitting down with this book feels less like reading a monograph than like encountering a friendly fellow in a pub. . . . Gant’s lively history will help keep the tradition alive.

Christian Century