Reformed Churchmen

We are Confessional Calvinists and a Prayer Book Church-people. In 2012, we remembered the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer; also, we remembered the 450th anniversary of John Jewel's sober, scholarly, and Reformed "An Apology of the Church of England." In 2013, we remembered the publication of the "Heidelberg Catechism" and the influence of Reformed theologians in England, including Heinrich Bullinger's Decades. For 2014: Tyndale's NT translation. For 2015, John Roger, Rowland Taylor and Bishop John Hooper's martyrdom, burned at the stakes. Books of the month. December 2014: Alan Jacob's "Book of Common Prayer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Common-Prayer-Biography-Religious/dp/0691154813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417814005&sr=8-1&keywords=jacobs+book+of+common+prayer. January 2015: A.F. Pollard's "Thomas Cranmer and the English Reformation: 1489-1556" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-English-Reformation-1489-1556/dp/1592448658/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420055574&sr=8-1&keywords=A.F.+Pollard+Cranmer. February 2015: Jaspar Ridley's "Thomas Cranmer" at: http://www.amazon.com/Thomas-Cranmer-Jasper-Ridley/dp/0198212879/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422892154&sr=8-1&keywords=jasper+ridley+cranmer&pebp=1422892151110&peasin=198212879

Monday, September 9, 2013

English Parish Music: Ditching Raucous Worship Bawlings, Howlings, and Croonings


        Temperley, Nicholas. The Music of the English Parish Church, Vol.1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.


There's nothing like a "good old fashioned Anglican Prayer Book service" and good old fashioned Anglican hymns to keep the raffish and raucous bawlings, ill-advised opinings, odd voices, and other worship-loons, especially in America, minimized and dismissed. 
Good Lord, deliver us from raucous bawlings, howlings, croonings and other such indecent and unseemly noises during divine worship. Grant that we would offer such as is Biblical, reverent, learned, studied, wise, historic and dignified.  May we do so in humility, the fear of the Lord, and with thanksgiving, befitting Thy Majesty and to Thy glory, through our only Advocate and Mediator, Christ Jesus, Amen.

The website offers this promotional:

“This book is the most thorough and extensive history of English parish church music ever published, covering the period from the late middle ages to the present day. Through the ages English parish churches have resounded to all manner of music, ranging from the rich choral polyphony of Henry VIII's or Victoria's reigns to the bare unaccompanied psalm tunes of the seventeenth century. Temperley has found in this neglected field a wealth of fascinating music, as well as a host of intellectual problems to intrigue the scholar. A recurring theme of the book is the conflict between two incompatible goals for Protestant parish church music: artistic performance and popular expression. Professor Temperley suggests that the Elizabethan metrical psalm tunes were survivors of a mode of popular music that preceded the familiar corpus of ballad tunes. Passed on by oral transmission through several generations of unregulated singing, these once lively tunes changed gradually into very slow, quavering chants. This later style, which came to be called 'the old way of singing', is fully described and explained here for the first time. Temperley guides the reader through the complex social, theological and aesthetic movements that played their part in the formation of the late Victorian ideal of the surpliced choir in every chancel, and he makes a fresh assessment of that old bugbear, the Victorian hymn tune. His findings show that the radical liturgical experiments of the last few years have not dislodged the Victorian model for the music of the English parish church.

Contents

Tables, Plates, Figure, Prefaces, Abbreviations

1.  The Significance of Parish Church Music

2.  The Reformation Era (1534-1559)

1.  Parish Church Music Before the Reformation

2.  Parish Church Music Under Edward VI

3.  Popular Song of the Reformation

4.  Metrical Psalms in England up to 1533

5.  Marian Exiles

6.  Early Psalm Tunes

7.  Summary and Evaluation

3.  The Establishment of Anglicanism (1559-1644)

1.  Parish Church Music Under Elizabeth 1

2.  Parish Church Music Under the First Two Stuarts

3.  “The Whole Book of Psalms”

4.  The Official Tunes

5.  The “Common” Tunes

6.  Harmonized Psalm Books: East and Ravenscroft

7.  Popular Harmony

8.  Summary and Evaluation

4.  Commonwealth and Restoration (1644-1700)

1.  Puritan Ascendance and the Parish Church

2.  Efforts to Reform the Psalms and their Performance

3.  Restoration of Church and King

4.  The “Old Way of Singing”

5.  Summary and Evaluation

5.  Urban Parish Church Music

1.  Motives for Reform

2.  Parish Church Government and Finance

3.  Provincial Town Churches

4.  London Churches

5.  Metrical Psalms and Hymns

6.  Choir and Congregation

7.  Organ and Charity Children

8.  Organ Voluntaries

9.  Unreformed Church Music

10.  Summary and Evalution

6.  Country Psalmody (1685-1830)

1.  Reforming Psalmody Without an Organ

2.  Separation of the Choir: the Singing Gallery

3.  Anthems for Country Choirs

4.  Chants and Service Music

5.  Psalm Tunes

6.  Compilers and Composers

7.  Performing Practice: the Clef Problem

8.  Style of Country Psalmody

9.  The Church Bands

10.  Summary and Evaluation

7.  Reform Movements (1760-1830)

1.  The Evangelical Movement

2.  Evangelical Aims For Parish Church Music

3.  Traditional High Churchmanship

4.  Improved Psalmody

5.  Churches, Organs, and Barrel Organs

6.  The Survival of Country Psalmody

7.  Summary and Evaluation

8.  The Rediscovery of Tradition (1800-1850)

1.  The Romantic Movement

2.  The Oxford Movement

3.  Tractarian Aims for Parish Music

4.  Anglican Hymnody

5.  Summary and Evaluation

9.  The Victorian Settlement (1850-1900)

1.  The Ritualist Controversy

2.  The Middle Ground: Choral Service

3.  Music for Choral Worship

4.  The Deluge of Hymns

5.  Character of the Victorian Hymn Tune

6.  Organ Accompaniment

7.  Summary and Evaluation

10.    The Twentieth Century

1.  Anglican Worship in the Twentieth Century

2.  Aesthetes and Populists

3.  Chanting the Psalms

4.  Parish Communion

5.  Liturgical Experiment

6.  Changing the Physical Setting

7.  The Continuing Practice of Hymnody

8.  Summary and Evaluation

11.    Past and Present

Appendix 1 and 2, Plates, Bibliography, and Index

 

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