This volume brings together new approaches to music history to reveal the interdependence of music and religion in nineteenth-century culture. As composers and performers drew inspiration from the Bible and new historical sciences called into question the historicity of Scripture, controversies raged over the performance, publication and censorship of old and new musical forms. From oratorio to opera, from parlour song to pantomime, and from hymn to broadside, nineteenth-century Britons continually encountered elements of the biblical past in song. Both elite and popular music came to play a significant role in the formation, regulation and contestation of religious and cultural identity and were used to address questions of class, nation and race, leading to the beginnings of ethnomusicology. This richly interdisciplinary volume brings together musicologists, historians, literary and art historians and theologians to reveal points of intersection between music, religion and cultural history.

This volume brings together new approaches to music history to reveal the interdependence of music and religion in nineteenth-century culture. As composers and performers drew inspiration from the Bible and new historical sciences called into question the historicity of Scripture, controversies raged over the performance, publication and censorship of old and new musical forms. From oratorio to opera, from parlour song to pantomime, and from hymn to broadside, nineteenth-century Britons continually encountered elements of the biblical past in song. Both elite and popular music came to play a significant role in the formation, regulation and contestation of religious and cultural identity and were used to address questions of class, nation and race, leading to the beginnings of ethnomusicology. This richly interdisciplinary volume brings together musicologists, historians, literary and art historians and theologians to reveal points of intersection between music, religion and cultural history.

The interrelationship of music and theology is a burgeoning area of scholarship in which conceptual issues have been explored by musicologists and theologians including Jeremy Begbie, Quentin Faulkner and Jon Michael Spencer. Their important work has opened up opportunities for focussed, critical studies of the ways in which music and theology can be seen to interact in specific repertoires, genres, and institutions as well as the work of particular composers, religious leaders and scholars. This collection of essays explores such areas in relation to the religious, musical and social history of nineteenth-century Britain. The book does not simply present a history of sacred music of the period, but examines the role of music in the diverse religious life of a century that encompassed the Oxford Movement, Catholic Emancipation, religious revivals involving many different denominations, the production of several landmark hymnals and greater legal recognition for religions other than Christianity. The book therefore provides a valuable guide to the music of this complex historical period.

Demonstrating that nineteenth-century historical novelists played their rational, trustworthy narrators against shifting and untrustworthy depictions of space and place, Tom Bragg argues that the result was a flexible form of fiction that could be modified to reflect both the different historical visions of the authors and the changing aesthetic tastes of the reader. Bragg focuses on Scott, William Harrison Ainsworth, and Edward Bulwer Lytton, identifying links between spatial representation and the historical novel's multi-generic rendering of history and narrative. Even though their understanding of history and historical process could not be more different, all writers employed space and place to mirror narrative, stimulate discussion, interrogate historical inquiry, or otherwise comment beyond the rational, factual narrator's point of view. Bragg also traces how landscape depictions in all three authors' works inculcated heroic masculine values to show how a dominating theme of the genre endures even through widely differing versions of the form. In taking historical novels beyond the localized questions of political and regional context, Bragg reveals the genre's relevance to general discussions about the novel and its development. Nineteenth-century readers of the novel understood historical fiction to be epic and serious, moral and healthful, patriotic but also universal. Space and Narrative in the Nineteenth-Century British Historical Novel takes this readership at its word and acknowledges the complexity and diversity of the form by examining one of its few continuous features: a flexibly metaphorical valuation of space and place.

In recent years, the assumption that traditional songs originated from a primarily oral tradition has been challenged by research into ’street literature’ - that is, the cheap printed broadsides and chapbooks that poured from the presses of jobbing printers from the late sixteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth. Not only are some traditional singers known to have learned songs from printed sources, but most of the songs were composed by professional writers and reached the populace in printed form. Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America engages with the long-running debate over the origin of traditional songs by examining street literature’s interaction with, and influence on, oral traditions.

A survey of the rituals of the year in Victorian England, showing the influence of the Middle Ages.

Science and Sound in Nineteenth-Century Britain is a four-volume set of primary sources which seeks to define our historical understanding of the relationship between British scientific knowledge and sound between 1815 and 1900. In the context of rapid urbanization and industrialization, as well as a growing overseas empire, Britain was home to a rich scientific culture in which the ear was as valuable an organ as the eye for examining nature. Experiments on how sound behaved informed new understandings of how a diverse array of natural phenomena operated, notably those of heat, light, and electro-magnetism. In nineteenth-century Britain, sound was not just a phenomenon to be studied, but central to the practice of science itself and broader understandings over nature and the universe. This collection, accompanied by extensive editorial commentary, will be of great interest to students and scholars of the History of Science.

The 20th century, especially the latter decades, was a time of explosive growth and importance in hymnody, and yet published material about the hymnody of this period has been scattered and difficult to come by. The present volume catalogues and categorizes the available writings to guide students and scholars in their research. Furthermore, this reference does not depend primarily on the view of the author/compiler, but guides users toward a broad spectrum of viewpoints about 20th-century hymnody. Listing the principal writings on the repertory, language, practice, and people of hymnody during the last century, this annotated bibliography offers students and researchers alike a handy reference for a vast and varied field. Beginning with a unique introduction to and summary of hymnody in the 20th century, Music arranges the entries by topic, dividing each chapter by helpful subject headings. The repertory of the twentieth century, and language issues are discussed. Practical elements of hymnody are covered, while the final chapter lists writings about individual hymn writers and other influential persons in the field. Music provides a brief annotation for each entry and uses numerous cross-references, guiding the reader to relevant material in other sections of the book. A comprehensive index concludes this essential reference.

From the Founding Fathers through the present, Christianity has exercised powerful influence in the United States—from its role in shaping politics and social institutions to its hand in inspiring art and culture. The Encyclopedia of Christianity in the United States outlines the myriad roles Christianity has played and continues to play. This masterful five-volume reference work includes biographies of major figures in the Christian church in the United States, influential religious documents and Supreme Court decisions, and information on theology and theologians, denominations, faith-based organizations, immigration, art—from decorative arts and film to music and literature—evangelism and crusades, the significant role of women, racial issues, civil religion, and more. The first volume opens with introductory essays that provide snapshots of Christianity in the U.S. from pre-colonial times to the present, as well as a statistical profile and a timeline of key dates and events. Entries are organized from A to Z. The final volume closes with essays exploring impressions of Christianity in the United States from other faiths and other parts of the world, as well as a select yet comprehensive bibliography. Appendices help readers locate entries by thematic section and author, and a comprehensive index further aids navigation.

Focus on works written by women from various faith backgrounds, countries and social classes, including Christina Rossetti, Florence Nightingale, Harriet Beecher Stowe. Mary Cornwallis, Catherine McAuley, Mary Anne SchimmelPenninck, Josephine Butler, Elizabeth Rundle Charles, Christina Rossetti, Elizabeth Wordsworth, Annie Besant and Etty Woosnam. Due to their exclusion from the academy, women's interpretive writings addressed primarily a nonscholarly audience and were written in a variety of genres: novels, poetry, catechisms, manuals for Bible study and commentaries on the books of the Bible. Each essay locates a female author in her historical, ecclesiastical and interpretive context, focusing on particular biblical passages.