Plainchant is the oldest substantial body of music that has been preserved in any shape or form. It was first written down in Western Europe in the eighth to ninth centuries. Many thousands of chants have been sung at different times or places in a multitude of forms and styles, responding to the differing needs of the church through the ages. This book provides a clear and concise introduction, designed both for those to whom the subject is new and those who require a reference work for advanced study. It begins with an explanation of the liturgies that plainchant was designed to serve. It describes all the chief genres of chant, different types of liturgical book, and plainchant notations. After an exposition of early medieval theoretical writing on plainchant, Hiley provides a historical survey that traces the constantly changing nature of the repertory. He also discusses important musicians and centers of composition. Copiously illustrated with over 200 musical examples, this book highlights the diversity of practice and richness of the chant repertory in the Middle Ages. It will be an indispensable introduction and reference source on this important music for many years to come.

Taking up questions and issues in early chant studies, this volume of essays addresses some of the topics raised in James McKinnon's The Advent Project: The Later Seventh-Century Creation of the Roman Mass, the last book before his untimely death in February 1999. A distinguished group of chant scholars examine the formation of the liturgy, issues of theory and notation, and Carolingian and post-Carolingian chant. Special studies include the origins of musical notations, nuances of early chant performance (with accompanying CD), musical style and liturgical structure in the early Divine Office, and new sources for Old-Roman chant. Western Plainchant in the First Millenium offers new information and new insights about a period of crucial importance in the growth of the liturgy and music of the Western Church.

Tonal consciousness, in the sense of a clear intuition about which note or chord a piece of music will finish on, is as much a part of our everyday experience of music as it is of contemporary music theory. This book asks to what extent such tonal consciousness might have operated in the minds of musicians of the Middle Ages, given the different tone world found in the modes of Gregorian chant, in troubadour and trouvère music, in Minnesang and in the early polyphony based upon chant. The author's approach is analytical, focusing on modality and balancing up-to-date concepts and methods of music analysis with those insights into their own compositional needs and processes that the people of the Middle Ages provided themselves through their writings about music. The book examines a range of both music sources and theoretical sources from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. This is a ground-breaking contribution both to the study of medieval music and to music analysis.

Holy Treasure and Sacred Song explores the complex interplay between relic cults and the liturgy in medieval Tuscany. Drawing on documentary, literary and visual evidence rarely considered together, it reveals that liturgical texts, music, and ritual were integral to the clergy's well-informed promotion of saints buried in their churches.

Nearly all religious traditions have reserved a special place for sacred music. Whether it is music accompanying a ritual or purely for devotional purposes, music composed for entire congregations or for the trained soloist, or music set to holy words or purely instrumental, in some form or another, music is present. In fact, in some traditions the relation between the music and the ritual is so intimate that to distinguish between them would be inaccurate. The A to Z of Sacred Music covers the most important aspects of the sacred music of Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and other smaller religious groups. It provides useful information on all the significant traditions of this music through the use of a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, appendixes, and hundreds of cross-referenced dictionary entries on major types of music, composers, key religious figures, specialized positions, genres of composition, technical terms, instruments, fundamental documents and sources, significant places, and important musical compositions.

The offertory has played a key role in the recent debates about the origins of Gregorian chant. This book offers a comprehensive study of the offertory, considering the music, lyrics, and liturgical history to shed new light on its origins and chronology.

This is the first comprehensive study of Greek language ordinary chants (Gloria/Doxa, Credo/Pisteuo, Sanctus/Hagios and Agnus Dei/Amnos tu theu) in Western manuscripts from the 9th to 14th centuries. These chants – known as “Missa Graeca” – have been the subject of academic research for over a hundred years. So far, however, research has been almost exclusively from a Western point of view, without knowledge of the Byzantine sources. For the first time, this book presents an in-depth analysis of these chants and their historical, linguistic and theological-liturgical environment from a Byzantine perspective. The new approach enables the author to refute numerous (and largely contradictory) theories on the origin and development of the Missa Graeca and provides new answers to old questions.

Richard L. Crocker offers in this book and its accompanying compact disc an introduction to the history and meaning of the Gregorian chant. He explains how Gregorian chant began, what functions and meanings it had over time, who heard it and where, and how it was composed, learned, written down and handed on. Crocker explains Gregorian chant and its functions within modern catholic liturgy as well as its position outside this liturgy, where the modern listener may hear it just as music. He describes the origins of the chant in the early Middle Ages, details its medieval development and use, and considers how it survived without, and later with, musical notation. The author probes the paradoxical position of the chant in monastic life -- serving as an expression of liturgical fellowship on the one hand and as the medium of solitary mystic ascent on the other. The book also includes a detailed commentary on each of twenty-six complete chants performed by the Orlando Consort and by the author on the accompanying compact disc. --From publisher's description.

Until the 1960s American jazz, for all its improvisational and rhythmic brilliance, remained rooted in formal Western conventions originating in ancient Greece and early Christian plainchant. At the same time European jazz continued to follow the American model. When the creators of so-called free jazz--Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Anthony Braxton, and others--liberated American jazz from its Western ties, European musicians found their own distinctive voices and created a vital, innovative, and independent jazz culture. Northern Sun, Southern Moon examines this pan-Eurasian musical revolution. Author and musician Mike Heffley charts its development in Scandinavia, Holland, England, France, Italy, and especially (former East and West) Germany. He then follows its spread to former Eastern-bloc countries. Heffley brings to life an evolving musical phenomenon, situating European jazz in its historical, social, political, and cultural contexts and adding valuable material to the still-scant scholarship on improvisation. He reveals a Eurasian genealogy worthy of jazz's well-established African and American pedigrees and proposes startling new implications for the histories of both Western music and jazz.

From Modes to Keys in Early Modern Music Theory addresses one of the broadest and most elusive open topics in music history: the transition from the Renaissance modes to the major and minor keys of the high Baroque. Through deep engagement with the corpus of Western music theory, author Michael R. Dodds presents a model to clarify the factors of this complex shift.