xxi + 211 pp.Published in three parts, vols. A48, A49, A50

ix + 215 pp.Publishined in three volumes, A48, A49, and A50

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, most Americans probably encountered European classical music primarily through hymn tunes. Hymnody was the most popular and commercially successful genre of the antebellum period in the United States, and the unquenchable thirst for new tunes to sing led to a phenomenon largely forgotten today: in their search for fresh material, editors lifted hundreds of tunes from the works of major classical composers to use as settings of psalms and hymns. The few that remain popular today millions have sung "Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee" to Beethoven and "Hark, The Herald Angels Sing" to Mendelssohn are vestiges of one of the most distinctive trends in antebellum music-making. Gems of Exquisite Beauty is the first in-depth study of the historical rise and fall of this adaptation practice, its artistic achievements, and its place in nineteenth-century American musical life. It traces the contributions of pioneering figures like Arthur Clifton and the impact of bestsellers like the Handel and Haydn Society Collection, which helped turn Lowell Mason into America's most influential musician. By telling the tales of these hymns and those who brought them into the world, author Peter Mercer-Taylor reveals a central part of the history of how the American public first came to meet and creatively engage with Europe's rich musical practices.

Pro Ecclesia is a quarterly journal of theology published by the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology.

The scholar Robin A. Leaver holds a unique place in sacred music scholarship because of his training in both music and theology. He has written widely, bringing acute insights on a variety of musical repertories and topics related to Martin Luther, sixteenth-century psalmody, hymnody, and the sacred music of Johann Sebastian Bach. In Music and Theology, twelve scholars influenced by Leaver's work contribute essays in diverse areas of sacred music history and philosophy, focusing on the intersection of music and theology. Ranging chronologically from the twelfth-century writer and composer Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) to present-day considerations of American church music and worship, the volume provides thought-provoking new work for all who study church music. Reflecting the prominent emphasis in Leaver's own scholarship, eight chapters deal with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, including his organ music, sacred cantatas, and passion settings. A final chapter provides a chronological listing of Leaver's own voluminous writings on music and theology.

The treatise on musica plana and musica mensurabilis written by Lambertus/Aristoteles is our main witness to thirteenth-century musical thought in the decades between the treatises of Johannes de Garlandia and Franco of Cologne. Most treatises on music of this century - except for Franco‘s treatise on musical notation - survive in only a single copy; Lambertus‘s Ars musica, extant in five sources, is thus distinguished by a more substantial and long-lasting manuscript tradition. Unique in its ambitions, this treatise presents both the rudiments of the practice of liturgical chant and the principles of polyphonic notation in a dense and rigorous manner like few music treatises of its time - a conceptual framework characteristic of Parisian university culture in the thirteenth century. This new edition of Lambertus‘s treatise is the first since Edmond de Coussemaker‘s of 1864. Christian Meyer‘s meticulous edition is displayed on facing pages with Karen Desmonds English translation, and the treatise and translation are prefaced by a substantial introduction to the text and its author by Christian Meyer, translated by Barbara Haggh-Huglo.