Sacred and religious music Books

Book SynopsisSteeped in the Catholic spiritual tradition, The Sacramentality of Music argues that musical experience, in its appeal to the entirety of the human person, can serve as a locus of encounter with the divine and an occasion of God's self-revelation in love, with spiritually nurturing, ultimately transformative, ends. Christina Labriolacontends that this dynamic might most aptly be understood as sacramental, an all-encompassing perspective of the cosmos permeated by the divine creative, salvific, sustaining presence. Through its participation in the mysteries of beauty and creativity, its bodily and affective engagement, and impact on the inner life, music operates sacramentally: manifesting divine realities through the tangible stuff of human experience. In a thematic theological exploration that interweaves pastoral theology, theological aesthetics, and mysticism, the reader is invited to contemplate music's sacramental potentiality and to engage the sacramentally charged music of Beethoven, Bartok, MacMillan, Messiaen, Mozart, Ešenvalds, Bach, Pärt, and Hildegard. In attending to musical ways of relating to God, this book invites readers into a deepening awareness of the sacramental nature of reality itself as that in which the spiritual resonance of music is grounded and reveals afresh, taking musical beauty seriously in the spiritual order with repercussions for Christian living.

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Book SynopsisAncient ideas on sacred sound find a very tangible and lively expression in the practice of kirtan, which is a broad term referring to various forms of devotional singing commonly done in South Asian traditions. Kirtan is a core practice in the Hindu and Sikh faiths that is becoming increasingly popular around the world among people of all ethnicities, thus developing as a transnational and transcultural phenomenon. Indeed, the broader cultural implications and deepening social penetration that this practice has achieved over the past five decades suggest that it is attaining permanent status in the world's religious soundscape. Sacred Sound and the Transcultural Practice of Kirtan explores the practice of kirtan as it has been re-created in the United States, Canada, and Brazil through multi-sided interactions that generate new cultural patterns in an ongoing process of cross-pollination. Approaching kirtan as a type of technology of the self', Gustavo Moura combines textual, historical, and ethnographic sources to address the questions of how this practice is adopted and adapted in the Americas and how it has been shaping identities, communities, and traditions.

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Book SynopsisFather Andrei Papkov's unique textbook is the only book addressing the liturgical performance practices of religious singing in the Russian Orthodox Church. The topics it covers include various aspects of choral work in this tradition, including but not limited to the choice of repertoire, the eight-tone system, Kievan square notation, rehearsal techniques, vocal pedagogy, and the element of time within Orthodox church services. This definitive textbook will be of interest to anyone working, worshipping, or interested in the rich musical tradition of Orthodox Christianity.

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Book SynopsisNow available in this Russian edition, Father Andrei Papkov's unique textbook is the only book addressing the liturgical performance practices of religious singing in the Russian Orthodox Church. The topics it covers include various aspects of choral work in this tradition, including but not limited to the choice of repertoire, the eight-tone system, Kievan square notation, rehearsal techniques, vocal pedagogy, and the element of time within Orthodox church services. This definitive textbook will be of interest to anyone working, worshipping, or interested in the rich musical tradition of Orthodox Christianity.

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