The Music of the English Parish Church: Volume 2

by Nicholas Temperley

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. 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. This volume provides an anthology of parish church music of all kinds from the fifteenth century to the twentieth, newly edited from primary sources for study or for performance.

Genres: Music

220 pages, Paperback

First published December 6, 1979

About the author

Historical musicologist specializing in the Classic and Romantic periods, and in British music of many kinds and periods.

Reviews

[Andrew Marr]

A scholarly survey of music in the parish churches since the Reformation up to current times. Although the emphasis is on music, one can't help learning some social church history along the way, which increases the book's usefulness. One learns that the hymns and Anglican chant that seem to have been around forever are actually rather recent innovations. One thing this book does is take away any desire to take a time machine back to visit any of these parish churches and hear the way people sang there. A accompanying volume contains musical examples referred to in this volume.