Page 49 - Church Music Quarterly June 2019

ALL THE LATEST REVIEWS ARE AVAILABLE ONLINE AT WWW.RSCM.COM/REVIEWS
of the daily routine of the choir. One does not need to be a present or former chorister to enjoy reading this well-researched evocation of what is indeed a special world. Julian Elloway
SINGING
CHORAL AND VOCAL SIGHT SINGING AND KEYBOARD HARMONY
NANCY LITTEN
Alfred Music
Singer edition: 56pp. P/B 20173UK £9.95 Pianist edition: 84pp. P/B 20172UK £12.95
These books provide carefully graded sight singing practice at the same time as teaching pianists keyboard harmony as they accompany the exercises from chord symbols. The books are well- structured and systematic in the way new keys and chords are gradually introduced. Each stage includes exercises for the singers intended to be practised as well as sight read, along with accompanied songs. I’m not sure in what way it is for ‘choral’ sight reading more than any other sight singing book – the vocal line throughout is a single line and in the treble clef.
The ‘pianist edition’ encourages pianists to experiment with varied examples of realizations of chords and different styles of accompaniment.
It also sensibly explains the ways chords are described and makes easy sense of what can be otherwise be confusing. It includes chord examples and practice routines, and at the back are charts with every chord you are likely to come across in every key. One chord per bar is used at first with more frequent changes in later chapters. Cross-references in the piano book
to the relevant page number in the ‘singer edition’ would have made the pianist’s task easier when working with singers.
One surprise is to come across Jerusalem notated with a minim
beat as if in 3/2 but given a 6/4 time signature. This is even explained:
‘6/4 is six crotchets in a bar (in 3 groups of 2)’. Er, no! But otherwise this is a sound course that will encourage pianists and choir directors to develop their keyboard harmony skills while working on sight singing.
Julian Elloway
MUSIC AS AN ART
ROGER SCRUTON
Bloomsbury: 261pp.
H/B 978-1-4729-5571-5 £25.00
Devotees of Sir Roger Scruton will enjoy this book. It predictably attacks Boulez, Adorno, Schoenberg and Stockhausen among others along
with Marxism, controversial opera productions, pop and rock music, even a passing jibe at Islamists (who wish to replace Western civilization, including classical music, with barbarism).
It refers to ‘our generation’ or ‘my generation’ (Scruton was born in 1944) and is uneasy with much of the culture of succeeding generations. David Matthews (born 1943) is the only living composer with a chapter to himself. So far, so predictable – the author is renowned as a conservative polemicist. What is disappointing is the lack of a structured argument
to take us through the book from ‘When is a Tune?’ to ‘The Culture of Pop’. No less than 8 of the 17 chapters are adapted from previous publications or lectures and the individual parts
are not welded into a bigger whole. Constant reference to the index will help the reader to jump to and fro as necessary, so when, for example, we read praise of George Rochberg (1918–2005) and his quartet variations on Pachelbel’s Canon, surprisingly at the culmination of Chapter 16 ‘The Music of the Future’, a memory of having encountered that name leads
us via the index to the relevant pages
in Chapter 5.
Music as an art for use in worship makes occasional appearances, mostly
CHURCH MUSIC QUARTERLY JUNE 2019 55
in the first chapter. We read that ‘Hymns Ancient and Modern has more or less disappeared from our churches; the Anglican Hymn Book ... is itself being replaced by Mission Praise which shows a marked preference for the happy-clappy over the solemn and patriotic’; the ‘old tunes’ have been replaced by ‘kitsch’. A recurrent theme throughout the book is the distinction between kitsch or cliché and expressive sentiment. Readers who agree will hardly need this book to reinforce them in their views. Those who disagree will find much to argue with in these provocative but disorganized chapters.
HAUNTED BY CHRIST: MODERN WRITERS AND THE STRUGGLE FOR FAITH RICHARD HARRIES
SPCK: 233pp.
H/B 978-0-281-07933-9 £19.99; P/B 978-0-281-07934-6 £9.99
Much of Haunted by Christ is also based on previous publications or lectures, but there is a structured continuum from the opening discussion of Dostoevsky’s ‘Furnace
of Doubt’ to Marilynne Robinson’s affirmation of a Christian life ‘taking seriously the biblical revelation of a wise and loving God’. Harries considers the work of 20 writers within 15 chapters. Emily Dickinson, Gerald Manly Hopkins, Auden, Eliot, Muir and Mackay Brown are among the poets discussed who themselves referred
to music and singing or wrote words that acted as stimuli for composers. Although not a book specifically about music, these reflections about how poets have wrestled with their Christian faith will resonate with many musicians. Julian Elloway
THINKING ABOUT MUSIC
You will find reviews of recent printed music publications in this issue of Sunday by Sunday (no. 89). All the latest reviews are available online at www.rscm.com/reviews
Printed music and books (not CDs) reviewed by the RSCM, with the occasional exception of private publications, can be obtained from RSCM Music Direct. Tel: +44 (0)845 021 7726; fax: +44 (0)845
021 8826; email: musicdirect@rscm.com
Items for review should be sent to the Reviews Editor, Ashleigh House, Cirencester Road, Minchinhampton, Stroud, Glos GL6 9EL. Tel:
+44 (0)7879 406048; email: cmqreviews@rscm.com