When Bernarr Rainbow was director of music at the College of St Mark and St John, Chelsea, he came across the 1849 diary of service music of Thomas Helmore. Astonished at its breadth of repertoire, he was inspired to investigate the circumstances of the document. His findings are recorded in this book, which sets Thomas Helmore's contribution in perspective against the background of the Choral Revival as a whole.In tracing the history of the remarkable revival of care for the music of the liturgy, the author produced a socio-musical history of a period vital in the evolution of the Anglican...

First published 1967, long out of print, and now reprinted in full by kind permission of Novello and company, this book fills a gap that has long existed. It is the outcome of serious scholarly research, fully documented. More than a book about musical education, it is also a social history of education; yet always the general, social and educational references are related to the main theme - singing from symbols. Various methods are described and the author shows how these interact, ending with that -agent of synthesis- John Curwen. Everyone who teaches music, or is training to teach music,...

This volume presents reprints of the prefaces to representative collections of metrical psalms. Psalm-singing, an essentially popular form of music, required some musical knowledge in the singers, and it was in these prefaces that the compilers gave basic information on the staves, clefs and note-values of contemporary notation. Dr Rainbow's introduction is a fascinating guide to the changing tastes and needs shown by the carefully selected reprints.