Sacred Music: Home

Sacred Music is the official journal of the Church Music Association of America, and the oldest continuously published journal of music in North America. It is the essential resource for every Church musician, professional or amateur, who is interested in the restoration of the sacred in Catholic liturgical life.

The Yale Journal of Music & Religion (YJMR) is published twice yearly by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, an interdisciplinary graduate center that educates leaders who foster, explore, and study engagement with the sacred through music, worship, and the arts in Christian communities, diverse religious traditions, and public life.

"The official publication of the American Choral Directors Association is Choral Journal. This national publication, issued monthly, contains articles and columns of a scholarly and practical nature in addition to reviews of newly released CD recordings, books, and printed music."

"Early Music is a stimulating and richly illustrated journal that is unrivalled in its field. Founded in 1973, it remains the journal for anyone interested in early music and how it is being interpreted today. Contributions from scholars and performers of international standing explore every aspect of earlier musical repertoires, present vital new evidence for our understanding of the music of the past, and tackle controversial issues of performance practice. Each issue contains a wide range of thought-provoking articles on performance practice. New discoveries of musical sources, instruments, and documentation are regularly featured, and innovatory approaches to research and performance are explored, often in collections of themed articles."

"THE HYMN is a peer-reviewed journal of congregational song for church musicians, clergy, scholars, poets, and others with varied backgrounds and interests. A journal of research and opinion, containing practical and scholarly articles, THE HYMN reflects diverse cultural and theological identities, and also provides exemplary hymn texts and tunes in various styles."

"Das Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie (JLH) wird von Jörg Neijenhuis, Daniela Wissemann-Garbe, Alexander Deeg, Michael Meyer-Blanck, Irmgard Scheitler, Matthias Schneider und Helmut Schwier in Verbindung mit der Internationalen Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Hymnologie und dem Interdisziplinären Arbeitskreis Gesangbuchforschung Mainz, dem Liturgiewissenschaftlichen Institut Leipzig und der Liturgischen Konferenz herausgegeben. 1955 wurde es von Konrad Ameln, Christhard Mahrenholz und Karl Ferdinand Müller begründet."

An online magazine dealing with news concerning contemporary Christian music.

Official Magazine of the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.

This 55-volume resource contains the authoritative texts of hundreds of medieval hymns

"Since the appearance of The Bay Psalm Book in 1640, music has served as a defining factor for American religious experience. Music is crucial to the maintenance of the belief systems that account for multiculturalism in American denominationalism. The sacred musics of North America symbolize the unifying factors of worship shaping the historical landscape, and give voice to the diversity that distinguishes the religious experiences as American. This book studies the ways in which music shapes the distinctive presence of religion in the United States and Canada." -OUP

"This fully updated second edition is a selective annotated bibliography of all relevant published resources relating to church and worship music in the United States. Over the past decade, there has been a growth of literature covering everything from traditional subject matter such as the organ works of J.S. Bach to newer areas of inquiry including folk hymnology, women and African-American composers, music as a spiritual healer, to the music of Mormon, Shaker, Moravian, and other smaller sects. With multiple indices, this book will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field." - Routledge

"It was natural, therefore, in the ordinary course of events, that someone should come forward and try to bring within the limits of a book of reference the enormous mass of facts which surround our national hymnology. It is impossible to give too much credit to the Rev. John Julian for his courage in facing such a task, or too much praise for the admirable manner in which he has fulfilled it. The result of his labours is a volume of 1,6oo pages, closely printed, abounding with facts of the greatest interest. People talk of the romance of hymn tunes and their composers, but the romance of hymns and their authors is not a whit the less thrilling and fascinating.” - Musical Times and Singing Class Circular"

"The three writers examined in Richard Arnold’s Trinity of Discord, Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and William Cowper, are known as famous poets, but are also the greatest and most popularly compiled and used hymn-writers of all time. While masters of their kind, they were so remarkably different, considering they were working in the same (and quite new) genre. Moreover, when considered in their poetic-historical contexts, it is noteworthy that Watts can be seen as an archetypal Neoclassicist (not unlike Pope and Johnson), Wesley as a transitional pre-Romantic (not unlike Gray and Collins), and Cowper a thoroughgoing Romantic (not unlike Wordsworth and Coleridge, but with a much sharper psychological edge). Most noteworthy is that Watts, Wesley, and Cowper come before their later counterparts and their respective movements: their importance to mainstream or canonical literary history cannot be overestimated." - Peter Lang

"The Encyclopedia of American Gospel Music is the first comprehensive reference to cover this important American musical form. Coverage includes all aspects of both African-American and white gospel from history and performers to recording techniques and styles as well as the influence of gospel on different musical genres and cultural trends." - Routledge

"This is an anthology of 250 hymns plus one, with a foreword by Timothy Dudley‐Smith, one of the greatest living hymn writers (the two hundred and fifty‐first hymn, which is a postscript to the anthology, is by him).... Each of the 250 hymns has a textual, critical, and historical annotation, indicating the circumstances of publication, the church history of the time, and the development of the text, and then drawing attention to special features of the work. The hymns are divided into sections, beginning with ‘Ancient and Medieval Hymns’ (in translation) and continuing through the centuries to the final section, ‘The Mid‐Twentieth Century, and the Hymn Explosion’. Some attention is also paid to the tunes to which each hymn has been set, and their composers, although the tunes are not printed." - OUP

"This compact, attractive volume is more than an abbreviation of the Harvard Dictionary of Music. It has been written with a particular reader in mind: the amateur in the best sense of the word, whether a high school student learning his instrument or an adult with a serious interest in music but without advanced technical training. The Brief Dictionary eliminates many entries of interest only to musicologists, and devotes ample space to informative discussions of such subjects as Symphony, Concerto, and Song. It is written in a straightforward, readable style, and avoids excessive technical terminology. The emphasis is on music which the amateur or student is likely to play or hear performed, and numerous figures and drawings of instruments clarify or illustrate the text." - Harvard University Press