Product Description

The definitive collection of 100 anthems, mostly for SATB voices, from Tudor times to the present day, including favourites from each period, and lesser-known pieces. Keyboard reductions are included for unaccompanied music, and organ accompaniments are always practical.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #36858 in Books
• Published on: 1994-12-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 592 pages

Review
The New Church Anthem Book is one of the finest collections of sacred music ever collected in one volume, and its use throughout the universal church will offer great hope for the future of church music well into the next century. Oxford University Press deserves the highest praise for this project. Every person involved in church music should own at least one volume for reference. (Creator )

The print is OUP clarity itself throughout . . . Dr Dakers has performed an epoch-making task and the book is wholeheartedly to be commended . . . It represents a musical milestone . . . a thing of beauty as well as a fairly precise record of current taste. (Organists' Review )

Customer Reviews

Probably the best single book you can buy for a church choir
Take a good look at the "Look Inside" samples - they'll tell you all you need to know. If that's too much hassle ...

If you poke about in the place where they store the music in an English parish church with a well-established choir, one of the books you can be pretty sure to find, along with the first two parts of Carols for Choirs and the Parish Psalter with Chants, is a green hardback called the Church Anthem Book. 60 years after the old green one was published, this is the revamp, replacing about a third of the pieces. There are plenty of old standards like the Elgar and Mozart Ave Verums, and well-chosen less obvious material. The music is not all easy but a reasonable choir should be able to sing all or most of it. There are suggestions about what to use when.

Practical aspects: All the anthems are clearly printed in a consistent format, with the vocal ranges indicated. The book uses good quality paper and is properly bound with sewn signatures, so should last as long as the old ones. The new version is quite a bit larger, which is no bad thing. It's also heavier, but these are mostly short pieces, so that's not really a problem.

If you're in the (fairly rare) situation of setting up a new church choir, put this one close to the top of your shopping list.