Christian Music in Jerusalem: The First Two Thousand Years (Jenny Stanford Series on Sacred Music)

This book brings together several decades of research on the topic, including the last two decades of the author’s own research. Each specific point of view was either formed beforehand or emerged in the  process of ethnography and its analysis. The book explores various aspects of autochthonous Christian music in Jerusalem and other localities in Israel. It covers aspects such as the music of iconic Christian places in Jerusalem; fieldwork, documentation, and research of the local Christian tradition and its music; and longitudinal perspectives and cross-cultural environment. Other topics include historical connections (albeit hypothetical and not based on direct evidence of any kind or source) between Christian music heard and performed in the churches of Jerusalem and its predecessors in Second Temple practices, the earliest Christian music in the area, and other sources with varying historical depth. The book presents a wide range of topics related to the history and modernity of Christian music through the eyes of a scholar from Jerusalem, a city that encompasses the musical traditions of 10 officially represented churches, not to mention their subdivisions, as well as several other, officially unrepresented denominations.