“I Will Sing the Wondrous Story”: A History of Baptist Hymnody in North America. By David W. Music and Paul A. Richardson. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2008. xvi + 638 pp. $45.00 cloth.

摘要

David Music is professor of church music and director of graduate studies innthe school of music at Baylor University. Paul Richardson is professor ofnmusic in the school of the performing arts at Samford University. Both arenmembers of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada and have anlong and distinguished record of hymnological research and writing. Theynhave teamed up in this book to trace hymnody among Baptists in NorthnAmerica from its British roots in the early seventeenth century to thenbeginning of the twenty-first century. Organized as a narrative in tennchapters, it moves from the British roots through the beginnings of Baptistnmusic or its absence in America, early hymnals, early regional nineteenth-ncentury collections, mid-nineteenth-century sectional and denominationalncollections, the Civil War, Sunday School and Gospel songs, late nineteenth-ncentury hymnals, “denominational” ones in the twentieth century, and thensplintering at the end of the twentieth century viewed through grids liken“reformers” and “revolutionaries.” In the process, Baptist leaders and groupsnare considered and their various views and conflicts described.