We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
To save content items to your account,
please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies.
If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account.
Find out more about saving content to .
To save content items to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org
is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings
on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part
of your Kindle email address below.
Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations.
‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi.
‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
BROADLY SPEAKING, the gospel singing tradition encompasses the repertory of evangelical Christian hymns that emerged in the wake of religious revival movements from the late nineteenth century. While contemporary gospel music performance is most commonly associated with African American populations in the United States, its associated repertoire became highly popular among white evangelical Christians, both in the United States and in the United Kingdom. The two main compilations from which they drew, containing what became known as gospel ‘songs’, are Ira D. Sankey's Sacred Songs and Solos, first published in 1873, and Redemption Songs, first published in 1899.
One of the most unusual – or at least, the most unexpected – manifestations of the British gospel singing tradition was practiced among Scottish fishermen during the mid-twentieth century, facilitated largely by maritime radio. Gospel singing over the ships’ radio was enabled by the introduction of radio telephony to the North-East Scottish fishing fleets in 1949–50, and reached its height between 1950 and 1965. Radio was a leading medium for the transmission of this music into the lives of fisher families both at sea and on land during this period – indeed, radio singers have often been visible members of their own religious alliances when at home – and created a shared acoustic space within which all community members, whether at sea or on land, could live and work. The communal singing functioned as a means of expressing their faith among like-minded colleagues, and the hymn texts they chose suggested a shared set of core beliefs and values. In addition, radio provided a platform for gifted singers to broadcast themselves to a captive audience, contributing to a gradual movement towards professionalizing and commodifying local gospel music during the latter half of the twentieth century.
This chapter examines how the practice contributed to and strengthened the cultural and spiritual lives of inhabitants of North-East coastal communities, creating what ethnomusicologist Tong Soon Lee might describe as a ‘sacred acoustic space’ within which this distinctive religious and socio-economic group lived and worked. Radio and other media technology have been criticized in the past for creating a state of what R. Murray Schafer dubbed ‘schizophonia’, the splitting of sound from its original source.
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
For centuries, the sea and those who sail upon it have inspired the imaginations of British musicians. Generations of British artists have viewed the ocean as a metaphor for the mutable human condition - by turns calm and reflective, tempestuous and destructive - and have been influenced as much by its physical presence as by its musical potential. But just as geographical perspectives and attitudes on seascapes have evolved over time, so too have cultural assumptions about their meaning and significance. Changes in how Britons have used the sea to travel, communicate, work, play, and go to war have all irresistibly shaped the way that maritime imagery has been conceived, represented, and disseminated in British music. By exploring the sea's significance within the complex world of British music, this book reveals a network of largely unexamined cultural tropes unique to this island nation. The essays are organised around three main themes: the Sea as Landscape, the Sea as Profession, and the Sea as Metaphor, covering an array of topics drawn from the seventeenth century to the twenty-first. Featuring studies of pieces by the likes of Purcell, Arne, Sullivan, Vaughan Williams, and Davies, as well as examinations of cultural touchstones such as the BBC, the Scottish fishing industry, and the Aldeburgh Festival, The Sea in the British Musical Imagination will be of interest to musicologists as well as scholars in history, British studies, cultural studies, and English literature.
ERIC SAYLOR is Associate Professor of Musicology at Drake University.
CHRISTOPHER M. SCHEER is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Utah State University.
CONTRIBUTORS: Byron Adams, Jenny Doctor, Amanda Eubanks Winkler, James Brooks Kuykendall, Charles Edward McGuire, Alyson McLamore, Louis Niebur, Jennifer Oates, Eric Saylor, Christopher M. Scheer, Aidan J. Thomson, Justin Vickers, Frances Wilkins
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)
Edited by
Eric Saylor, Associate Professor, musicology (Drake University),Christopher M. Scheer, Associate Professor, musicology (Utah State University)