Singing the Right Way

Jeffers Engelhardt is an Associate Professor of Music at Amherst College. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Oberlin College, his research deals broadly with music, religion, European identity, and media. His second book, a co-edited volume titled Resounding Transcendence: Transitions in Music, Religion, and Ritual, will also be published by Oxford University Press.

• Table of Contents ; About the Companion Website ; Track Listing ; Maps ; Introduction ; Part 1 ; Chapter 1 - Orthodoxy in Estonia, Estonian Orthodoxy ; Chapter 2 - Right Singing: The Voice of Orthodoxy and Orthopraxy ; Chapter 3 - "Today is an important day here, the birthday of our own religion": Festivity ; and the Secular Enchantments of Right Singing ; Part 2 ; Chapter 4 - "Every bird has its own song": Congregational Singing and the Making of ; Estonian Orthodoxy ; Chapter 5 - Songs of Commemoration and Continuity ; Part 3 ; Chapter 6 - "Life is so simple to live when the corridor you are to walk down has already ; been made": Byzantification and Conversion at the Cathedral of Saint Simeon and the Prophetess Hanna ; Chapter 7 - "We are people of the country, but we worship and Russian-type God": ; Singing the Right Way in Setomaa ; Epilogue ; Appendix ; Bibliography

In this remarkable book, with its abundant musical scores, photographs and audio recordings on a companion website, ethnomusicologist Jeffers Engelhardt enables us to listen in to the wide diapason of sounds and styles which have come to be considered 'right singing' in Orthodox communities in Estonia... The book is intensely human and by the time we come to the end, many of the singers and choir leaders we encounter have almost become our friends, as they obviously have for the author.