For those who are interested in worship and music, we want to highlight a fairly recent book by Wendy J. Porter, Worship, Music, and Interpretation: Exploratory Essays, McMaster General Studies Series 16 (Eugene, OR: MDC Press/Pickwick, 2024). Although the subtitle seems to indicate that the contents in this book are tentative and exploratory, there is much research and expert knowledge that spans from ancient to modern times and from a variety of perspectives. In the Preface, Porter writes:

One of the distinctives in this volume is that it contains scholarly work in the areas of musicology and worship studies that addresses topics from ancient times to the present. Those who address this range of topics are relatively few, I realize, but I have enjoyed the opportunity to bring together a range of skills and interests, from my practice as a contemporary worship musician with several published CDs, from classical music training, from research in ancient studies relating to music and some pertaining to Greek, and from my own PhD research in musicology, as well as an ongoing practice of theological reflection on the nature of Christian worship past and present to be able to address some of these issues.

This volume contains 17 chapters including the introduction, with the table of contents listed below:

Ch 1 – An Introduction to Worship, Music, and Interpretation

Part 1 – Music and Interpretation in the Early Church

Ch 2 – Liturgical and Musical Interpretation
Ch 3 – Music and the Early Church
Ch 4 – Creeds and Hymns in the Early Church
Ch 5 – A Word about Women, Music, and Sensuality in the Early Church
Ch 6 – Ekphonetic Notation in LIturgical Manuscripts
Ch 7 – Is Early Christian Music Jewish or Greco-Roman?
Ch 8 – Romanos Melodus and the Ancient Christian Musical Tradition

Part 2 – Musical Traditions and Interpretations

Ch 9 – The Composer as Interpreter of the Bible
Ch 10 – Resurrection in the Western Wind Credos of Taverner, Sheppard, and Tye
Ch 11 – Images of Christ in Credos or Bach, Beethoven, and Stravinsky
Ch 12 – Sacred Music at the Turn of the Millennia
Ch 13 – Contemporary Worship Songs and Suffering
Ch 14 – Christian Worship and the Toronto Blessing
Ch 15 – William Byrd, Reformation Liturgy, and Contemporary Worship

Part 3 – The Past and Present of Music and Worship

Ch 16 – New Songs in Biblical and Christian History
Ch 17 – Theological Reflections on the History of Christian Worship

Those interested in getting a wider and deeper understanding of Christian music in its historical context, as well as from a variety of perspectives, will be sure to find this volume informative, thought provoking, and enlightening. Certainly, those involved in leading worship in their local churches, and pastors of these local churches, will greatly benefit from going through the contents of this book, to give a broader vision and context of worship and music, for understanding why we do (or why we should not do) what we do today in our churches.

— David I. Yoon