Language English Media type Print (paperback) Originally published 1928 ISBN 9780193533158 Country United Kingdom | Publication date 1928 Pages 480 Page count 480 Publisher Oxford University Press | |
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Editor Percy Dearmer, Martin Shaw & Ralph Vaughan Williams Subject Sheet Music - Religious Similar Percy Dearmer books, Other books | ||
The Oxford Book of Carols is a collection of vocal scores of Christmas carols. It was first published in 1928 by Oxford University Press and was edited by Percy Dearmer, Martin Shaw and Ralph Vaughan Williams. It became a widely used source of carols in among choirs and church congregations in Britain.
Contents
History
Vaughan Williams was a noted composer and arranger of music in the Anglican Church and a founder member of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. He was a scholar of English folk-song and his music was greatly influenced by traditional folk forms. Vaughan Williams had collaborated with Percy Dearmer on the production of the English Hymnal, which was published in 1906, and as with this hymnal, the Oxford Book of Carols favoured traditional folk tunes and polyphonic arrangements of carols, instead of the Victorian hymn tunes that Vaughan Williams considered to be over-sentimental and Germanic in tone. Vaughan Williams in particular drew on music from his own childhood and his scholarship of English folk music, and was driven by his conviction that the music of ordinary people should be valued.
Editions
The Oxford Book of Carols has been reissued in several editions. It was re-engraved and reset in 1964 by OUP and the page size of the new edition is larger but the content is the same. The most recent impression is dated January 26, 1984 and is still in print.
The New Oxford Book of Carols was published in 1992 by OUP. Anthologists Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott make few references to OBC in their Introduction and their aim appears the same as Dearmer's in 1928. The enormous task was shared by both sets of anthologists and Keyte and Parrott issued The Shorter New Oxford Book of Carols in 1993.