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This unique reference is the first systematic guide to the history of the English-language hymn tune, as represented in printed sources from the earliest (Coverdale's Goostly Psalmes) to 1820. Using a simple numerical code to represent the first two lines of each melody, the book allows the reader to look up any of nearly 20,000 British and American hymn tunes without advance knowledge of the composer, name, or text. Each entry provides an array of information on the tune's first printing, composer, the texts to which it was sung, and its later history. The work contains a historical introduction; a theoretical introduction; chronological and geographical lists of sources; indexes of tunes by name, composer, text, and metre; and tables of concordances with early German and French tunes.

Temperley (music, Univ. of Illinois) has produced a detailed and comprehensive reference tool of the highest quality that indexes the print history of all English-language (including Scottish, Irish, and American) hymn tunes found in books or other printed sources. He provides information including the earliest known version of a tune and its variants, a chronology of printed sources of the tune, and musical information such as key, meter, and the first two lines of music in numeric code. The organization is complex and will be confusing to a first-time or one-time user, but it is logical and will become comprehensible, even elegant, to the initiated. Entries (Volumes 3 and 4) consist of numbers, numeric codes, and abbreviations in small print arranged in five columns. Essays (Volume 1) include an overview of hymnody scholarship and a long technical introduction. Indexes (Volume 2) list tunes by musical incipit (melody), text incipit (first line), name, and composer, as well as tunes for unusual text meters. General readers may be better served by the single-volume Hymns and Tunes: An Index (Scarecrow, 1979), which is easier to use and covers 20th-century material. This four-volume print edition is an abbreviated version of a larger database maintained at the University of Illinois, accessible in limited form on the Internet at . Recommended for academic, theological, and music libraries serving music historians or large public libraries with hymn collections. Marc Meola, Temple Univ. Lib., Philadelphia Copyright 1999 Library Journal Reviews