Registered Charity No. 1200306
President: The Most Reverend Bernard Longley, Archbishop of Birmingham
The CMS exists to promote the use of church music of the highest quality for the diverse needs of the Christian Church.
We seek to enable performers and worship leaders, composers and scholars, by publishing church music, new and old, not otherwise commercially available, and by providing a platform for research and educational material.
New Publications include the Missa Verbum supernum and motet Tantum Ergo by Rupert Jeffcoat (with flexible scoring for either 2-part upper and lower voices or SATB, with organ), another issue in our series of Great 16th-c. Responds edited by Sally Dunkley, Homo quidam by Thomas Tallis (suitable for use at communion), and the verse anthem If we believe that Jesus died by Louisa Bagot, first performed at St George's Chapel, Windsor, in 1808. For new additions to the 'Music Downloads' and 'Lectures and Papers' sections, see below.
Coming soon: the Preces and Responses by David Trendell (1964-2014). Formerly Organist and Lecturer in Music at King's College, London, Director of Music at the Priory Church of St Bartholomew the Great and at St Mary's, Bourne St, David Trendell composed these Preces and Responses c.1985 during his time as Organ Scholar at Exeter College, Oxford. Recently brought to light by Jeremy Summerly, they have been broadcast twice on BBC Radio 3’s Choral Evensong in 2023, from St Luke’s Chelsea, and the Edington Music Festival.
The most substantial recent addition to Music Downloads is a new reconstruction of the The Sixth Service by Thomas Weelkes by the General Editor. Two published reconstructions exist of this Magnificat and Nunc dimittis (Walsh 1990 & James 2001), but this new version offers a number of different solutions to the problem of the missing parts. Also newly added is a collection of several 16th-century settings of The Lord's Prayer, supplementing those already available in the two published volumes of early Preces & Responses. This contains two early anonymous settings from the Wanley Partbooks, three by William Daman and one each by William Parsons and John Sheppard. The two from the Wanley collection are for lower voices; one of these, for four voices using the shortened form of text ending after 'deliver us from evil', is also available in an adapted form for SATB.
Newly added to the Lectures and Papers section: '‘For the King’s Day’: the royal anthems of Thomas Weelkes', by the General Editor. This paper is based on the Church Music Society lecture that was given in Chichester as part of the Southern Cathedrals Festival in 2023, the 400th anniversary of the death of Thomas Weelkes.
Please read our ‘Membership’ page and consider taking up the benefits of becoming a member of the Society.
Please visit our ‘Catalogue’ through which you can order our titles from our publishers, Oxford University Press, or from Banks Music Publications (with 25% discount from Banks if a Society member).