The Church Music Society
Registered Charity No. 1200306
President: The Most Reverend Bernard Longley, Archbishop of Birmingham
Welcome
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.
Dr Simon Lindley, 1948-2025
The Church Music Society remembers, with gratitude and great affection, our Vice-President, Dr Simon Lindley, who died on 25 February. Organist and Master of the Music at Leeds Minster 1975-2016, President of the Royal College of Organists 2000-2003 and of the Incorporated Association of Organists 2003-2005, he was the long-serving Secretary of the Church Music Society from 1991 to 2023.
For more than three decades Simon was the most prominent public face of the Society and its most tireless ambassador, the most generous of friends to its members and the most enthusiastic advocate for its work.
He was a consummate musician, deeply appreciative of and knowledgeable about church music across the denominational spectrum, and a great, though humble servant of all that is best in worship in the house of God. May he rest in peace.
News and Updates
New Publications include a reconstruction of the Evening Service by Daniel Roseingrave, composed for Winchester Cathedral in the 1680s, the Ascension Hymn from 1913 by Charles Wood, and Three Carol Arrangements ('I Saw Three Ships', 'Stille Nacht/Silent Night' and 'The Holly and the Ivy') by Martindale Sidwell, formerly Director of Music at Hampstead Parish Church and St Clement Dane's in London.
Forthcoming Publications
These include contrafacta of two eight-part madrigals by Robert Pearsall with texts for use at Communion and Benediction – Tantum ergo and O salutaris Hostia – adapted by Patrick Russill, and a collection of Restoration-period music for upper voices, edited by Myles Hartley.
Free Music Downloads
Two settings of the Evening Canticles have recently been added to Music Downloads – a new reconstruction of the The Sixth Service by Thomas Weelkes, and a setting in E Major from 1812 by Exeter-based composer Lucy Moseley – together with a collection of several 16th-century settings of The Lord's Prayer, supplementing those already available in the two printed volumes of early Preces & Responses.
Lectures and Papers
The two most recent additions to Lectures and Papers are a study of 19th-C. liturgical music by women composers sung at St George's Chapel, Windsor, and at Canterbury Cathedral (which ties in with the recent publication of the anthem If we believe that Jesus died by Louisa Bagot), and a paper on the 'royal' anthems of Thomas Weelkes marking the 400th anniversary is his death in 1623, based on the CMS lecture delivered at the Southern Cathedrals Festival in July.
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).
