Announcement of Professor Laszlo Dobszay’s forthcoming publication

The NLM has mentioned this title before. In fact it appears in the NLM sidebar under forthcoming publications, but this is now a more formal announcement coming from the publisher who has taken on this new book:

The Restoration and Development of the Roman Rite
Edited and with a foreword by Laurence Paul Hemming
T&T Clark London , July 2009, 240pp, app. £25.00
ISBN 9780567033864

From the Publisher:

The Restoration and Development of the Roman Rite will further the debate about liturgy at an advanced level of serious, scholarly, measured analysis combining historical, philosophical, musicological and liturgical research.

This book advances a provocative and controversial set of proposals for the development of future liturgical reform in its attempt to re-engage with a traditional sense of the Roman Rite. The author, Prof Laszlo Dobszay is uniquely placed to make the case he does: a mediævalist and musicologist of unparalleled experience and breadth, Dobszay combines – almost uniquely – a profound knowledge of the history of the development of the Roman Rite – especially the Antiphonary – with a personal interest and passionate concern for the lived experience of the rite itself.

The result is a lively and vigorous text based around the idea of the actual liturgical sense of the Roman Rite – meaning a respect for its integrity as an historical tradition that found multiform expression across Europe and also across at least 1600 years, combined with a sympathy for the fact that the rite is still a living entity with a long future ahead of it. Dobszay provides an introduction to the whole meaning of liturgical study and the liturgical sense, scholarly insight, and practical understanding. The text is divided into two sections – an introductory section giving background and history and a rationale for the second section which, segment by segment, examines the current state of the Roman Rite and makes constructive proposals for its development. The text is a provocation – it will certainly excite both considerable hostility and sympathy from a wide range of quarters from conservative to radical wings of the discussion.

The Restoration and Development of the Roman Rite will publish in July 2009. It will be the first volume in the new T&T Clark Studies in Fundamental Liturgy, edited by Susan Frank Parsons and Laurence Paul Hemming. The series will offer cutting edge scholarship from all disciplines related to liturgical study which seek to reintegrate biblical, patristic, historical, dogmatic and philosophical questions with liturgical study in ways faithful and sympathetic to classical liturgical enquiry. Volumes in the series include monographs, translations of recent texts and edited collections around very specific themes. Other forthcoming volumes in the series will include The Collects of the Roman Missal by Lauren Pristas (September 2009) and Being Liturgical. The Subject of Worship by Laurence Paul Hemming (November 2009).