How Sweet the Sound limns the harmonies of religion, hymns, and American culture through an amazing musical and historical panorama. Stowe's stunning exploration of European, Indian, African, and Asian interchanges underscores music's centrality to American spiritual expression and might well inspire readers to break into song themselves.

David Stowe is a historian who understands the power of music to reach the human soul. Adding tools from ethnomusicology, anthropology, folklore studies, and hymnology to his own historiographical tool-kit, he offers convincing, humane, often eloquent accounts of the global give-and-take in which sacred song in America has for centuries been engaged.

Mr. Stowe's observations regarding the relationship between music and spirituality take him to the religious music of Indians, Shakers, Mormons, Moravians, African-Americans, Jews, Buddhists and others...With abundant lyrics, photographs, and musical scores, How Sweet the Sound is a musical feast. Thump to it. Sing with it. Read this book.

With historical anecdotes and deft musical analysis, Stowe...focuses on selected moments, from colonial times to the present, when sacred musical styles emerged, combined with others, or took on whole new colorings.

This book describes the intimate connection between music and spirituality found in such groups as the Shakers and Mormons, and in individuals such as Yossele Rosenblatt, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Wynton Marsalis. Mr. Stowe narrates how the civil rights movement hastened the evolution of 'Amazing Grace' and 'We Shall Overcome' into the secular spirituals and icons of today's American religious culture.

This book by David W. Stowe offers a wide-ranging treatment of the variety of religious music that has characterized the religious expression of generations of American believers, chronicling the evolution and popularity of this music in groups as diverse as the Shakers and American Buddhists.... Stowe has greatly increased our knowledge of the important role that religious music played and continues to play in the lives of average Americans.

Stowe must be read and understood if we are to grasp something of the cultural context which shapes our singing—and how our singing shapes the culture around us, both within and without the church...I strongly recommend the reading of Stowe’s marvelously researched and delightfully written book.