'With God's Oldest Friends' is filled with realistic, detailed, and practical information for pastoral caregivers. What makes it unique is its basis in ascetical/mystical theology. Calling the nursing home a true 'dark night of the soul' transformation and spiritual growth of the highest kind. The reader just might feel a strong and urgent call to a deeper level of ministry with people who are on the verge of God. I certainly did. Jane Marie Thibault, Division of Geriatric Medicine, University of Louisville School of Medicine Our feelings of obligation and yet uneasiness about visiting ill people intensify when the ones confined are in nursing homes. This fine volume will be of great help to family members, clergy, and pastoral ministers in facing that situation. Its useful information and practical suggestions should significantly lower discomfort levels and make the obligatory visits much more satisfying experiences for all involved. Rev. Joseph M. Champlin, Rector at Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Syracuse, New York, Author of 'A Thoughtful word, A Healing Touch: A Guide for visiting the Sick'

At the end of his second year in Leipzig, J.S. Bach composed nine sacred cantatas to texts by Leipzig poet Mariane von Ziegler (1695-1760). Despite the fact that these cantatas are Bach's only compositions to texts by a female poet, the works have been largely ignored in the Bach literature. Ziegler was Germany's first female poet laureate, and the book highlights her significance in early eighteenth-century Germany and her commitment to advancing women's rights of self-expression. Peters enriches and enlivens the account with extracts from Ziegler's four published volumes of poetry and prose, and analyses her approach to cantata text composition by arguing that her distinctive conception of the cantata as a genre encouraged Bach's creative musical realizations. In considering Bach's settings of Ziegler's texts, Peters argues that Bach was here pursuing a number of compositional procedures not common in his other sacred cantatas, including experimentation with the order of movements within a cantata, with formal considerations in arias and recitatives, and with the use of instruments, as well as innovative approaches to Vox Christi texts and to texts dealing with speech and silence. A Woman's Voice in Baroque Music is the first book to deal in depth with issues of women in music in relation to Bach, and one of the few comprehensive studies of a specific repertory of Bach's sacred cantatas. It therefore provides a significant new perspective on both Ziegler as poet and cantata librettist and Bach as cantata composer.