From: elkies@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Renaissance misconceptions (Re: Singers wanted?)
Date: 18 Aug 92 02:59:48 GMT
Organization: Harvard Math Department

In article <2A903996.24465@orion.oac.uci.edu>
jdooley@maemaster.eng.uci.edu (John R. Dooley) writes:
"1.  It seems to me (a non-singer if I want to keep my friends) that
"choral music from the renaissance, such as Josquin des Prez's,
"is more difficult to perform than many later Chorale pieces.  
"Since, this music uses polyphony it's more challenging for the
"singers and (especially) for the choir master.  So, performing
"this music adequately requires an extremely well-trained and
"coherent choir.  
"
"    Whereas, Baroque and Classical choral music can be quite 
"demanding on the soloists, but the parts for the choir as a whole
"are less difficult than parts for a renaissance choir.  

Where did you get that idea?  There's choral music hard and easy,
monophonic and polyphonic, in either the Renaissance or the Baroque
or the Classical period.  If anything, post-Renaissance music often
poses the additional difficulty of coordinating the chorus with
instruments (though one can find a capella Classical music and
accompanied pre-Bach choral music as well).  I'd expect that even a
non-singing musician can readily appreciate the difficulty of, say, the
fugues in Mozart's C-minor mass, let alone Beethoven's Missa Solemnis!

>2.  The size of the choirs for Baroque and Classical music are much
>larger than Renaissance ensembles.

This too is questionable: i) Bach's choirs were generally of a size
comparable to those of Josquin or Schutz or Palestrina. ii) Choruses
much larger than either Bach or Josquin used can perform either
composer's works well.

>                                    Even Renaissance works that are 
>scored for many voices have the singers broken into relatively
>small units.  (For instance, the Tallis 40-part motet "Spem in Alium"
>is designated for 8 5-singer choirs.)

Well, if you think "Spem in Alium" is a typical Renaissance piece, that
could explain a few things...  That piece is about as far from the norm
as one can get, an extravagant tour de force that might even have been
written as a monument (as far as I know there is no record of a
performance in Tallis' time, nor did he publish the piece).
Besides Spem, one would be hard-put to find even a 10-part motet
from the same period.  Usually 3 to 6 parts, with an occasional
7-part motet or 8-part double-chorus piece.

>                                       So, in a way, asking a choir
>that sings Baroque works to sing Renaissance works is a little like
>asking an Early Music Ensemble to perform R. Strauss.  (Well, it's
>a bad analogy but I can't think of a better one.)

Not only a bad analogy but one that goes the wrong way if you're arguing
that modern choirs are too big for Renaissance music.  We can perform
Bach to good effect on the modern piano, an instrument quite different
from Bach's keyboards; in unaccompanied vocal music even the "instrument"
hasn't changed much since the music was written...

--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu)
  Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical