From: inr@eccles.caltech.edu (I. Neill Reid)
Subject: re: Renaissance music misconceptions
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Organization: California Institute of Technology
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 16:38:00 GMT

>From: elkies@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)

>>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
  [ sections omitted ]

  Agreed - but I think the main problem with tackling Renaissance music
is that the style of the music is much less familiar - so that makes it
particularly off-putting for amateur/community choirs. Everybody has
heard some Mozart & Bach - few have heard Tallis, Byrd, Lassus or
even Monteverdi. Then its the old Catch 22 - the style is unfamiliar, 
so you don't perform it; and you don't perform it because the style is 
unfamiliar. 

>>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.

True - cf. David Hills & the Westminster Cathedral Choir, or the 
various Oxbridge chapel choirs. But it gets difficult with even 
a 50+ voice choir - you have to go for resonance and sonority and you 
tend to lose clarity amongst the inner voices - so that limits the
repertoire. The Byrd or Josquin `Ave Maria', with long, slow moving phrases,
can be done - but I couldn't see Josquin's Missa L'Homme Arme Sexti Tonni 
ever working. I've heard some Monteverdi recordings with massive
choirs and they're mush. 


>>                                    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.

 They're not common, but they're not that rare - Spem in alium was
written in response to Alessandro Striggio's 34-part (I think)
motet `Ecce beata hominem' and the piece was performed at least once 
in Tallis' lifetime at Arundel house. It was also performed at
the weddings of James VI & I two sons (William, if memory
serves,  in 1610 and Charles in 1616) (and at the Proms on the occasion 
of a more recent royal wedding). 
There's nothing else that quite gets up there with
that many parts - after all, Tallis seems to have written it mainly
to prove that home-grown English talent could out-womp those
pretentious foreigners. However. there is also the 19-part motet 
`O bone Jesu' by Robert Carver (written for James IV Chapel Royal at 
Stirling and including 11 parts for tenors - what an excellent choice), 
and a 10-part mass by the same composer; there's the
12-part Earthquake mass `Et ecce terrae' by Antoine Brumel; there
is the 8-part requiem by Duarte Lobo; there are several Lassus 8-part
motets, Osculetur me is the best known; there are several 8-10 part 
pieces by Isaac; by Gabrieli - in fact, there is a lot of double-choir
writing by the Venetians (including Monteverdi) for St. Mark. 
 But I agree that 4-6 parts are more common.

 While we're on the subject, let me put in a plug for one of the
best renaissance (well, counter-renaissance) recordings I've heard for a
long time - the Fourth book of Lamentations of Jeremiah written by
Palestrina (5-6 voices). These are complete settings of the text
sung on the three days immediately prior to Easter. I suspect most
people, if they're familiar with any of the Tenebrae Responses or 
Lamentations, will know the Vittoria set or the two settings by Tallis.
Well, the Palestrina set has just been recorded on the Allegro label by 
Pro Cantione Antiqua under Bruno Turner. The settings are, if anything, 
more introspective and reflective than the Vittoria - not music for big 
choirs - and are well matched to the darker hues of the all-male PCA. 
This is far removed from the better known Palestrina of the Missa
Pappae Marcelli, Tu es Petrus, and Hodie Cne.
The performances are marvellous, as you'd expect from an ensemble thats 
been together for nearly 20 years now and a director who has been 
responsible for preparing many of the best performing editions of 
renaissance music. 

 Neill Reid    inr@eccles.caltech.edu
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical