Choral Music in Italy and the Germanic Lands (part IV)

Intonation is one of the most critical aspects of this style; florid lines require harmonic clarity which only good intonation can give. Nevertheless, intonation and tuning would themselves have varied with the performance context. When singers were unaccompanied, they would likely have sung simultaneous octaves, fifths, and thirds as close to pure as possible. But when they performed with instruments, we must assume that they adopted the instruments’ tuning. This is of particular concern with regard to the fretted strings and keyboard instruments, especially the organ, on continuo parts. Fretted strings such as lutes and viols can make some concessions to just intonation through the use of double fretting or variable finger placement and pressure at the frets, but keyboard instruments are completely inflexible, and any instruments or voices performing with them must match their pitches.

In the early seventeenth century, matching keyboard pitches often meant performing in quarter-comma meantone, which provides perfectly lovely pure thirds as long as one keeps to the right keys. By the time of Buxtehude, however, the use of a wide variety of well-tempered tunings were coming into vogue in Germany, especially the temperaments of Andreas Werckmeister. The greater chromatic flexibility permitted by these temperaments was balanced by the fact that more chords were slightly out of tune, although not as badly as the wolf chords of the meantone system.

Choral Music in Italy and the Germanic Lands (part III)

Performance practices such as those mentioned above are discussed mainly for large-scale works. Small-scale works, like sacred concertos and secular madrigals, lieder, and the like, would seem to require only one singer to a part, especially in light of the choir of favoriti as the most universal ensemble, even in larger works. The use of solo ensembles was probably standard as late as the madrigals of Alessandro Scarlatti. Solo performance is certainly indicated where a singer represents a particular character, for example, a shepherd in a pastoral drama or one of the characters in a biblical representation, like Schütz’s Christmas Story or the cantatas performed for papal Christmas entertainments, in which closing choruses were probably sung by the collected characters, as in opera seria.

Even beyond such clearly dramatic works, the quest for a historical performance practice should also take into consideration other possible liturgical or dramatic contexts. In Catholic sacred works, this includes the place of Gregorian chant, or organ versets in appropriate alternation with liturgical polyphony. In Lutheran works, it suggests the alternation of chorale verses between organ and choir, and perhaps with a large congregation singing the tune monophonically. In some cases, reconstruction of an entire liturgical service or secular festival offers a thrilling performance montage. Research can uncover equivalent contexts for secular works, as well, for interpolation of musical numbers in dramas as intermedii, set pieces, or melodramas. Such an expanded performance context can be further enriched by architectural investigation in order to locate musical forces as they might have been in a period performance for the best aural effect.

Choral Music in Italy and the Germanic Lands (part II)

This distinction also obtained in Germany. Praetorius (1619) said that the numbers following the title of a piece indicate the most essential voices first (favoriti) and that the remaining numbers indicate ripieno choirs, which can be omitted. He also described a wide variety of alternative performance arrangements.18 Aside from his own works, music like his most opulent prescriptions was also heard at the cathedral of Salzburg and the Habsburg court. At the former, the episcopal court supported over forty singers and thirty to forty musicians, who performed concerted music with as many as ten different spatially separated groups or as many as thirty-two separate parts. The imperial court’s musical establishment was of comparable size and supported performance of the grandest post-Venetian works, as well as more intimate motets and Masses in the stile antico. Such grand works cannot be discussed individually, but their rich textural variety displayed the usual contrast between favoriti and ripieno, with rich flourishes of contrasting vocal and instrumental timbres in every choir. Nevertheless, in the Germanic countries, as in Italy, such grandiosity represents only the most elaborate manifestation of a part-singing performance tradition that, in a simpler medium, was widespread in households, cities, and churches.

Choral Music in Italy and the Germanic Lands (part I)

Music was constantly changing in the seventeenth century. Yet even those who acknowledge this evolutionary condition often overlook the sources and inspirations for Baroque musical style. There is little that is unprecedented: practically every feature of the style evolved directly from some sixteenth-century musical practice. The stile antico did not expire operatically with the development of monody, continuo playing, and the highly figured Baroque style; rather, all lived on side by side, and composers of the seventeenth century, Claudio Monteverdi, Heinrich Schütz, and others, wrote music in both styles with equal fluency.1 The opposition of the two styles in larger works enriched the new aesthetic of contrasting affects, and these contrasts contributed further stylistic freedom to already well-defined national and regional styles. Baroque innovations particularly reinforced traditional bonds of musical influence between Italy and Germany.

Geographical proximity, ancient political ties, and continuing intellectual exchange had always bestowed common features upon music in Italy and the German-speaking countries. In the seventeenth century, expanding cities, exhibitionistic churches, profligate nobility, and burgeoning numbers of middle-class amateurs supported a rich profusion of new musical styles in both sacred and secular music. The stabilization of Protestantism in the north added further diversity. These groups demanded a rich menu of vocal ensemble works to display their standing. Such works ranged from large-scale festival works for major churches and the ruling class to smaller works for private gatherings, school choirs, and the day-to-day celebrations of city churches throughout Italy and the north. The rich variety of genres and styles obliges a modern performer to investigate a work’s musical construction in its original context.

Importance of Text

Good singing is also an artistic pursuit. The technical skills of the singer need to be brought to bear on the expression of the text (“the soul of the vocal art”) in ways that complement and enhance the mere notes on the page.

Vocal and choral music in the seventeenth century are text centered. This may seem obvious, but it bears repeating. The ensemble director should understand the literal meaning of every word of text in the program, as well as any metaphoric or symbolic baggage carried by the text. The singers should learn the meaning of every word they are singing from the very start. The director should know the correct pronunciation of every word, so that rehearsal time is not wasted. And he or she should provide the audience with both the original text and the translation in parallel.

Beyond good pronunciation, all subtleties of expressive singing—dynamic contrast, phrasing, variety of articulation, added embellishment—should be rooted in the performers’ comprehension of the text. Thomas Morley grumbled that “Most of our churchmen, so they can cry louder in the choir than their fellows, care for no more; whereas by the contrary they ought to study how to vowel and sing clean, expressing their words with devotion and passion.”

Ensemble Size and Vocal Types in France

The king’s musicians consisted of three distinct entities. The Musique de la Chambre was made up of soloists: singers, lutenists, and players of other soft instruments, responsible for music for the entertainment of the court. The famous 24 Violons du Roi evolved from the Chambre but became virtually autonomous because of their prestige.

The Musique de la Grande Écurie employed players of sackbuts, oboes, cornetts, fifes, drums, and trumpets, who provided music for the battlefield, the hunt, and the public processional. In 1645 the Musique de la Chapelle Royale consisted of a maître (an honorary appointment given to a highly placed ecclesiastic rather than a musician), two sous-maîtres (one was Compositeur de la Chapelle, responsible for training the choir as well as choosing and composing music for the king’s Mass), two cornettists, twenty-six singers, eight chaplains, four clerks, and two grammar instructors for the children. In 1682 a new royal chapel was inaugurated at Versailles; by 1708 it listed ninety singers: eleven sopranos, eighteen haute-contres, twenty-three tenors, twenty-four baritones, and fourteen basses. In grands motets the normal texture was five voices, the added part usually a baritone, hence the large number of low voices. There was a mixed ensemble of instrumentalists attached to the chapel, including strings, woodwinds (including a bass cromorne), and a theorbo.

Ensemble Size and Vocal Types in England

Cathedral and chapel choirs in England used men and boys only. The English Chapel Royal of the earlier Stuart period typically included approximately twelve boys and twenty men, augmented by a variable number of unpaid “extraordinary” members. For quotidian purposes they sang in smaller numbers on a rotating basis, accompanied by a wind consort (cornetts and sackbuts) and organ. In the period immediately following the Restoration, cornetts substituted for boy trebles: “Above a Year after the Opening of His Majesties Chappel, the Orderers of the Musick there, were necessitated to supply the superiour Parts of their Musick with Cornets and Mens feigned Voices, there being not one Lad, for all that time, capable of singing his Part readily.”

The countertenor (male alto) enjoyed a great vogue in secular as well as sacred music in the later seventeenth century, and its role as the uppermost voice type of a male trio or chorus survived until the nineteenth century in innumerable anthems and glees. However, there can be no justification for trying to make women sound like boys or falsettists, in the name of historically informed performance. A lean choral tone with a minimum of vibrato and meticulous attention to intonation will serve the music admirably and has excellent precedent in the work of such historically oriented ensembles as Les Arts Florissants and the Tallis Scholars, where women sing soprano and both men and women sing alto.

Choral Music in France and England

The primary focus of this topic is the performance of sung ensemble music, that is, music with several texted parts. Today the term “choral music” commonly implies that there is more than one performer on each part, while “ensemble music” commonly implies only one performer to a part. However, as we shall see, music of
the seventeenth century that we customarily consider choral—polyphonic Masses, motets, anthems, and the like—was very often performed as ensemble music. France and England are grouped together in this chapter, partly for convenience, and partly because there are similarities in the uses to which choral music was put, and indeed in the kinds of choral music preferred, despite the obvious difference that one was a Catholic country and the other Protestant.

Choirs or choruses were to be found in churches, opera houses, and public theaters — places where both the sheer size of the venue and the desire for impressive pageantry mandated larger numbers of singers. On both sides of the Channel (or La Manche), the most up-to-date, stylish music made dramatic use of the contrasting sounds of choral singing, solo singing, and obbligato instruments.