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.


The smaller city church was more like that of Dieterich Buxtehude. Most of his surviving “choral” works seem to have been for a choir of soloists, although a few works employ ripieno voices, beyond the ten to fourteen musicians on strings and winds. But the presence of Latin school choirboys should not deceive us into imagining a large ripieno here any more than in Italy. In many German cities, the Latin school’s obligations required dividing its choristers among three or four churches, so the number of choristers employed in any one church was between four and twelve. And a substantial increase in the use of polyphony in the seventeenth century, from as seldom as six times a year to weekly, put further strain on available vocal resources. Solo ensembles represented a universal practice in sacred choral music of the seventeenth century, with ripieno doubling of voices employed only where performance forces permitted.

Thus, even in large performances, it is very clear that nothing like our modern “concert choir” of fifty to eighty voices on four parts ever existed. Even six voices on a part would have been extraordinary, and the contrast between favoriti and ripieno was usually between soloists and a choir of two to three on a part, often with instrumental doubling. When larger forces were available, the number of parts and spatially separated choirs grew, rather than the number of performers on any one part. The disposition of these forces was most variable.

The fame of Saint Mark’s in Venice arose from the erroneous belief that its choir balconies inspired spatially separated choirs in music for cori spezzati. The musical style itself actually seems to have originated in Padua, although Venetian documentary and iconographic evidence supports the city’s renown soon afterward as a center for multiple-choir music. But Venetian and other evidence also supports performance of double-choir works with both groups in the same place next to each other. Even though churches, cities, bishops, and lords undoubtedly enjoyed the self-congratulatory opulence of music with singers and musicians scattered all about, it is unlikely that a restricted performing space ever prevented the performance of a major work. Flexibility of placement was merely one more part of the repertory of expedients for adapting works, like the elimination of ripieno parts doubling the favoriti, or their replacement by instruments. Such adaptation according to the group’s particular needs, although an imprecise rendering of the composer’s fullest intentions, was and remains a permissible approach to works by Gabrieli, Praetorius, Heinrich Ignaz Biber, Schütz, or others with otherwise daunting scoring.

Instruments generally mingled with the voices in three guises, continuo, obbligato, and colla parte. The use of continuo was ubiquitous throughout the seventeenth century, even when it was not specifically called for. Right from the beginning of the century, the presence of even a simple basso seguente line (an unfigured bass line for organ made up of the lowest sounding pitches from each chord) should be interpreted as some sort of continuo part. Although church continuo instrumentation usually included the organ, combinations involving regal, harpsichord, theorbo, bassoon, violone, or even greatbass Pommer (shawm) were not unknown, and any effective combination of the above is suitable for both sacred and secular music, as long as some kind of continuo is used, for Praetorius awards continuo a nearly universal role in leading a performance.

Obbligato instrumental parts can be divided into three types: the first, like some choirs in Gabrieli’s music, have instrumental lines similar to the vocal lines, that is, a second choir of contrasting timbre (and perhaps location) but similar musical characteristics. The second type is a variation on this, namely, accompanying instrumental parts in a choir having one solo vocal part. The third type of obbligato instrumental part has an independent figuration or a ritornello function that makes it more distinctive from the parts around it, exemplified by duets for treble instruments in the works of Monteverdi, Schütz, and others. Clearly, obbligato parts of the third type are much more essential than those of the first or second, which can be replaced by a keyboard part or sometimes even omitted.

Colla parte doubling of vocal parts is less universally documented, but it was probably very common. In some Italian churches, the practice of doubling some or all voices of sacred polyphony appears to have continued at least into the seventeenth century. In German-speaking countries, it remained common throughout the century, as is documented at the Habsburg court, the cathedral of Salzburg, and in Buxtehude’s works. A common combination for such doubling was cornett and trombones, even up to J. S. Bach’s time, although string doubling seems to have been preferred by Buxtehude.33 The actual indication of such doubling was less common than was the practice itself. It is unclear whether a similar ensemble might have supported congregational singing in Protestant worship.

You may also like:

Music k-8
Music Keyboard
Music Keys
Music Key Finder 
Music Key Signatures