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.


The designation “verse” for a section of an English anthem or canticle setting traditionally means that the section is sung by solo voices. However, Bruce Wood found “unambiguous evidence” in manuscript sources that verse sections of several Chapel Royal anthems could be sung by at least two singers on a part. Generalizing from a small number of anthems to an entire repertory is risky. Nevertheless, if it is more practical for you to have two voices on each line in verse sections, the important thing will be to maintain the distinction between verse and “full” by having three or four voices on each part in full sections.

Performance space was limited in the small chapels at Whitehall and Windsor. Peter Holman suggests that spatial separation of groups of players and singers was a feature of music for the Chapel Royal at Whitehall, with singers positioned in the organ loft and instrumentalists in the “musick room”—part of a gallery that opened into the chapel at first-floor (U.S. second-floor) level. Fashionable visitors were also seated in the organ loft, at what inconvenience to the musicians we can only imagine. State occasions—for example, royal weddings, coronations, a Te Deum in celebration of a military victory—normally occurred in larger venues such as Westminster Abbey, and it was then that the whole chapel performed together, augmented by the
abbey choir and organ.

The violin band eventually replaced the wind consort as the usual accompaniment for Chapel Royal anthems. This change did not happen overnight, but gradually during the period 1661–1670. If there were no obbligato parts, strings generally doubled voices in all passages for full choir, or perhaps only in the final chorus. As late as 1676, the theorbo was frequently used to support the continuo in sacred music and consorts, though it disappeared soon thereafter. “After the accession of William and Mary, the instrumental accompaniment of anthems was abandoned and the Chapel repertory became virtually indistinguishable from that of the cathedrals.”

Ensemble music for domestic use, such as madrigals, canzonets, Psalms, Songs, and Sonnets (the title of a collection by William Byrd), ballets, consort songs, and so forth might be sung or played by any family members, male or female, adult or child. Since part music was usually published in sets of partbooks, each part in a separate small volume typically measuring about 5" × 8", one or two persons at most could sing or play from the same book. Even more limiting were books that displayed all four parts in one opening, positioned so that when the book lay flat in the middle of the table, each part faced a side of the table. The present-day director of an earlymusic ensemble can confidently arrange a wide variety of mixed one-on-a-part ensembles for this repertory, even omitting a voice if necessary, as long as instruments are used one on a part and, for a setting of a preexisting melody such as a psalm or hymn, the voice with the familiar tune is not omitted.