The Glory of Polyphony

[DracoM]

Hence my inverted commas on 'dealt'.
And 'Eton Choirbook' was THEIR title to the prog, not mine.

[jean]

Phillips played three pieces of Cornysh: an excerpt from the Magnificat sung by his own choir, a setting of the Ave Maria sung by the Cardinall's Musick, and an except from the Salve Regina sung by the The Sixteen. I think there was also something specially recorded by the BBC Singers.

He finished with Ah Robin, sung by the Oxford Camerata, which is probably by a different and younger Cornysh.

(All had women on the top line. I suppose that's the objection.)

He spoke of the Eton Choirbook and its remarkable survival as context for the composer he'd chosen to exemplify the style it represents. I don't think he claimed to have dealt with it, with or without inverted commas. Nor could he have squeezed many more performances into the time he had available.

[DracoM]

...........and even more interestingly, none of the tracks you quote is sung by the forces each of those composers would have heard in their heads when writing i.e boys on top line. Why not?

Given the choices avaiable, I find that unacceptable. But, hey, this series has become smugly in-crowd, dull and disappointing, so why should one expect adventure?

[doversoul1]

...........and even more interestingly, none of the tracks you quote is sung by the forces each of those composers would have heard in their heads when writing i.e boys on top line. Why not?

This is a genuine question. Do you think those composers heard in their heads the sound of treble voices we are used to hearing now? And what about other voices?

[jean]

We can't know exactly what sound composers of this period had in their heads when they composed this music.

But we do know that boys' voices changed much later then than they do now, so we can suppose the sound was not quite that of a modern twelve-year-old.

Phillips himself discusses this point in his contribution to Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music. See pp 45-46 here.

[DracoM]

This is a genuine question. Do you think those composers heard in their heads the sound of treble voices we are used to hearing now? And what about other voices?

Well, dovers, for sure, they would not have heard women's voices in their heads when they sat down to compse their next setting of the Liturgy. They were not airy-fairy ivory tower dreamers. These guys were working pros, daily working hard for their living, writing to order, playing the organ, training choirs, were a living part of I suspect more sung services a week than most modern DoMs, services in serious places, and with choirs that were mostly led by boys - whatever such boys might have sounded like as against today's 12 yr olds.

All that.......so, IMO, if you are making a programme about the development of polyphony, using modern day resources, and you mention one of the more significant sources of the genre - the Eton Choirbook - I think it is your duty to give your audience on R3 more than a few examples of some likely sounds, whatever the theories. And yes, men would probably have sung far more of the parts than maybe they do now etc etc etc....

So, in the last decade, Stephen Darlington at CCCOx has specifically trained that choir in various masterpieces of the Eton Choirbook and produced a sequence of CDs opening up the glories of it. So why the heck do we not get a little closer to hearing what some of that music might have sounded like by using a notable modern-day choir of likely voices who have made a bit of a specialism of singing that very repertoire?

Seems pretty unanswerable to me.

[Serial_Apologist]

We can't know exactly what sound composers of this period had in their heads when they composed this music.

But we do know that boys' voices changed much later then than they do now, so we can suppose the sound was not quite that of a modern twelve-year-old.

Phillips himself discusses this point in his contribution to Companion to Medieval and Renaissance Music. See pp 45-46 here.

Interestingly, perhaps, when it comes to plainsong, one theory put to the Spanish composer Maurice Ohana by a Roman Catholic priest was that its sonorous properties aided the meditative state by juxtapositing massed vocal overtones within a given pitch range with interior acoustic resonance. In this respect it would have something in common with Tibetan Buddhist chanting. It might I suppose be feasible to conjecture that the contrapuntal or polyphonic vocal languages that emerged empirically out of planchant were a continuation of the same proven practices.

[Quarky]

......The example of Cornysh's Ave Maria was sung by an all-male choir.......

As regards thought processes, I guess at least the congregations of that time would have been influenced by paintings of the type shown in the web page of this programme ?

[DracoM]

Yes, agreed, many / most / a number might well have been sung by all-male, post-puberty males - yes, all that which has rightly and extensively been argued endlessly, but I still maintain that at least one of those options would have been a boy-led all-male ensemble.

And whichever combo you favour to have been the likeliest one for the Eton Choirbook composers, the one that NONE of them would have expected would have been how the prog chose to illustrate their work in the Eton Choirbook - namely by ensembles with women on top line.

[doversoul1]

Tomkins, Cardoso and the New World

[BBMmk2]

This is a genuine question. Do you think those composers heard in their heads the sound of treble voices we are used to hearing now? And what about other voices?

I was wondering whether their voices would be more earthy sounding?

[DracoM]

Maybe, BUT the core of the question is that whatever sound the boys might have made, it would still have been BOYS and not either expert girl choristers or pro women on top line.

Think HIP: the difference to a piece written in nineteenth century but we usually hear on modern brass / modern strings / modern reeds, and then the same piece played on historically informed instrumentation. The difference in the aural experience is immediate

And I really do think what kinds of sounds a composer imagines from daily experience in his / her head as they write has to influence timbres, groupings of voices etc etc, maybe even structure. Surely that is inevitable.

And it is why I was so saddened by the programme so insistently using current pro ensembles eg Sixteen, Tallis Scholars to perform the Eton Choirbook material especially. I do not for a moment doubt these ensembles' scrupulous preparation / performance / musicianship in any way. BUT CCCOx / Darlington [as have others eg Drome] particularly have spent years working on / recording this repertoire. Just seemed a trifle perverse.

I have the CDs and I feel additionally sad that R3 listeners who do not own them, would therefore not have heard the boy sound, particularly in a R3 programme that was ostensibly tracing for possibly first time listeners the unfolding of a hugely influential musical / liturgical development.

[jean]

The only thing we know for sure about ‘the boy sound’ in the sixteenth century and earlier is that it wasn’t the same as what we’re used to hearing today.

The comparison with historic instruments isn’t helpful since instruments survive, larynxes don’t.

[doversoul1]

The only thing we know for sure about ‘the boy sound’ in the sixteenth century and earlier is that it wasn’t the same as what we’re used to hearing today.

The comparison with historic instruments isn’t helpful since instruments survive, larynxes don’t.

But maybe what makes the quality/characteristics of boys’ voice distinct from those of women’s may not have been so different then? Or boys’ voice today is closer to the boys’ voice then than that today’s women’s voice is? These are just guesses but I remember feeling rather odd hearing women’s voice in a (I think) Gabrieli’s work.

[doversoul1]

This will be repeated from Sunday 23 December starting at 10.00pm.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b527p4