Missa Corona Spinea - Taverner/Tallis Scholars

[ardcarp]

Unscholarly me wants to ask how it can be known that 'impressment' (such as happened for the Chapel Royal in later times) did not take place?

BTW, on my LA-ing of Corona Spinea (blasting full tilt through the house this time) one of my g-kids (a girl) began copying the high treble part to great effect. She didn't find it especially high or taxing. It is perhaps a mistake to underestimate what kids can do. Think of all the Shakespearian child actors......

[Simon Biazeck]

Indeed, but I ask again, did these composers expect trebles to be able to [a] read, [b] sing long stints this stratospherically?
Yes, I know it's unanswerable. But it does set the mind boggling, does it not?
And, OK, I presume they DID have su
ch gangs of lads capable, otherwise why compose so regularly with such heights and swtchbacks to navigate?

I very much doubt it on the high pitch question. Singing technique post bel canto allows us all to sing with the sort of deep support which enables the even emission of breath and spun legato. I very much doubt the fashionable sound of polyphony these days is one that Taverner would have recognized.

[ardcarp]

I very much doubt the fashionable sound of polyphony these days is one that Taverner would have recognized.

That applies to almost everything which is even a few generations away from living memory...Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, whatever. The 'absolute' nature of musical conception (clever dots on the page) is there, but as you suggest, fashions and styles of performance evolve (quickly?) through the ages.

There was probably no single concept of 'a choral sound' then. There isn't now! We might surmise that tuning and ensemble are better, but who knows? The problem for scholars is that there are so few sources pertaining to what anything might have sounded like. And how could it have been expressed in mere words anyway? I gather there is a Renaissance picture of someone singing which suggests poor voice-production by our standards. A researcher might pounce on an idea (about pitch, for instance), sub-consciously form a view, and then take what little extant material there is to reinforce it. (Been there, done that! Different field, though.) Another scholar will surely form an opposite conclusion before too long.

I have a personal view of what children's un-trained voices might have been like, Rousseau-esque admittedly. If you hear a young child (boy or girl) singing to itself, maybe whilst playing and unaware of anyone listening, it will be a pure head-voice, and for many children high notes are just not a problem. To what extent, and by whom, this may have been modified or changed in some sort of semi-monastic regime is anyone's guess.

[DracoM]

Yes, ardcarp, I suppose in a way I was answering my own silly question: moral of story - never under-estimate kids and their capacity to surprise you with their skills and aspirations.

[Pulcinella]

There is a comment in the liner notes of The Sixteen's version that I'm listening to at the moment about the disposition of the six voices being different in this mass (compared with that in his other two festal masses).

Instead of two countertenors, it has two bass parts of slightly different tessitura whose function is more often to support the cantus firmus than to participate fully in the imitative texture.

Perhaps that's part of why this sounds so special.

[Vox Humana]

<< had to rely on local talent without the luxury of impressment >>

Woa.......so if composers had to rely on 'local talent', how / why did they ever expect that local pick-up gang to cope with some of the most complex and high-lying treble lines ever written? Why would you write music so regularly for ensembles you doubted might cope?

Yes, I know that puberty / 'the change' was far later then than it is today, but even so......!!

I heard Grier's CCC ensemble quite often, and on one never to be forgotten Feb evening, heard them sing a long piece of Mundy [ sorry, cannot now remember what it was ] for the anthem in Evensong that came as a complete and dizzying thrill.

Don't assume that everywhere sang this most complex sort of music. Many churches satisfied themselves with much simpler fare, which might sometimes be simple polyphony in a form of notation that could be handled by those only capable of reading plainsong.

As part of his research, Bowers analysed the careers of choirboys and concluded that the notion that their voices broke later is a myth. He found that they broke at around the age of 13 or 14. It's in his thesis somewhere.

That Mundy piece would surely have been Vox Patris caelestis, which was performed several times by the Clerkes of Oxenford and has since become quite well known amongst fans of Tudor music - and a wonderful piece it is too.

Indeed, but I ask again, did these composers expect trebles to be able to [a] read, [b] sing long stints this stratospherically?
Yes, I know it's unanswerable. But it does set the mind boggling, does it not?

It is answerable and you will find all the information in Bowers' thesis (which is actually an interesting and by no means difficult read). Boys only began to sing composed polyphony shortly before the death of Dunstable and at that point churches started to employ professional musicians to teach them to do so. That the boys did learn to sing complex notation is not in doubt. During renovations to the choir practice room at St George's Windsor, for example, the work uncovered a selection of ligatures painted on the walls which must have been there as a teaching aid.

As for singing stratospherically, they didn't. There is no evidence capable of withstanding scrutiny that they did so. Basically the high pitch theory depends wholly on assumptions about the sounding pitch of Tudor organ pipes 5' or 10' long, which Parrott and Goetze & Gwynn showed to be mistaken. (5' pitch does seem to have been a standard, but it was merely a convenient round figure in the same way as 8' pipe lengths are today.) Once that tenet crumbles, so does the whole structure of the Oxenford theory.

[ardcarp]

As part of his research, Bowers analysed the careers of choirboys and concluded that the notion that their voices broke later is a myth. He found that they broke at around the age of 13 or 14.

I find that strange, because during my lifetime various things have changed. Shoe sizes for a start. Hardly time for evolution to have had a hand (or foot) in it. Nutrition is the answer. It was common in my childhood for boys of 15 or even 16 still to be singing treble. Almost unheard of nowadays, but surely the trajectory points to much later voice-change in former times.

We have this from the Shakespeare Survey, Vol. 58 (concerning child actors)

"….....a substantial amount of documentary evidence does survive about pre-Restoration boy players, but much of it has remained buried in archives or scattered across various books and articles. When gathered and analysed, this evidence points to a consistent conclusion: until the early 1660s, female roles on the English stage (including the most demanding, complex parts) were played by adolescent boys, no younger than twelve and no older than twenty-one or twenty-two, with a median of around sixteen or seventeen."


Concerning a later period, we have an entry dated 1699 [noted in Lafontaine The King's Musick]

"...warrant to provide clothes for William Crofts and William Robert....late children of the Chapell Royal, whose voices are changed, and gone from the Chapell, and to pay them the sum of £20 each for the year 1698."

As Croft was born in 1678, the implication is that he was singing as a chorister up to the age of 19 or 20.

[Vox Humana]

In the Shakespeare Survey, who is defining "adolescent", I wonder?

My recollection of Bowers was a year out. This is what he said in a footnote in one of his papers:

"... it is entirely clear that in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries the trained singing-boy's voice broke not at 18 but at about 14 or 15. This is shown by analysis of the careers of almost 100 boys who served as choristers of St George's Chapel, Windsor between 1461 and 1499; ... confirmation is provided by the Chantry Certificates of 1545 and 1547/8, which list both the name and age of the choristers of a number of collegiate churches, none of whom exceeded 15 years of age, even despite the likely presence among them of boys whose voices had in fact broken, but whose services were being nominally retained in order to qualify them for the usual ex gratia payment at the dissolution as compensation for loss of employment. ... It may be noted that university colleges such as King's Hall, Cambridge, whither suitable ex-choristers were sent from the Chapel Royal for the furtherance of their education, effectively applied for admission a minimum age qualification of about 17 or 18; once their voices had broken, former choristers would still have to spend some three or four years attending the grammar school of the royal household ... before they were able to meet the entry qualifications for colleges which admitted undergraduates."

Bowers' final observation here is a warning against assuming that boys left the Chapel Royal as soon as their voices changed. Maybe a similar caution needs to be applied in the cases of Croft and Roberts, but that's really not my period so I can't comment.

[ardcarp]

Isn't this fun!

[Vox Humana]

I'd like to think so, but not everyone is as peculiar as I am!

[DracoM]

Exactly what this thread is there for!

[Magnificat]

I find that strange, because during my lifetime various things have changed. Shoe sizes for a start. Hardly time for evolution to have had a hand (or foot) in it. Nutrition is the answer. It was common in my childhood for boys of 15 or even 16 still to be singing treble. Almost unheard of nowadays, but surely the trajectory points to much later voice-change in former times.

ardcarp

Yes, and there is also the story of a fearsome cathedral choirmaster earlier in the 20th century( I've forgotten the cathedral) whose head chorister approached him very gingerly at choir practice one day and asked for the weekend off. "You'd better have a bloody good reason" said the organist. "Well, Sir" said the boy, " I'm getting married on Saturday."

VCC.

[Vox Humana]

Yes, and there is also the story of a fearsome cathedral choirmaster earlier in the 20th century( I've forgotten the cathedral) whose head chorister approached him very gingerly at choir practice one day and asked for the weekend off. "You'd better have a bloody good reason" said the organist. "Well, Sir" said the boy, " I'm getting married on Saturday."

VCC.

Surely a bit pointless if he were still singing treble? (Do we really believe this tale?)

[Simon Biazeck]

Surely a bit pointless if he were still singing treble? (Do we really believe this tale?)

For what it's worth, I must say I am really enjoying your informative, myth-busting common sense posts! Excellent contributions all.

[Vox Humana]

Well, thank you very much, Sir!