CE Magdalen College, Oxford Wed, 31st January 2018

[ardcarp]

Must get it. The list's growing.

[jean]

...Pre Ref. English choral music...

Depends on when you think the English Reformation actually happened - Sheppard's Latin church music was written during Mary's reign.

[Nevilevelis]

I just wish I had the dots in front of me.....

Readily available on cpdl.

[Vox Humana]

Depends on when you think the English Reformation actually happened - Sheppard's Latin church music was written during Mary's reign.

It has been suggested that a lot of his four-part Latin pieces date from Henry's reign. I believe that revisionist historians now tend to talk about the English reformations rather than a single reformation. For musical purposes it is reasonable to treat the music presumed to have been written in Mary's reign as pre-Reformation, not least because the chronology of almost all of it is so uncertain. For years everyone considered Tallis's Gaude gloriosa to be a Marian piece and O sacrum convivium Elizabethan.

[Wolsey]

Could one of you experts explain why the Canticles are actually in F minor (assuming A = 440 Hz). Is that what they would have sounded like back then pitch-wise?

Pitch - especially in the Chapel Royal - was sharper then than 'standardised baroque' A = 415Hz, and higher than 'modern' A = 440Hz. Modern historically informed recordings of Purcell's church music take A = 466Hz, which is more or less a semitone higher than A440. Hence, some English baroque canticle settings (D Purcell in E minor; Humfrey in E minor) are transposed a semitone higher in modern editions. Others (H Purcell in B flat and in G minor), however, are transposed a tone (not semitone) higher - for performance convenience, I suspect, otherwise Purcell's B flat Service would appear in print in B major, and his G minor setting in G sharp minor.

[mw963]

Thanks for the further enlightenment. They sounded "wrong" to me as I heard them (in the sense of the published key sig) so I had recourse to the piano, at the end of the Mag, just to check I wasn't going into orbit pitch-wise.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Pitch - especially in the Chapel Royal - was sharper then than 'standardised baroque' A = 415Hz, and higher than 'modern' A = 440Hz. Modern historically informed recordings of Purcell's church music take A = 466Hz, which is more or less a semitone higher than A440. Hence, some English baroque canticle settings (D Purcell in E minor; Humfrey in E minor) are transposed a semitone higher in modern editions. Others (H Purcell in B flat and in G minor), however, are transposed a tone (not semitone) higher - for performance convenience, I suspect, otherwise Purcell's B flat Service would appear in print in B major, and his G minor setting in G sharp minor.

Very interesting, Wolsey - many thanks.

[Vox Humana]

Pitch - especially in the Chapel Royal - was sharper then than 'standardised baroque' A = 415Hz, and higher than 'modern' A = 440Hz.

Interesting. I think I can guess the answer, but how do we know this? Can anyone point me to any learned articles dealing with this topic?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Interesting. I think I can guess the answer, but how do we know this? Can anyone point me to any learned articles dealing with this topic?

- I guessed something to do with organ pipes??

[DracoM]

Very interesting, Wolsey - many thanks.

Yes, fascinating. Many thx.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

- I guessed something to do with organ pipes??

I've just had a quick look through my copy of Donald Burrows'Handel & the English Chapel Royal, but, whilst there's copious information about the size, number, and situation of the organs, sadly there's nothing (that I can see) about tuning/temperament.

We're told the names of some of the chaps who held the position of Tuner of the Organs, but not what tuning (s) they used. ⅞

[inquires]

I have just listened to Magdalen; my goodness..they have set the bar for this years broadcasts. A superb evensong from, in my opinion, the finest of the Oxford choirs.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Interesting. I think I can guess the answer, but how do we know this? Can anyone point me to any learned articles dealing with this topic?

There is this, from the Ashgate Research Companion to Henry Purcell:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5nHeCwAAQBAJ&p

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Darn! That doesn't take you to the specific page!

Essentially, it quotes a (?Mr?) Gwynne, who suggests the "nearly two semitones" that VH mentioned - at least between 1662 and 1676, when Bernard Smith was paid "for taking half a note lower the organ".

A (?Mr?) Haynes is then quoted as hypothesising that the new pitch of the Organ would have been a = 473, "in order to put it in transposing reach of the lower pitched Wind instruments, used by French players".

[Vox Humana]

Essentially, it quotes a (?Mr?) Gwynne, who suggests the "nearly two semitones" that VH mentioned - at least between 1662 and 1676, when Bernard Smith was paid "for taking half a note lower the organ".

Thanks, ferney. That may refer back to the chapter "The English Organ in Purcell's Lifetime" by the organ builder Dominic Gwynn in the book Performing the Music of Henry Purcell (1996). <sigh> I guess I'll have to get what's left of our library to borrow a copy for me.