Spem in alium

[DracoM]

Well, OK, and thx for supreme scholarship, but I am still puzzled as to how LOGISTICALLY and in performance, a 40-part motet worked on the actual floor / choir space / of an actual chapel etc.

Crush? Jostle? Desperate nudge? Distancing? Small choristers, taller clerks..............I mean...........???

[Pulcinella]

Here a paragraph from an article on Striggio's 40-part Mass that gives a clue (though not about the first performance):

Some time later, a copy of the mass was made in 42 separate little books, each containing a single part (plus one for the general bass and a sort of short score). This was placed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris where it was miscatalogued as having been written by Strusco and for only four voices – a more usual number for a mass, the disbelief of the cataloger speaking volumes for the extraordinary scale of the work. And with that it disappeared for four centuries.

Here's the full article:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/mar/03/striggio-choir-i-fagiolini-lost-mass

[DracoM]

Watched the Hollingworth Striggio CD in rehearsal. Am still puzzled, however........how the heck did they, in live delivery, do a 'Spem' or a Striggio back in the day? In St Peter's hey have space, OK, but....? The sheer practical logistics are daunting, are they not?

Yes, I get that it happened etc, but it just beggars belief as to how..............!!

[ardcarp]

Here a paragraph from an article on Striggio's 40-part Mass that gives a clue (though not about the first performance):

Some time later, a copy of the mass was made in 42 separate little books, each containing a single part (plus one for the general bass and a sort of short score). This was placed in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris where it was miscatalogued as having been written by Strusco and for only four voices – a more usual number for a mass, the disbelief of the cataloger speaking volumes for the extraordinary scale of the work. And with that it disappeared for four centuries.

Here's the full article:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...lini-lost-mass

I am not sure how 'authentic' it is (or was) to have some voice parts played on instruments rather than sung in Striggio's time. Comments anyone?

[Miles Coverdale]

If I may split a hair, the missal was a book for the priest at the altar, the gradual a book for the choir. There was no question of them ever needing to share a lectern. That was a whole point of having the two different books. I'm actually struggling to think of a case offhand when a revolving lectern would be required.

True. A breviary and an antiphonal would have been a better example.

Opposing shelves at different heights could conceivably have catered for the differing heights of boy and adult soloists—or of a seated organist—though it's strange that choirbooks always have the boys parts at the top.

Having shelves at different heights seems unlikely, because that would need two polyphonic sources. Surely one of the reasons for the move from choirbooks to partbooks was the fact that partbooks are much more manageable and practical, as well as cheaper. The fact that in choirbooks the triplex part is at the top left and the medius part bottom left and top right also suggests that memory played a part, or that separate parts were copied out.

Thomas Morley's famous Introduction to Practical Music leaves no doubt that Tudor singers and players were expected to have absolutely rock solid rhythm in order to cope with the most complex of 'tuplets'. I have little doubt that, at the first performance of Spem, the singers would have had rolls of paper (or vellum) with just their own part. Scribes had a couple of ways of easing the burden of counting long rests. The most regular way was to mark the cadence before your entry with a pair of dots on the staff (like modern repeat dots), so that you just listened for the cadence and only started counting the rests from the dots. The other, used where a voice had to enter without any guiding cadence, was to add a signum imitationis (aka signum congruentiae) in one of the other parts that was already singing over or under the note that coincided with the entry of the new voice. This instructed the first singer to signal the entry to the new singer. I suspect that the original parts of Spem might have had rather a lot of these.

I'm pretty sure that the Tallis Scholars sing Spem from heavily-cued individual parts rather than a score.

[Miles Coverdale]

Well, OK, and thx for supreme scholarship, but I am still puzzled as to how LOGISTICALLY and in performance, a 40-part motet worked on the actual floor / choir space / of an actual chapel etc.

Crush? Jostle? Desperate nudge? Distancing? Small choristers, taller clerks..............I mean...........???

I'd imagine something like eight groups of five people, each group in two rows with two choristers in the front row, three adults behind, each group on one side of a nominal octagon or perhaps two groups on each side of a square, all facing the centre. I'd have thought there would be space to accommodate such an arrangement in most cathedrals or large chapels.

[DracoM]

DoM? Where he?

[ardcarp]

I doubt there would have been 'a conductor' in full view. No doubt the Magister Chori (no not that one!) would have set a speed and maybe nodded a bit. The rock-solid in-built tempo of the singers would do the rest. Wouldn't it be great to be a time-shifted fly on the wall?

[Vox Humana]

I'd imagine something like eight groups of five people, each group in two rows with two choristers in the front row, three adults behind, each group on one side of a nominal octagon or perhaps two groups on each side of a square, all facing the centre. I'd have thought there would be space to accommodate such an arrangement in most cathedrals or large chapels.

Although it is late and not completely accurate, I think there is likely to be some truth in Thomas Wateridge's account of 1611 about how Spem came to be written. The most persuasive interpretation of this, to my mind, has the piece being commissioned by Thomas Howard, fourth Duke of Norfolk, in response to a performance of one of Striggio's 40-part pieces during his visit to England in 1567. Howard had Spem sung at Nonsuch Palace, possibly in one of the octagonal towers. The library at Nonsuch did have a manuscript of Spem, but, like the palace, it is no longer extant.

[cat]

The partbook from Chichester's library shown in this video has extremely large text. Were they often in this format?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDwltATDgAk

Easy for larger groups to read from a distance, although more work for the page turners!

[DracoM]

Blimey!! HUGE!
And yes, some luckless page-turner wold have a very sore arm non-stop turning - and possibly bruised head and back after being non-stop nudged and chastised by desperate singers if he missed a page...OMG, imagine turning three pages at once mid-service....by mistake!

[Miles Coverdale]

The partbook from Chichester's library shown in this video has extremely large text. Were they often in this format?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDwltATDgAk

Easy for larger groups to read from a distance, although more work for the page turners!

That wouldn't be described as a partbook, but as a choirbook, in this case containing plainsong, not polyphony. It's also much more practical for performance than most polyphonic choirbooks. It has only four staves per page, with very large and legible text underlay. Four staves to a page is an unusually small number, but six or seven isn't uncommon. Eton, in contrast, has 14 staves per page, and the underlay is not particularly legible.

[DracoM]

So which would be easier for a whole choir to see? How many copies of same would you need for a FORTY part motet? Erm..............??

[Miles Coverdale]

So which would be easier for a whole choir to see? How many copies of same would you need for a FORTY part motet? Erm..............??

It would be entirely impractical to try and put a 40-part piece in a choirbook; even making, say, eight separate choirbooks with five parts in each would be a very cumbersome way of doing it. I think the only practical way to notate such a piece would be to give each singer his own part.