Byrd, Andrew Carwood & the Cardinall's Musick

[jean]

...on In Tune yesterday:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018ntfn/In_Tune_Andrew_Carwood_Zoe_Rahman/

[ardcarp]

LA-ed it, skipping through such delights as The Blue Danube to get at the bits of Byrd. Presenter true to form in sycophancy and had not much to say about Byrd except that it must have been difficult for him to write Catholic music in Protestant England...a mantra he repeated 5 times to my reckoning. AC was genrally more urbane and informative. For a small group from TCM to sing live in that studio is a bit daunting...a bit like walking naked in a nunnery. They are all expert singers, of course, but these weren't really the right conditions. With no acoustic to float the voice they all tried a bit hard and the result was a bit unrelieved and not always pleasing to my ears. The men-only pieces were better IMO (one pretty bullet-proof countertenor) and I was confused by the soprano sound. In the first piece the top line was a bit tremulous whilst in the last one Descendit de coelis it was pleasingly soaring. It's fashionable to suppose that much of Byrd's Catholic music was sung in some recusant pantry by a handful of housemaids and footmen. Frankly I don't believe it, but in any case I prefer a choral sound as opposed to solo voices, and ideally a big space. This was nevertheless a good plug for TCM's Byrd tour; I gather no-one gets paid for these flagging-up sessions.

[DracoM]

Didn't hear it first time, but ardcarp's posting above is so jolly witty and spot on it might be worth listening after all!! Many thanks.

[jean]

I rarely listen seriously to In Tune, and had turned off, only to realise later that there'd been a lot more Byrd to come.

It's an irritating format, and if that example is anything to go by , the different types of music featured do nothing to illuminate each other, as sometimes happens on Late Junction. Sean Rafferty was particularly obtuse, drawing nothing of interest out of Andrew Carwood.

It was brave of the few voices of the Cardinall's Music to perform live in the studio, and with mixed results, as you say - I too was puzzled by the soprano, who sounded very different in different pieces. I was reminded that I've heard AC himself say he likes a more specifically female sound than some other directors of similar groups - and I've also heard him opine that Byrd's later Catholic works could never have been performed liturgically because the danger of discovery would mean that actual Mass celebrations would have to be got though as quickly and with as little embellishment as possible, so that the appropriate music would have been more likely to be sung by a mixed group, as madrigals were (though I don't know where the housemaids and footmen idea came from).

They also made a stab at authentic Elizabethan pronunciation, though I don't think the singers were quite consistent, and SF certainly wasn't. AC doesn't sound convinced by this, and I think he is wrong to suggest that English pronunciation of Latin at the time was influenced by French - the English just pronounced Latin as it came naturally to them, and AC's refusal to use French vowel sounds was correct anyway, as nobody thinks the English would have used (for example) the 'u' sound that the French did, and do.

[ardcarp]

housemaids and footmen

Sorry; a bit of licence on my part.

There is a book (whose name I forget) about differing pronunciations of Latin. I read it and wasn't convinced, especially about pre-Reformation England. We were not a remote outpost of the Roman Church; there were Papal nuncios by the dozen, and I'm fairly certain Italianate Latin would have been the norm. All we know is how the French and the Germans sing Latin now, so it's perfectly reasonable to attempt works from the 19th and 20th century in 'vernacular' Latin. However, when a load of good singers get together and perform with minimum rehearsal time, it makes sense just to stick to the normal.

[Miles Coverdale]

Those who are interested in this slightly arcane area of performance practice are advised to read the work of Alison Wray and/or Harold Copeman: in particular I would recommend Alison Wray's essay 'English pronunciation, c. 1500 - c. 1625' in English Choral Practice 1400-1650 (CUP, 1995).

One obvious way in which the pronunciation of 'English' Latin has changed over time is the the sound of the vowel in the word 'te' (as in Laudamus te), which has moved from rhyming with 'tea' to rhyming with 'tay'. An example of this shift can be seen in the macaronic carol In dulci jubilo:

O Jesu parvule,
My heart is sore for thee.

which later became

O Jesu parvule,
I yearn for thee alway.

It seems extremely unlikely to me that English singers were singing Italianate Latin in the sixteenth century.

[ardcarp]

It seems extremely unlikely to me that English singers were singing Italianate Latin in the sixteenth century.

Oh well. We'll agree to differ on that one. Locals singing carols (which were after all secular or at least outside the church tradition) may well have Anglicised their Latin. But the sixteenth century imitative style was surely more pan-European than any since...in itself evidence of the huge dominance of the Roman church.

[jean]

Locals singing carols (which were after all secular or at least outside the church tradition) may well have Anglicised their Latin. But the sixteenth century imitative style was surely more pan-European than any since...in itself evidence of the huge dominance of the Roman church.

But how then do you account for the English pronunciation of Latin that was is use in schools and Universities until the Reformed Classical pronunciation replaced it in the middle of the last century?

It survives in scraps of legal Latin, and interestingly in the way that, even now, Anglicans pronounce the titles of the canticles Venite, Benedicite, and less obviously Te Deum, even though the rest of the text is usually sung in English.

We are so used now to two pronunciations in parallel use in Church and academia that we may forget that until the Reformation Church and academia were an indissoluble whole.

As for a 'pan-European' pronunciation...why only in England?

[jean]

However, when a load of good singers get together and perform with minimum rehearsal time, it makes sense just to stick to the normal.

I certainly agree with that, having wasted a lot of time during a one-day workshop with Jeffrey Skidmore getting seventeenth-century French pronunciation exactly right when we'd have been better occupied concentrating on the notes.

But a professional performance or recording is a different matter, and it's interesting to hear an approximation to how the music might have sounded in its own time.

[Miles Coverdale]

But the sixteenth century imitative style was surely more pan-European than any since...in itself evidence of the huge dominance of the Roman church.

I don't think one can really infer the second part of that sentence from the first part. The style of composition may have become pan-European (but only by the end of the 16th century), but there is no reason to assume that a style of pronunciation accompanied it. Today, the way people from different countries pronounce Latin is heavily influenced by their vernacular, and I see no reason to think that matters were different four hundred years ago.

The style of imitative polyphony which began with Josquin (more or less) didn't really begin to influence English music until the 1540s. One of the first English pieces where one can see his influence is Taverner's Mean Mass, which was probably written about 20 years after Josquin's death. (Something we did acquire from Continental music is what we now call the 'English cadence', which came from Franco-Flemish composers like Gombert and Crequillon.)

By the time we get to the later 16th century and the quintessential style of Palestrina, English music, though polyphonic, does not sound like Palestrina, and I see no reason to assume it was pronounced like Palestrina either.

In any case, the influence of the Roman church in England was dealt something of a blow by Henry VIII.

[DracoM]

That last sentence is at least worth a murmur. Ecclesiastically, maybe, but musically?
The travelling musicians in Europe of many nationalities, mixing, listening, learning? Were we a musical island in all senses in and after H8's reign??

[Miles Coverdale]

Were we a musical island in all senses in and after H8's reign??

No, we weren't, but as I tried to show, Continental influences were relatively slow to catch on here.

Indeed, in the 15th century, the direction of musical influence was actually the reverse: far more English works survive in Continental manuscripts (eg the Aosta and Trent codices) than vice versa. But should we infer that Italians were therefore singing Dunstable (for example) using 'English' Latin? Surely not.

A later example of Continental influence here would be that of Alfonso Ferrabosco on Byrd's work, and it is known that a number of foreign musicians were employed a the royal court in the latter half of the 16th century.

My main point was that, even if there were 'Papal nuncios by the dozen' (centred mainly in London, one imagines), that is no reason to suppose that the whole of England was singing its Latin with Italianate pronunciation.

[Chris Watson]

This is all very interesting, but having spent more than quite a few interminable hours with directors such as a previously mentioned Brummie (who I admire greatly and merely disagree with him on this issue) I have yet to be persuaded that 'authentic' pronunciation is anything more than a red herring that has nothing whatsoever to do with making music, and which more often than not absorbs so much rehearsal time that the music making gets left behind.

[ardcarp]

I fear that, just as with changing fashions of HIPP, we shall have to follow our gut feelings about Latin pronunciation. I can remember my exhilaration at breaking away from trad church Latin as a student and singing a Mozart Coronation Mass in what we supposed to be the Austro-German manner, e.g. Tsaylee. Benedeetsimus. It sounded 'right'.

As schoolkids we were perfectly biligual, toggling back and forth between classroom and chapel with no sweat. Can jean or MC explain a little more about how the 'Reformed Classical' proninciation came about? Can one really imagine Caesar saying Waynee weedy weeky? Pythonesque IMO. And was there an element of anti-Roman Catholicism about it?

[ardcarp]

CW. My sympathies. I have to say (as an original member of Ex Cathedra) Jeff had not been seduced by exotic Latins in the 1970s. Had anyone?