Stick Time: A Taste of Early Music

Comments

1. Phillip Bernard says

   December 15, 2011 at 3:14 pm

   John, recent scholarship has shown that Bach was writing for 4 concertists (one-to-a-part) who handled all vocal lines, solo and “choral” passages alike, and an optional set of 4 ripienists, who sometimes reinforced the choral passages.  See The Essential Bach Choir by Andrew Parrott for a wonderful overview of the evidence.

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2. Jeremy McLeod says

   November 7, 2011 at 9:44 am

   Yes, indeed, this group did a wonderful job on this piece.  Diction.  What a delight.  etc.  And, Yes, Bach and earlier keyboard composers translate well to a piano and the occasional tuba playing a gavotte or two.  Yes, larger groups CAN sing earlie music and prob’ly should.

    

   That said? I, for one, am really glad there are those who work hard to understand primary sources and create modern performances that more directly breathe and make music in the performance practices of the time/place of a composition’s origins.  They lay important groundwork upon which groups like this can build to create their performances.

    

   Jeremy

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3. John Howell says

   November 7, 2011 at 9:42 am

   Actually, Scott, NOBODY says that larger choirs can’t (or shouldn’t) sing early music!  That’s what’s called a straw-man argument, setting up a non-question as if it were real.

    

   The significant question, and one that choir directors need to know about, is what kind of choirs a given piece of music was actually written for.  What did the composer expect to hear?  For some, that’s easy:  Bach and Handel both used choirs of about 20 singers, similar in size to the Chapel and Cathedral choirs in modern-day England.

    

   But THAT question is moot in any case, because the modern mixed-gender choir did not exist in any of the early churches where women were forbidden to sing.  So the modern choir is in no way the same instrument that those composers were writing for.  The famous problem of staffing the alto parts in renaissance motets is only one example of that.

    

   So what it really comes down to is judging not only one’s singers but the venue and its acoustics AND the music itself, and as usual, sometimes our judgement is better than at other times.

    

   All the best,

   John

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