There is a growing awareness of the performance potential of music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Of equal importance, are the increased opportunities for acquiring early-instrument reproductions. Thorough investigation and sumptuous recordings by such groups as David Munrow’s Early Music Consort of London have combined ‘authentic’ instruments and voices. These performances have imparted a vitality and increased dimension to music which too frequently has been treated too preciously.
Incorporating instruments into early choral music has many advantages. First, instruments provide contrast in timbre, either (a) by changing vocal and instrumental sonorities on successive
stanzas of part songs, as in Dowland’s “Come, again,” or (b) by contrasting vocal timbre as an entering voice in a round, as in Ravenscroft’s “He that will an ale-house keep,” or (c) performing an entire motet, chanson, or madrigal with different but balanced sonorities on each part, or ( d) simply by allowing the instrumentalists to insert a purely instrumental interlude among the choral pieces, which they very likely will be’ anxious to do.
Second, instruments can enhance the spirit or prevailing character of a piece. such as the addition of bowed stringed instruments to double voice parts in ]osquin’s or Gombert’s Mille regretz intensifies the languishing melancholy of those pieces.
Third, instruments may add ornamentation, as doubling or substituting instruments may (a) add melodic embellishment or cadential trills, (b) fiII in melodic skips with rapid or slow runs, depending upon the character of the piece, (c) intensify the rhythmic aspects of the music with staccato or repeated figures, or (d) play echoing or alternating patterns which enhance the concertato/ripieno aspects of the music.
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