Stick Time: 500-Year-Old Surround Sound

In the current world of home theatre installations, “surround sound” is all the rage.  Various companies schlep incredibly expensive systems intended to give the listener the impression of “being there” while watching a movie.

 

Note to the sound-system companies: Your “new” system is not entirely new. We choral folks have been at this for, oh, about a half a millennia.  Centuries-old cathedrals all over the world have been built to provide sound from multiple angles (such as St. Marks in Venice), and composers have long written poly-choral works that surround the sanctuary with multiple choirs.

 

Poly-choral works are enormous fun for singers, conductors, and audience members alike.  They provide shifting sources of sound, and if performed in a resonant space cause overlapping waves of sound that create exciting harmonic structures.  One common work of poly-choral composition is Orlando di Lasso’s O la o che bon echo.  Available in a variety of voice settings, it is well-known to many choral singers.  Perhaps the height of the form is the Tallis Spem in Alium, a monstrous work scored for eight five-voice choirs.

 

For conductors, the challenge is to provide balance within the sub-choirs and then to balance those choirs against one another.  Just as one voice part can be mismatched within a standard choir, so, too, can one choir be overwhelmed within the larger poly-choral setting.

 

Listen to this performance of a poly-choral work divided between three choirs.  How did the conductor balance each sub choir? How are the opposing choirs balanced?  How does the physical position of the choirs affect the performance?  What could be some of the problems facing the upstage choir who have to listen from behind the two choirs down-stage?  How does the resonance of the room affect the performance?   As an aside, there is a clever irony in setting a simple shape-note work in a complex poly-choral style.

 

(It does need to be noted that the effectiveness of a sonically three-dimensional poly-choral work is somewhat lost in the two-dimensional word of recorded sound.)