"Choral Music in the Renaissance"

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Choral Music in the RenaissanceAuthor(s): Howard Mayer BrownSource: Early Music, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Apr., 1978), pp. 164-169Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3125600 .

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164

CHORALMUSIC

I N T H ERENAISSANCEHOWARD MAYER BROWN

Instrumentalmusic did not equal vocal music in importanceuntil the 17thcentury. While it is true that a sizeable amount of music conceived forinstruments alone survives from the 16th century-and some of it is of avery high quality-most of the music composed during the Middle Agesand the Renaissancewas connected with a text, and most of the biggestandmany of the best 15th- and early 16th-centurycompositions-at least mostof the polyphony set to Latin words-were probably performed moreoften then by voices alone than by voices and instruments or byinstruments alone. In short, music for unaccompanied voices forms thecentral repertory of sacred music in the Renaissance.That statement issurely a truism. There are doubtless good reasons why so many of ourprofessional early music groups place more emphasis on instruments thanon voices, but we ought always to be aware of the fact that early musicmeans vocal music in the firstplace, a point I havemade repeatedlyin thisjournal and elsewhere, but which neverthelessseems appropriateto stateonce again in introducingthischoral issueof EarlyMusic.Vocal music is not necessarilychoral music, though. The historyof thechoir has not yet been written. Presumablythe first choirs in medievalwestern Europe were made up of clerics who sang plainchant. Polyphonywas the province of the more musicallyadept soloists. ManfredBukotzer,in his study of the performance directions in one manuscript, dated thebeginnings of choral polyphony about 1430.1No one to my knowledgehasyet challenged his conclusion, and archivalevidence seems to bear out hiscontention (at least until new evidence produces new conclusions). FrankD'Accone, for example,who has recentlywrittenone of the few studies thatattempts to pull together information from a variety of sources toilluminatean historicaltrend withregardto performance practice,hasveryneatly demonstrated the growth in the size of choral establishments insome northern Italian churchesin the late 15thcentury.2But to statebaldlythatpolyphonic choirs did not exist before the 15thcentury(asI seem to bedoing) is to imply that a rigid and clear-cut distinction should be madebetween groups of singers and a choir, distinctions that are patentlyartificial.

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D'Accone shows that 'choirs' (or do I mean groups of singers?) innorthern Italian churches grew from about six men in the earlier part ofthe 15th century to about 20 men late in the century, plus an unspecifiednumber of choirboys. Someone needs to demonstrate that the sameprocess of growth occurred in other European countries as well, and in factenough archival records have already been published to permit sometentative conclusions on the subject. I shall certainly not be surprised whenD'Accone's figures turn out to be typical for the rest of Europe, and in themeantime they provide a valuable rule of thumb for performers. So far aswe know now, in other words, Leonin's and Perotin's organa andclausula-virtuoso pieces that ought from time to time to appear in ourconcert programmes-as well as late 14th-century continental music,should be sung by soloists or by very small groups of singers. Ideally,Dufay's Masses require no more than about ten men and boys, whileJosquin's and also Palestrina's and Lassus' were probably normallyperformed in the 16th century by choirs of 20-25 singers. Thoseconclusions seem to be justified by documentary evidence, and moreoverthey feel right. Dufay's ornate melodic lines need the flexibility and 'give'that soloists can provide, while Josquin's music as well as that by laterrenaissance composers, in which each of the four or five voices seems to beequally important and equally well conceived in relation to the words, andthe melodies generally less fussy than those by early 15th-centurycomposers, can use the greater weight bigger choirs provide.But if choral groups begin to seek to duplicate original performingconditions in the belief that the true character of the music only revealsitself when the sound is close to what the composer imagined, they will findtheir task even more difficult and frustrating than that of those instru-mentalists who are very much involved in reconstructing old, lost sounds.Even if the choirmaster should assemble a group of the correct size, with an'authentic' distribution of voice parts, and even though he take to heart theconclusions of Peter Phillips in this issue of Early Music about pitch, andeven after he has rationalized the lack of castrati and the difficulty, in mostcountries except Britain, of finding choirboys (for, ultimately, arrangingsacred music of the Renaissance for mixed choirs is a fatal compromise),there still remains the well-nigh insoluble problem of discovering orimagining how singers in the 15th and 16th centuries actually producedtheir voices. Singers are at a great disadvantage in trying to recover losttechniques. They are restricted to descriptions of singers and of singing,whereas instrumentalists at least have the physical objects to hand, withtheir built-in clues and limitations. But today we might not agree that avoice described as sweet-sounding in the 16th century would correspond inany way with what we think is sweet; surely it is even difficult to get twopeople to agree on an appropriate adjective to describe the voice of anygiven living singer. Quite aside from the subjectivity of mere descriptions,though, there is the additional difficulty of trying to corroborate ourguesses about what the old writers mean. In the absence of time machines,we can never be certain we are correct. Even when writers seem to be sayingsomething quite specific, they are not always unambiguous. For example,Joseph Dyer, in this issue of Early Music, interprets Conrad von Zabern'sremarks about dynamics and voice range to mean that the registers of thevoice should all be distinct and separate, loud in the chest register and soft

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music seem to be developing a rather light sound, produced far forward inthe mask and with little or no vibrato. That sort of sound produces to myears the best results-a clear texture in which all of the polyphonic strandsare clearly audible-but the justifications for such a solution are empiricalrather than historical.One of the knottiest problems of performing choral music fiom theRenaissance concerns the question of adding instruments. When are we

justified in mixing cornetts and sackbuts with voices'? How 'authentic' arethose recordings that present a colourful melange of soft and loudinstruments doubling the singers in some passages and replacing them inothers'? The last word has by no means been spoken on the subject,although a growing consensus rejects the notion that any instrumentsexcept the organ normally accompanied choirs in liturgical music beforethe 16th century. D'Accone finds no evidence of instrumental participa-tion in northern Italian churches in the late 15th or early 16th centuries.James McKinnon has searched without success for documentary evidenceof instruments in earlier liturgical ceremonies. And Craig Wright hasrecently reminded us that some important establishments in theRenaissance, such as the Cathedral in Cambrai (as well as the SistineChapel in Rome), did not even allow organ music to disturb the rcaippll//aideal.4 Perhaps court chapels would tell a diflerent story. No one to myknowledge has yet investigated the possibility that princes permitted theirinstrumental ensembles to take part in church services earlier than thechurch authorities did. And no scholar has yet systematically surveyed theavailable information to discover when instruments were admitted to thechurch. Certainly by the middle of the 16th century many Italian churchesregularly hired bands of wind players and the practice may go back to thebeginning of the century in some countries and for certain specialoccasions. I myself think that many professional early music groups are toooptimistic in mixing instruments with voices in their performances ofsacred music, probably in the fear that modern concert audiences will find

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the 'authentic' versions too austere. But that austerity was probablymitigated in some circumstances even in the 15th century. Trumpets mayhave played in church sometimes, but possibly only to add a fanfare or twoat coronations and other very splendid occasions. I have recently shownthat soft instruments sometimes accompanied processions outside thechurch, through the city streets, in northern Italy in the late 15th century.5And someone needs to integrate the well-known description of theconsecration of the cathedral of Florence in 1436 into the theory thatinstruments were never played in church before the 16th century. On thatoccasion strings and winds played both during the procession and at theelevation of the host.

The assumption we all make that choruses sang sacred music and groupsof solo singers, one to a part, madrigals, chansons, lieder and other secularmusic, is probably a usable generalization, although stated so baldly it isdoubtless over simple. Madrigalesque compositions were very likely sungin 16th-century Italy, for example, by relatively large groups (that is, bychoirs), at civic and courtly ceremonies, during the intermedii stagedbetween acts of plays, and at unusually sumptuous banquets. And insmaller courts and churches, and perhaps during the duller bits of theecclesiastical year sacred music may well have been sung by a handtul ofmusicians even in important centres. Those exceptions beg the question, ofcourse, of what is ideal and of how we should best serve the composer'sintentions, and yet performance conditions varied as much then as now,and we should perhaps tolerate and even encourage experimentation anddiversity. John Eliot Gardner's performances of Monteverdi's madrigalswith large choir, for instance, may not be 'authentic' but his choir projectsthis music, almost certainly intended for soloists, beautifully, and it gainsin sureness and force what it loses in flexibility and nuance in Gardner'sreadings. As with almost everything having to do with the performingconventions of past times, we must steer a narrow course between acomplete and mindless permissiveness and a holier-than-thou purism thatmakes new dogmas and pretends to know more than it actually does. Wewould all like to be provided with a set of rules that can be mechanicallyfollowed, so that we can be certain that we are either right or wrong. Butreal life, including the real life of the later Middle Ages and the Renaissancethat we are trying to reconstruct, seldom works that way. There are those, Idaresay, who would claim that French secular music in early 16th-centuryItaly was never sung but always played on instruments, because the manu-script sources seldom supply text, and those who would claim thatmadrigals must never under any circumstances be sung by a choir, but thetruth was probably more complicated and more diverse. Certainly when wecompare the surviving music of the 16th century with eye-witness accountsof how it was actually performed on particular occasions, we almost alwayssee that the versions that have come down to us in printed books andmanuscripts were disseminated in a manner to make the pertformers' jobeasier. Compositions were published in a more or less 'neutral' version, thebest way to convey the sense of the music and at the same time allow theperforming musicians freedom to arrange them in the ways they thoughtbest.

In sum, there are still many things we need to know about choirs in theRenaissance and how they sounded, before we can claim with any

I ManfredF. Bukofzer,'TheBeginningsof'Choral Polyphony', Studies in Medieval &Renaissance usic London, 1950),pp. 176-89.2FrankA. D'Accone, 'Theperformanceofsacredmusic in ItalyduringJosquin's time,c 1475-1525', inJosquin des Prez, ed. EdwardE. Lowinsky(London, 1976),pp. 601-18.3Nanie Bridgman, La vie musicaleauquattrocentoParis, 1964),p. 197.4 D'Accone, 'Performanceof sacredmusic';James McKinnon,'Representationsof theMass in Medieval and RenaissanceArt'(to bepublished); and Craig Wright, 'DufayatCambrai:Discoveries and Revisions',JournalofjtheAmericanMusicologicalSociety28 (1975),175-229.5 H. M. Brown, 'On GentileBellini'sProcessione n San Marco(1496)', Proceedingsojthe TwelJthCongressojftheInternationalMusicologicalSociety, Berkeley,Caliornia, August1977 (to be published). See also illustrationsto H. M. Brown's articleon music in the timeof Boccaccio,EarlyMusic /3 (July1977),pp.332, 333, 339.In an article on thepifferiof the court of*Mantua,whichwill appearin a forthcomingissue of Rivista Italiana di Musicologia, WilliamPrizerdescribesthreeoccasions between1475and 1495when the altacappellaperformed during Mass,once on militarycampaignand twice for noble weddings.None of the sourcesdescribingthe eventsunequivocallystatesthat the loud bandaccompaniedsingers,but theydo make clearthat the band played during the liturgicalservice.I am gratefulto MrPrizer or lettingme read his article beforepublication.168



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assurance that we can judge the authenticity of a performance. How bigwere choirs at any particular time and place? How many singers in eachvoice range participated? How did they produce their sound? Whichpieces should be reserved fotbr hoirs and which for smaller groups ofsoloists? How many instruments can one add to a choir and what kindsshould they be? If we could give convincing answers to these and otherquestions, we still could not claim that we know the greatest masterpiecesof the 15th and 16th centuries until they become a regular part of theconcert repertory in our present-day secular society. I have neverunderstood why some musicians object to hearing renaissance masses inmodern concert halls. They seem to me no more objectionable or out ofplace there than renaissance madrigals or chansons. And yet, how manymasses and motets by Dufay, Ockeghem, Josquin des Prez, Lassus,Victoria, Palestrina or Byrd are performed each year in Alice Tully Hall inNew York, or at the South Bank in London? Until the time comes whenthose works take their rightful place in the concert hall beside Susato andPraetorius dances and other quaint novelties on curious soundinginstruments, we shall all have a distorted notion of the scope anddimension of early music.

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"Choral Music in the Renaissance"

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