What Classical Music Are You Listening To?

Larry Kart · August 30, 2021

48 minutes ago, JSngry said:

But why did they write it like that to begin with?

Because it fit the way the way they heard music/wanted it to sound. Was that way more or less "natural" to them or did they also have a taste for/put a value on difficulty per se, on tying themselves in knots and solving puzzles? Both at once I would guess. As far as "to begin with" goes, the way they wrote music and performed it undoubtedly flowed in some way from what was there beforehand, i.e. "to begin with." They certainly didn't know how we would write music 500 years later.

Peter Friedman · August 30, 2021

Schumann - Piano Trio No.2 and Beethoven - Piano Concerto No.2

JSngry · August 30, 2021

42 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

Because it fit the way the way they heard music/wanted it to sound. Was that way more or less "natural" to them or did they also have a taste for/put a value on difficulty per se, on tying themselves in knots and solving puzzles? Both at once I would guess.

Has anybody looked at this stuff mathematically? Like, as equations?

Larry Kart · August 30, 2021

I know that Pythagorean tuning was involved, or is said to have been involved, at times, but that's tuning, not the interweaving layers of separate voices, as described in the post from the guy on Amazon that I quoted above.

JSngry · August 30, 2021

It might well be a lost math for all we know, used to hide/code "advanced" ideas or something, especially considering the time period.

Hardly a new way to do things, even then...

Larry Kart · August 31, 2021

Further information:

According to Margaret Bent: "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our [modern] standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness".^[5] Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores were extremely rare, and barlines were not used. Note values were generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of beat was the semibreve, or whole note. As had been the case since the Ars Nova (see Medieval music), there could be either two or three of these for each breve (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent to the modern "measure," though it was itself a note value and a measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the next smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note") to each semibreve.

These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve–semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve–minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively) when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as quarter notes) occurred less often. This development of white mensural notation may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than vellum), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enforce the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes.

Accidentals (e.g. added sharps, flats and naturals that change the notes) were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering notations for guitar-family instruments (tablatures) today. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score correctly, even if the accidentals were not written in. As such, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." (See musica ficta.) A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together, musicians would avoid parallel octaves and parallel fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians.^[5]

Check out Ockeghem's "Missa Prolationum" on You Tube, score plus music.

T.D. · August 31, 2021

8 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

A post on Amazon ( re Cinquecento's recording of Richefort's Requiem) from a very knowledgeable guy:

Here's the learning process:
* First listen to any track on the CD and count the separate voices. You will hear six on most tracks; just five 2, 10, & 12; just 4 on 11; but 7 on track 14. You WILL be able to separate them, and that's one of the criteria for considering this performance a paragon of polyphony.
* Now listen to the separate voices and note that each one has its recognizable timbre; you could identify each singer in a blind test, perhaps even over the telephone. Each voice has character and musicality of its own, and that's a second criterion for excellence.
* Now choose one voice, other than the highest (superius) soprano/alto, and follow that one voice through the whole piece of music. You WILL be able to do so with all five or six voices throughout every piece. You'll hear each voice as an emotive statement in itself. You should note that the voices don't "fill in" in the manner of a large choir. The "transparency" of the vocal lines permits you to hear rhythmic and harmonic complexities and interactions. It also allows you to hear the harmonic logic of dissonance resolving to perfect consonance at cadences.
* Now the coup de grace: Listen and try to hear all the voices at once, not as a big whoosh of choral chords, but as a synchronized conversation of voices, each one interesting in itself.

That, my friends, in non-technical terms, is how Renaissance polyphony should sound!

Nice description, but it seems to assume that the piece is being performed "one voice per part". I prefer that, but it's far from universal, and for instance the ultra-popular Tallis Scholars use multiple voices per part. I get the impression there's even a degree of controversy.

I discovered Renaissance polyphony only recently, starting in 2013 iirc. I always loved counterpoint and Bach, for instance, so it's not a big surprise. My recordings collection is not as big as it might be, though: as a lapsed Catholic I only need to hear so many Kyrie eleisons, Ave Marias, ...

This CD+DVD has a nice recording, and the DVD features excellent ancillary info. Probably oop, however:

51SZqPXQTkL._SX425_.jpg

Larry Kart · August 31, 2021

The Tallis Scholars get dissed, when they do, for several reasons. Size of the ensemble (too large), and the rather New-Agey emphasis on the ensemble's ethereal upper-register female voices, which allegedly distorts (it certainly colors) the overall sound picture. Conductor Peter Phillips, coming from the world of 16th Century English choral music (e.g that of Tallis himself), seems to interpret Renaissance polyphony from the top down, which is not, so the story goes, how that music should go.

T.D. · August 31, 2021

7 hours ago, JSngry said:

Has anybody looked at this stuff mathematically? Like, as equations?

7 hours ago, JSngry said:

These days? Oh yeah. Though more computationally than via equations.

Without too much effort I found a couple of interesting articles. They seem fairly effective at recognizing the work of particular composers, though the second is much more extensive.

Markov chains:

https://eita-nakamura.github.io/articles/Nakamura-Takaki_PolyphonicMusicStyleAndPCIntervals_MCM2015.pdf

Numerical state space analysis:

https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/pdf/10.1484/J.JAF.5.124209