Talk:O bone Jesu (Robert Parsons): Difference between revisions
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{{Reply|by=[[User:Vaarky|Vaarky]] 16:49, 9 May 2010 (UTC)|text= | {{Reply|by=[[User:Vaarky|Vaarky]] 16:49, 9 May 2010 (UTC)|text= | ||
I strongly feel that | I strongly feel that the searchable voicing should indicate the minimum voicing needed to sing the piece without omitting any notes. I disagree with the voicing on the Gaude Gloriosa too, btw. | ||
The broader question is what the voicing category is for. Is it not for people to know what forces they need to perform a piece? Keeping this as a 5-part piece when it requires 6 mouths that can sing independently defeats the main purpose of this categorization. Putting it in the 5-part category creates the misleading impression that 5 people can sing it. If every piece that was mostly 4 part and had a brief divisi in every part to 8 voices categorized itself as 4 part, it would render searching by voicing largely useless in terms of noise to signal ratio. Even using multi-voicing to list it under both 4 and 8 voices makes search worthless because of all the pieces a group that can't handle the divisi has to wade through. | The broader question is what the voicing category is for. Is it not for people to know what forces they need to perform a piece? Keeping this as a 5-part piece when it requires 6 mouths that can sing independently defeats the main purpose of this categorization. Putting it in the 5-part category creates the misleading impression that 5 people can sing it. If every piece that was mostly 4 part and had a brief divisi in every part to 8 voices categorized itself as 4 part, it would render searching by voicing largely useless in terms of noise to signal ratio. Even using multi-voicing to list it under both 4 and 8 voices makes search worthless because of all the pieces a group that can't handle the divisi has to wade through. |
Revision as of 16:59, 9 May 2010
Vaarky,
I've thought about your change of 5vv to 6vv and changed it back, while attempting to clarify the situation with the note about the Bass gimell. I absolutely see your point - if 5 solo singers got together to perform this piece, they'd find themselves a man down - but it is still a "5-part" piece; i.e. it's contained in 5 partbooks. I think if we tried to reflect every division when specifying the overall number of voices, we'd get into difficulties - some of White's psalm-motets, while in 5 parts, have multiple gimells that would take the overall number of voices up to 8 or 10, enough to make any choir director's heart sink at the sight. And what about those not infrequent cases in earlier 16th-century polyphony where a voice-part divides only at a final chord - would we want to specify two voice-parts throughout? So many pieces from this period are distinguished by their number of voices that I think we perhaps need to retain the "traditional" designation. (I don't think there are in fact any gimells in White's 5-part Lamentations, but if there were, we'd be calling them the 6-part Lamentations, to the endless confusion of users looking for the "real", much less well-known, 6-part ones.) I think that categorising a piece such as O bone Jesu as AATTBB is right and necessary for users searching for specific voicings, but I'd still like somehow to retain a mention of the actual number of voice-parts. My initial attempt is far from perfect, so please feel free to have a better idea.--DaveF 16:28, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
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This reminds me of the Tallis Gaude gloriosa Dei Mater, which is nominally for SATTBarB (6 parts), but has gymels for S, A, and B, so would require a total of 9 soloists. I gave the voicing for it as SATTBB and point out the divisi in the Description. |
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