Double Chorus: This "unknown"

Ratatouille89 wrote:

Then did you ever need a deeper insight in this sense?

...emblematic, this question ...

I am using the Dubois, managing many voices simultaneously is proving to be formative for me

In my opinion, the Double Choir of the VII [exam] is the result of a misunderstanding. The ministerial program speaks of "composition of double choir counterpoint on a chant assigned by the commission"... chant, singular, not chants or basses. Furthermore, in the treatises from the beginning of the century, the period when the exam programs were written, the given basses are also called "chants."

This premise is to say that there is no single way to approach the test.

Double choir with 8 independent voices is obviously primarily Renaissance (even there, however, there is a difference between striking choirs and a single 8-voice choir), but in subsequent centuries, authors such as Bach, Cherubini, Brahms, and many others also ventured into this repertoire.

There are conservatories that ask for a sixteenth-century motet with a paraphrase of a Gregorian chant (and indeed they do not give 2 basses, but rather a Gregorian page from which to derive the various incipits for the sections), others where they give 2 sixteenth-century basses by an author (Lassus, Palestrina, Victoria... often parts of a Mass), others where the 2 basses are fully tonal and with clearly late imitations/progressions (like certain exercises by Broussard); once, I even saw a professor (A.G.) write on the spot 2 basses with a macaronic Latin text.

How did it go for you?

I preferred to remove them anyway, the basses were of tonal origin and the processing was in the style of Dubois...

I don't know how the audition will be, I am also preparing on the Dubois...how is Broussard?

Thanks for the first responses, it seems to me that the exam will be a lottery... I imagine it depends on the external examiner, right?

I didn't find the topic particularly stimulating, let's just say it's a massive pain in the ass. Excuse my frankness.

Oracolo wrote:

...how is Broussard?

It presents an excellent summary of the rules of counterpoint, which in Dubios are distributed in a scattered order; it is rich in examples.

Perhaps the splitting of parts is a bit exaggerated... which from 8 sometimes even reaches 10.

Sorry, it seems to me that this is a counterpoint exercise... but how many damn books are there on the subject. I have never heard of Brussard

Aspiring [musicians], there are many of them

The point is how many there are beyond the 4 voices ...subject of study for the double choir

Below the 4 voices, the 2 little books by Father Angelo Berardi are useful; Jeppesen's counterpoint book is not bad (even if it doesn't exist in Italian) ... texts like Dubois reach up to 8 voices

In any case, I believe that in the intermediate course a crossword test (such as the tonal double choir) is absolutely superfluous, but I remember that these are tests dating back to 1930, the period of the Cecilian revival, the rediscovery (non-philological) of Palestrina, etc.

I already do Renaissance counterpoint in the lower [level], from 2 to 4 voices, and so in the intermediate I move to 8 (with a rapid passage through 5-6-7) with full choirs. Three years for fugue, post-romantic romance, analysis, modulations, and double choir (also considering the complementary Organ and Gregorian, Score Reading, and Dramatic Poetics) are too few to do everything in depth.

In my way of seeing the matter, the double choir has a reason to exist if studied within the stylistic context in which it was born, as Zedef recalled, during the Renaissance period.

To be precise, the basses of the double choirs written between 1550 and 1580 are good.

The basses proposed by Dubois (which are by Cherubini) are good for technical practice, that is, applying the logic of the double choir without worrying about modal aspects; let us consider that a composition student has seen modality only in complementary organ and in an earlier historical context (also distorted precisely because of the type of tests they must undergo) … too little to delve in without foundations and coming from an exquisitely tonal world to start with Lasso, Palestrina, Vittoria, etc.

Afterward, it is mandatory to immerse oneself in the Renaissance language, which provides its own satisfactions; a text that I see has not been cited is R. Dionisi, B. Zanolini, “La Tecnica del contrappunto vocale del Cinquecento” [The Technique of 16th-century Vocal Counterpoint]... also convenient for those who would like to do choral conducting as well (see motet).

Let's say that making a parallel with the fugue, even a couple of months ago Maestro Lorenzini wrote a fugue (he is alive and well), everyone has written them from the 1600s to today, but at school, one delves into the context in which this procedure became consolidated.

Eagle wrote:

Aspirant, there are many of them

The point is how many there are beyond the 4 voices ...the subject of study for the double choir

Below the 4 voices, the 2 little books by Father Angelo Berardi are useful; Jeppesen's counterpoint book is not bad (even if it does not exist in Italian) ... texts like Dubois reach 8 voices

Certainly interesting on a historical level, I add Fux, which is still available as a facsimile.

I find the text I mentioned a moment ago to be formative nonetheless.