Tír Na HiFi

Vinyl....

jaybee wrote:

Jose Echenique wrote:
Call me old fashioned but I prefer children voices in Palestrina. Still it is true that the Tallis version is very beautiful.

My first exposure to his music was through his sung eucharists, live that is, so I do understand the preference for at least juvenile soprano ranks in the choir but I've yet to find one that wasn't a bit saccharine in its delivery.....

My favourite recording of the Pope Marcellus Mass was a 1950´s mono recording with the Regensburger Domspatzen in Archiv, not the later remake on stereo. Of the current versions I can live very happily with the Westminster Cathedral recording in Hyperion, which I don´t think it´s saccharine at all.
After all there´s ample reason to prefer children´s voices, that was what Palestrina heard in the XVI Century.

fergus wrote:

Jared wrote:^^ I'm pleased that some of you have been paying him a bit of reverence on his anniversary year...

I must confess that I was blissfully unaware of that fact to be honest Jared.

yes, it's his 150th Birth Aniversary (1862) he's been getting quite a bit of a play over here on R3...

On vinyl....





....and a wonderful version too!

Jose Echenique wrote:

jaybee wrote:

Jose Echenique wrote:
Call me old fashioned but I prefer children voices in Palestrina. Still it is true that the Tallis version is very beautiful.

My first exposure to his music was through his sung eucharists, live that is, so I do understand the preference for at least juvenile soprano ranks in the choir but I've yet to find one that wasn't a bit saccharine in its delivery.....

My favourite recording of the Pope Marcellus Mass was a 1950´s mono recording with the Regensburger Domspatzen in Archiv, not the later remake on stereo. Of the current versions I can live very happily with the Westminster Cathedral recording in Hyperion, which I don´t think it´s saccharine at all.
After all there´s ample reason to prefer children´s voices, that was what Palestrina heard in the XVI Century.

I would have thought the Papal Choir would have used castrati in that time, not children.

My favourite recording of the Pope Marcellus Mass was a 1950´s mono recording with the Regensburger Domspatzen in Archiv, not the later remake on stereo. Of the current versions I can live very happily with the Westminster Cathedral recording in Hyperion, which I don´t think it´s saccharine at all.
After all there´s ample reason to prefer children´s voices, that was what Palestrina heard in the XVI Century.[/quote]

I would have thought the Papal Choir would have used castrati in that time, not children.[/quote]

As far as I know castrati were very rare in the XVI Century. The demand for them came when opera appeared in the XVII Century. It is well known that the Vatican had castrati, the high solo in Gregorio Allegri´s Miserere was indeed written for a castrato, and there´s speculation that Allegri himself was a castrato, but Allegri died in the mid XVII Century, when castrati were already popular.

I found this in the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"For the next five years Palestrina directed the choir of St. John Lateran, but his efforts were continually thwarted by singers whose quality was almost as limited as their number, which was restricted because very little money was available for music. Nevertheless, he gained admission for his eldest son, Rodolfo, then about 13, as a chorister. Eventually he broke away from this uncongenial milieu. The chapter archives of St. John Lateran record that in July 1560 he and his son suddenly departed."

From that it´s obvious that Palestrina´son was still a boy soprano, and the choir situation in St. Peter must have been very similar to St. John Lateran.
I´m almost sure that the basic Palestrina choir consisted in boy sopranos and altos and tenors and basses.

Jose Echenique wrote:My favourite recording of the Pope Marcellus Mass was a 1950´s mono recording with the Regensburger Domspatzen in Archiv, not the later remake on stereo. Of the current versions I can live very happily with the Westminster Cathedral recording in Hyperion, which I don´t think it´s saccharine at all.
After all there´s ample reason to prefer children´s voices, that was what Palestrina heard in the XVI Century.

I would have thought the Papal Choir would have used castrati in that time, not children.

As far as I know castrati were very rare in the XVI Century. The demand for them came when opera appeared in the XVII Century. It is well known that the Vatican had castrati, the high solo in Gregorio Allegri´s Miserere was indeed written for a castrato, and there´s speculation that Allegri himself was a castrato, but Allegri died in the mid XVII Century, when castrati were already popular.

I found this in the Encyclopedia Britannica:

"For the next five years Palestrina directed the choir of St. John Lateran, but his efforts were continually thwarted by singers whose quality was almost as limited as their number, which was restricted because very little money was available for music. Nevertheless, he gained admission for his eldest son, Rodolfo, then about 13, as a chorister. Eventually he broke away from this uncongenial milieu. The chapter archives of St. John Lateran record that in July 1560 he and his son suddenly departed."

From that it´s obvious that Palestrina´son was still a boy soprano, and the choir situation in St. Peter must have been very similar to St. John Lateran.
I´m almost sure that the basic Palestrina choir consisted in boy sopranos and altos and tenors and basses.

According to Wikipedia

There were certainly castrati in the Sistine Chapel choir in 1558, although not described as such: on 27 April of that year, Hernando Bustamante, a Spaniard from Palencia, was admitted (the first castrati so termed who joined the Sistine choir were Pietro Paolo Folignato and Girolamo Rossini, admitted in 1599).... In 1589, by the bull Cum pro nostri temporali munere, Pope Sixtus V re-organised the choir of St Peter's, Rome specifically to include castrati. Thus the castrati came to supplant both boys (whose voices broke after only a few years) and falsettists (whose voices were weaker and less reliable) from the top line in such choirs. Women were banned by the Pauline dictum mulieres in ecclesiis taceant ("let women keep silent in church"; see I Corinthians, ch 14, v 34).

As Palestrina was active in Rome from 1551 until his death in 1594, he was contemporary with the rise of the castrati: it seems likely he would have performed his works with boys on the top line in some cases and castrati in others.

Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique
Andrew Davis/ BBC Symphony Orch (Live, 1993)

I will be spending a few days recapping on a few of my Berlioz recordings, which haven't seen the light of day in some time. Although I've played the Colin Davis version a few times within living memory, this lively version of Andrews, recorded live in Tokyo, has collected dust for too long.

Berlioz: Te Deum
BBC Symph/ Susanna Malkki

Grande symphonie funebre et triomphale
BBC NOW/ Thierry Fischer

Both recorded live at the Proms, 2009.... I'm sure Darren was there!!