Discover Top Posts Tagged with #polychoral

A look at one of the ancestors of the sonata.

Classical Nerd is a weekly video series covering music history, theoretical concepts, and techniques, hosted by composer, pianist, and music history aficionado Thomas Little.

#canzona #ancient music #sonata #giovanni gabrieli #polychoral

(The Birth of the Orchestra: History of an Institution, 1650-1815 - John Spitzer, Neal Zaslaw - p. 61)

This is amazing. 150 people playing, in 1628. That's something we'd usually conceive as being a 19th Century activity.

#additions #colossal baroque #polychoral #cori spezzati #reference

Georg Friedrich Händel - Concerto a due cori No.1 in B flat major, HWV 332

I wonder why, but I just can't find the score to this piece online anymore. I do have this screenshot of a page of it (taken July 31st 2011), so I'm sure it was on IMSLP or something. Any one out there knows this piece and would have the score?

-edit: oh, here they are, being the 3rd and last section of this anthology! They are wrongly numbered as HWV 342-344 on IMSLP. Gladly, they are already marked for revision.

This is a great example of how polychoral writing went on during the Baroque era. However, instead of using only choirs, Händel also uses string or wind sections as 1st and 2nd groups. In this piece, they are located one beside the other just like a Lassus or Padovano piece (no cori spezzati there, you guys!). There's some echoing by the 2nd group and they are very specific about the beginnings and ends of each group sections. Most of the time though, Händel sequences the choirs music, without actually relating them as a dependent development (such as echoing, doubling, etc), there are always new sections.

#Haendel #polychoral #reference #score #video