On Jul 23, 2005, at 8:53 AM, Andrew Stiller wrote:
Oh come off it. If I publish a choral work, there are a limited number
of preset terms for the type of chorus it is:
mixed chorus (= SATB)
men's chorus (=TTBB)
women's chorus (=SSAA)
boy's choir (=TrTrAA)
A great deal of the non-mixed choral repertoire in opera -- the
majority, I'd guess -- is in three parts. It's traditionally labeled
TTB for men and S1, S2, S3 for women. TTB does not mean you split your
tenor section in half and put all the basses on the bass clef. Any
sensible chorus director is going to split the group into three parts.
Much of the symphonic repertoire also uses a three-way split. When I
sang with the SF Symphony Chorus, every chorister had two identities --
one for the four/four split (SSAATTBB), and one for three/three
(HMLHML). A lot of pieces called for the high-middle-low splits,
either for the entire concert or for parts of it. It was understood
that when there were three parts, singers would go to the HML divisi,
regardless of whether it was written with two parts on the top staff,
two on the bottom, or in three separate staves.
There are some sacred choral pieces that are written with three women's
parts and two men's throughout. Off the top of my head, the only one I
can think of is Bach's Magnificat, but I'm pretty sure there are more.
(Perhaps this is a throwback to the old scheme with the "quintus" part?
That's outside my area of knowledge, so I couldn't say.)
mdl
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