On 13 May 2011 at 20:02, John Howell wrote: > At 7:12 PM -0400 5/13/11, David W. Fenton wrote: > >On 13 May 2011 at 19:09, John Howell wrote: > >> Josquin (or Pierre de la Rue) also > >> wrote the bass down to a low Bb at the end of "xxxx," but again we > >> don't know what pitch standard he was writing for. > > I sent that before remembering that the title was "Abslon, fili mi." > > >We don't even know which NOTES they were writing. The clef system > >back then wasn't tied to a fixed pitch like it is today -- it meant > >something entirely different to them than it does to us. > > Not quite THAT bad. The RELATIVE pitches were quite fixed.
Er, I didn't say anything that would contradict that. I didn't say none of the NOTES were tied to a fixed pitch, but that the CLEF SYSTEM wasn't tied to a fixed pitch. > (I.e., > all Cs were octaves apart, whatever the actual frequencies were.) The > two problems were that (a) with no fixed pitch standard, not even in > the same town, the reference pitch could have been anywhere within a > wide range; and (b) the clefs themselves might (or might not) have > been used in ways that constituted a kind of code indicating a > transposition. But that particular funeral motet is scored for ALL > very low voices if we can trust the original clefs. Or not. We don't really know that at all. > >Because of that, there is never any reason not to transpose that > >older music to the comfortable pitch range, insofar is you're not > >changing the overall sound (Ockeghem for 4-part women's choir would > >be, er, interesting). > > Sure, and Anonymous 4 have done exactly that and sound gorgeous doing > it. (Well, maybe not Ockeghem--that would be a little modern for > them!) But the one recording I have of "Absolon" was recorded a > tritone higher than the notated pitch, and if we assume that Josquin > really wanted a very low, dark sound, that spoils it. Ockeghem for 4-part women's choir would be about an octave higher than the nominal notated pitch, I'd think, which is a lot different from half an octave higher. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
