Music for Sixth Sunday of Easter

When singing Renaissance polyphony, the question of vocal range often poses questions for our ensemble. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, European music was often sung by mature lower voices only (with exceptions), among which lie three vocal types: lowest, low but ranging up to our modern tenors’ register, and “counter-tenor” or the range roughly one octave above full voice accomplished by singing in falsetto. When we confront the source for a-four part mass, for example, we often find it written for three lower and one upper voice, rather than our modern mixed-voice formation of two upper and two lower parts.

The good news is that these pices were sung at the pitch of whatever instrument accompanied them, or when sung a capella, the diapason was likely set by whoever was leading the group. Since the English choirs of the Victorian era, it has become common practice to transpose our editions of Tallis and Byrd to key signatures they would not recognize, seeking to suit the range of the group at hand.

As a result, we often hear Tallis’s famous motet If ye love me sung in F major by a mixed chorus, as one finds in the Novello editions of old. Today, the tenors and basses of our choir sing Solemn Mass, and I thought it would be interesting to sing this four-part motet at the pitch originally notated. While this is a fourth lower than you’re accustomed to hearing it, it may be closer to the register in which it was sung in Tallis’s time. Regardless of spurious “authenticity,” I find that this diapason produces even richer, darker, consonances, providing a slightly different perspective on the motet, and on the words of Christ from today’s Gospel.

Abraham Ross

Solemn Mass takes place at St. James’ Anglican Church, Vancouver at 10:30 am every Sunday.