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>> Nicholas Brown: My name is Nicholas Brown and I'm a Music Specialist at the Library of Congress Music Division. It's my great pleasure to have with us today the Founder and Director of The Tallis Scholars, the world renowned British Renaissance Choir, Peter Phillips. Welcome Peter. >> Peter Phillips: Thank you very much. >> Nicholas Brown: It's a great pleasure to have you here. We heard your ensemble in performance recently here at the library, which was a
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stunning concert featuring some Christmas themed repertoire. We heard some Josquin and we nixed the Sermisy, but we heard the rore and some other repertoire, which is really fantastic. So today we'd love to just get some thoughts from you about how you interact with archival sources and also some of your ideas about Renaissance vocal performance practice. And to give a bit of an introduction, the library holds approximately 1000 pre 1700 volumes of vocal music, and we
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have some of those objects here featuring music by Josquin and Palestrina and others. These are wonderful archival sources for performers and musicologists alike, and we have the great fortune of having digitized a great many of them which are available through our Music Treasures Consortium Online, which is a partnership with the likes of The Beal and other major libraries. So as a conductor and former organist as well, and presumably singer too, somewhere in there.
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What is your relationship been with archival sources? >> Peter Phillips: Well, when I was a student and I was doing a music degree at Oxford, I spent quite a lot of time with these sources, not with the really early ones. I didn't do very much from Choirbook format, though I did work with the Lambeth Choirbook and transcribed a big piece by Fairfax, which was published as a modern edition. But most of the work was done from book format, which I see as largely what you've got up there.
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This is not too difficult to work from. You collate the part books onto a single score basically, and you hope that the scribe has got the notes right and has certainly got the rests right, because those are the things that mess you up. >> Nicholas Brown: And where would you say in your musical training, were you prepared to handle this kind of notation? >> Peter Phillips: Well, it's not difficult to do. I didn't really receive any formal training.
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I think there was a class in this palaeography, as it called. I don't think I went to it. You certainly need that kind of training in music from the 14th and some of the 15th centuries because the notation needs to be explained. Quite simply, they use coloured ink for different rhythms and mensuration.
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But by the time you get to the stuff I was dealing in and sing now full time, as it were, the notes are pretty obvious. The stave is the same and you can just read it straight off. You've got to decide whether the note lengths in the original are satisfactory for modern singers. You've got to decide a number of things along those lines. What pitch is also satisfactory for modern choirs? So some basic. But you don't need training in that.
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Well, the training you need in that is to have a choir standing in front of you and you try out what you've transcribed from the sources and see whether it works for modern people. And it doesn't always. >> Nicholas Brown: When you're approaching a new work or revisiting a work and you're trying to approach it with a fresh perspective, what is the process in terms of selecting additions to work from? Do you go straight to the earliest printed source available?
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>> Peter Phillips: I would go to the earliest source available. It doesn't have to be-- Isn't usually a printed source, though. Sometimes it is. It is in the case-- Sometimes in the case of the Josquin masses, which is a project I'm very interested in at the moment. The earliest source could be Petrucci, who published all or almost all his masses in Josquin's lifetime. So one sort of feels that one has access to the composer himself if he's still alive when these things were written
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out. But it doesn't matter very much whether it's printed or manuscript, they're going to be mistakes in them because you've already got one stage away from the composer, at least one stage away from the composer. And the moment, as you know, probably yourself, the moment you start copying things out, errors creep in, and that's a problem. The editor has the job of trying to spot those errors and correct them, you know, in the best way possible with taste and discrimination.
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>> Nicholas Brown: What are the libraries or archives that you rely upon when you're doing this kind of prep? >> Peter Phillips: Well, I don't now do this kind of prep.
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It's amazingly time consuming. I mean, I'd love to do it. This is the really grass roots stuff.
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I look at these things with fascination as I'm going to look at that table you have over there. But no, basically I get people to do it or indeed nowadays people come up to me and say, I've made an edition of this composer, Renaissance composer. Would you like to sing from this edition?So they can actually hear the music that they've been working on for so long.
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So it's rather turned round. But if I'm doing something obscure enough, I'll ask. I'll pay someone to go do the sources and give me a properly considered modern edition, which involves collating all the sources. If there's any one source from the period, that's relatively easy unless it's got mistakes. But if you've got several sources which were the famous piece by Josquin, for example, there may be there could be 50 sources. In one case there is, the Missa de Beata Virgine.
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So it will take a very long time to put all that together into one place and decide the best version. >> Nicholas Brown: And in your career, working with this period of music, have there been any significant changes in the way that you or your colleagues who prepare the transcriptions from the sources, how they notate that? >> Peter Phillips: Yes. If you go back with the modern editions of fascinating in themselves historically, the notes don't change off the original sources.
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Decisions are the same. And the way it's written out for modern use, you're going to make the same basic decisions. But how it's presented in the modern edition is, as I say, extremely interesting. I mean, if you go back 50 years, you'll find that they have piano parts, dynamic markings and even sulfur, so that the look on the page is extremely complicated, very distracting. We find, we're not used to it now. So as I've gone through my career, the piano parts have
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disappeared. The editorial suggestions, they're all editorial suggestions I'm talking about. There's nothing in the sources that would give you any dynamic indication at all. At all. So that's entirely up to the modern person. But it was thought necessary by early editors of this music. I say early I mean 50 years ago, even a hundred years ago now, it was thought necessary that the editor should contribute his own thoughts on the subject and put in dynamic markings, diminuendos, crescendos,
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phrasings, the works. So it looks like a modern piece of music
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when it wasn't. And gradually it's been understood that these things are unnecessary and in fact more than unnecessary, they are unhelpful because if you see a forte marking against an entry, you tend to sing forte. Even if the conductor has said, I don't like that forte, I'd rather it was piano. The singer will still see the F there, and well, it's very distracting. >> Nicholas Brown: With the editions that are prepared for The Tallis Scholars to use in performance,
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say it's an edition that's specifically put together for you. Do the people preparing those editions go on to publish those independently or do you control the publication of them since you've hired them? >> Peter Phillips: We retain the copyright.
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When it comes to recording and modern edition, we retain the copyright and then that person, that editor is at liberty with our permission to go on to make money out of it. We've got no problem with that. In fact, we want this music to be distributed as widely as possible. And we also put up on our website, our recording Gimelll Records it's called. If you go to Gimelll Records, you'll see that the scores are actually put up there and the new disc comes out so that the interested person can
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hear it and follow it at the same time. And that will be a unique edition. So you won't be able to just go to an online site and find it somewhere else. >> Nicholas Brown: In our previous conversation, you mentioned having to make your own editorial decisions in terms of the practicality of performing these pieces.
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How does that get worked into the additions, if at all, or is it just something that you negotiate with your singers in the rehearsal settings? >> Peter Phillips: Well, it doesn't get into the additions in the writing out stage, as I say, is basically a blank sheet waiting for me to interpret in the way that I want to do. And I usually do it quite on the spur of the moment. I find the rather romantic practice of imposing dynamics unhelpful. I have had the experience when I was
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younger of putting in, you know, we're going to sing this, this suddenly going to go forte here and then it comes to the performance and I think that's really fake. You know, it doesn't work very well. I wish I hadn't done it quite like that, but at least you can then rub it out and start again with it.
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But I think all that I really put in these days are suggestions about where the phrases should phrase down so that the diminuendo is written in the scores where I say it'll come in softer after that. So you get a nice shading and then a gentler passage which can then build up. That tends to be high renaissance imitative counterpoint works, but it's a subtle process and really the subtlety, I leave it until very often I leave it until the performance. I'm just--
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But I need singers who can follow every nuance, who are confident enough with themselves and with me and with the music to be able just to do it on the spur of the moment.
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>> Nicholas Brown: Tempo is another interesting factor in all of this. What type of tempo information is in the editions that either you are sourcing or you're having created? And then how do you interpret how the tempo should be applied? >> Peter Phillips: Tempo is a is a very difficult one because there's no starting point. If you look at the sources, there are a lot of signs in it which relate one tempo to another, but you've got to have decided by then what the basic tactus is.
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A Belgian priest once told me that it should be the pulse of your hand, that the basic tactus would be your natural pulse. I find this unconvincing because sometimes I'm nervous. Sometimes I've been running to get to the rehearsal on time, you know? This affects the speed. So I think my job as a conductor is to find a convincing speed for the start to which everything will then basically relate.
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Though I'm quite keen not to be too strict about that. I don't like being boxed in by theory, but I would also say that each piece may well have its own satisfactory tempo.
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I don't mind being quite sort of forthright about not doing the same tempo between movements of a mass, for example, because it's boring. You know, if you're going to sing a mass all the way through, you don't want every movement start exactly the same, especially as it may start with the same material. So it's more interesting to hear that material slightly shaded. These are subtle differences. But I mean, after you've finished the Gloria, for example, it is a particular speed.
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That may have lasted ten minutes. It's not a brilliant idea to do the whole of the creed is exactly the same speed with the same basic material.
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>> Nicholas Brown: One of the things that you've written and spoken about a fair amount is the notion of an ideal sound in your approach to this music.
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What informed the development of your ideal sound? How has that ideal evolved over time, if at all? And then also, what do you get from the manuscript and archival sources that informs that? >> Peter Phillips: Well, the ideal sound hasn't changed in my head. And it's quite true that when I started I conceived this ideal sound, which was... Well, it was informed by what was going on around me, but I thought I could improve on it. I had the recklessness of youth at that time and the arrogance
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really, and I just thought there is a sound that will suit this music. I mean, if you look at it on the page, as you were saying on the manuscript, there's nothing there except the dots. So it's going to be a clean sort of sound. It's going to be a very strong basic sound. Just respects the dots. From there, you can sort of elaborate a bit. You can make it interesting in various beautiful ways. But I assumed also from the sources that each part was equal
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if they're written out that way, they contribute to the conversation that's going on in the music that way. So I assumed right from the start that when you're listening to it, the parts should be equally strong. In a lot of other choral music, it's the top and bottom parts that count and the middle parts are not so important. But I've always thought the alto and tenor parts should be just as strong as the outside parts. So that was one of the ideas behind the sound.
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But I think the really essential thing was that it should be an attractive sound that people would want to listen to that would draw them towards the music and under the surface of the sound, if they were drawn, they would find this sometimes extremely mathematically complicated music and enjoy it and let their minds work on it. It takes a long time to get to know a really difficult piece of Renaissance music. The mathematics are-- you don't have to understand the
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mathematics, but they trigger off a sort of resonance in the mind that's very engaging. It's sort of you're fascinated by it without fully understanding it. And to draw someone to that level of listening, I always thought the starting point had to be a beautiful sound. That would be seductive, actually.
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>> Nicholas Brown: In one article that you discussed this topic and you mentioned the vocal style that was prevalent before you started doing this professionally, which was a more operatic sound, much more vibrato involved. Can you talk about how that's kind of phased out of the picture with at least your top level of performing this repertoire? >> Peter Phillips: Yes, well, it's phased out because it was clearly inappropriate. It was a later performing style
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being imposed randomly on an earlier period of music. And it has been understood that that's just not good enough. It spoils the music. It doesn't help explain present the music because quite simply, vibrato distorts. The tuning of vibrato is a wobbly voice. I mean, we do sing with vibrato, actually, you could hear it last night, but if you've got five lines in a texture and they're all going like this, they're going to bang into each other.
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That clarity, which the sources suggest will be lost and you won't be able to hear the detail of the counterpoint and remember that this music is harmonically quite dull. The harmony is not the point of it. You might get the harmony in-- It's like putting the music in an acoustic that's very big. You can't hear the detail in those acoustics, but you can probably get the harmony. But that's just not the point. It's not interesting. The interest is in how the voices react to each other.
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You must be able to hear this. So your concert hall is very good for that.
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>> Nicholas Brown: Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate it.
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With that in mind, with the clarity of sound that you seek, are there significant differences in the way that young voices can accomplish that versus adult voices or more developed voices? >> Peter Phillips: That's a very interesting question, because
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you see, things have changed over the years. When I started, it didn't matter whether they were young or old. They just didn't have the knack. The information wasn't out there in those days. Not really. And when people sort of sang in an early music style, they were rather dismissed as amateurs and not trained singers. Now, you know, the popularity of this style of performance has gone along. More and more young people are actually interested in doing it
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right from the start. So I'm finding now that the young voices, the 20 year olds who have grown up with the sound in their ears all their lives are really good at it. They've got no other agenda.
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The older people, now, it is more difficult because in fact, as you get older, your muscles loosen or whatever happens to them and you lose control. It's particularly true of the countertenor voice, which has this very strange muscular production.
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But then there are countertenors like James Bowman, who have survived into older age.
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It's the high voices that go, The Sopranos and tenors. 60 year old Sopranos, you know, can have trouble, whereas the low voices actually can get better or get fuller. And it's those low notes in the alto range and the bass range, which are fascinating. And young people do have trouble with those.
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>> Nicholas Brown: Do you think it's a worthwhile endeavor for the higher voices who have reached that point in their career where the maybe the upper range isn't as strong, where they should be transitioning to more of an alto range? >> Peter Phillips: Well, I think they do, actually. I think they naturally are asked if the conductor knows what he's doing, he and wants to keep that good singer. He will probably ask him or her to sing the lower parts. Yes, I think that does happen.
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It's going to be the high notes that require, a soprano high note requires tremendous support and sheer energy that tends to go in old age, older age, I should say.
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>> Nicholas Brown: Before we jump into looking at these specific objects here, I'd love to chat for a moment about the Chansonnier Laborde, which the library has, and it is from about 1470, which I know is a little prior to the period that you deal with principally. But can you tell us a bit about this type of source which compiles many different works by many different composers specific to maybe a location or the service to a specific church or court?
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>> Peter Phillips: Yes, I understand this Chansonnier came from tour and it's not the only one. There are 2 or 3 others.
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So there was obviously a tremendous interest in late medieval secular music. They're all secular pieces with most of the words are in French, not entirely, but and well, about a hundred chansons there. And I don't know how many there are in the other chansonnier. But what a repertoire if that's what you do, you know, there's scarcely a sacred source to rival the scope of that, though of course these pieces are quite short and they tend to be for three voices, possibly four, whereas of course
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the Renaissance, the sacred music from the Renaissance, well, it started with three and four, but grew into much bigger structures. Anyway, I noticed from the list of the chanson that are there that they were very influential pieces taken up by composers of sacred music for models that they would put into their sacred compositions. And actually, however secular the words may seem, they're turned into mass settings with these titles.
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So if you look at the mass titles of that slightly later period because it would be about 20 or 30 years later that this music sort of got into the mainstream of the sacred composition of the Flemish school. I'm talking about the Flemish school here.
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You will find that some of these masses have very inappropriate looking titles, but nobody seemed to mind.
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>> Nicholas Brown: Interesting. I wonder what that says about the priests. >> Peter Phillips: Well, exactly. Lassus is the classic case, actually. He wrote a lot of mass settings, but they're called parody masses, where you take a pre-existing model and dress it up in your own counterpoint. But the model is still right there. And there's one called Vinum Bonum. So I probably don't need to translate and one about how lovely pork is to eat.
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On our latest recording, the sort of featured the A side piece is a dice mass, which is just amazing. But it's got nothing to do with the chanson. But it's a very interesting story that Petrucci in his print for this mass, which is not long after this would be I think it was 15, 14 was the print for this particular mass. And he puts a dice before each movement, two dice, I mean two faces of a dice, which indicates the degree by which the tenors should augment the part that they've taken
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indeed from a chanson in the in the Laborde Chansonnier. It's by Robert Morton who sounds English I think he probably was. But anyway he got into this collection and I can't remember the title. Nori Jijimi Kilkisiakos. Well, and so what-- What Josquin has done is taken the tenor part of this chanson which you can find in your collection and given it to the tenors in his mass setting, but not at any point I think at the original speed and the dice tell the tenors by
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what extent they should augment. It's always in augmentation, the tenor part of the Morton. And then he's written three other parts to go around. Whatever the result of that decision is. Isn't that fun? >> Nicholas Brown: Yeah. Is it very noticeable for someone who is not aware of that connection that there is a musical thread going through like that? >> Peter Phillips: It's never very obvious.
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And then the question is, what does it matter to the modern listener that they don't know that? I mean, we stand there day after day singing music that has these references in it without necessarily knowing ourselves and the audience is still really seem to love it. So it's very interesting point aesthetically.
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I mean, I often ask people who talk about this how well knowledgeably they follow sonata form when they're listening to a string quartet. I mean, do you follow the sonata form? It's easier, actually, because we all know how it should go and we can probably follow it in outline. But the subtleties involved in a really good composer like Haydn or Mozart, I mean, we don't have to listen to that many, many times to get that. And that's exactly the same with the Renaissance stuff.
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Amongst the chanson in this Laborde Chansonnier, there are, as I say, a number of pieces that were influential enough to get into the mainstream of the mass composition of just the next generation. I think the most important composer in there probably is Ockeghem. He was le bon par. He was the good father that was really the head of the school, of the Flemish of that time, who influenced everybody. And he particularly influenced Josquin, who loved to
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quote him. And there's one piece in there which is called D'ung Oltremare, where Josquin took this very lovingly. One has the impression, took the music of Ockeghem and reset it in the simplest way. So the Ockeghem is so clearly stated that you can't doubt that he's there in the composition and that applies to a number of other pieces. He's clearly the lead composer of that collection.
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>> Nicholas Brown: With the notion of the parody masses,
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is that tradition applied in different ways between the Flemish school or the English mass settings. >> Peter Phillips: The parody mass?
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The principle of parodying, which in another world would be seen as borrowing without permission was actually, at the time it was a kind of flattery. You so admired your teacher's work that you, in your humble way, you took an aspect of it and represented it with your own modest thoughts, I think was the thinking behind it, though, of course, if you were Palestrina or Josquin, you probably hoped to improve on the model. But no, it's not just confined to the Flemish school.
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Palestrina did it all the time and so did Victoria in Spain and in England,
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Byrd's masses seemed to be free compositions. So but the English scene was mucked up by the Reformation.
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If you go before the Reformation, you get works by Taverner and they are based on not on polyphonic models, but on chant models, which is called a paraphrase mass. But it's a very similar technique. You took a tune that already existed and dressed it up. So in the Gloria Tibi trinitas mass of Tavna, which we recorded the chant, it's plain chant. And the famous in nomine section, which you may know from viol Consort music has chant in it.
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It's actually got a chant part which is taken straight from the Gloria Tibi trinitas chant. And and then Taverner dresses it up.
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>> Nicholas Brown: Great. I think now we'll pull over some of these objects. I think we can start with the Josquin that we were looking at earlier. So here we have a part book and this is the tenor part book which includes the music for Praeter Rerum Seriem, which you performed here at the library. What kind of discoveries can you make from seeing this kind of source? >> Peter Phillips: Well, the first thing to say is it's an absolute thrill, of course,
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to be in front of a major source for a major work.
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Josquin's Praetorium Sarum was one of the most parodied and therefore admired pieces of its whole period. There are about six mass settings by his students or followers, one of which we sang here for you by Cipriano de Rore. But there are many others. It would make a wonderful set to do the whole thing. There are also Magnificat settings on this. So it was that famous and that admired and I can see why it's got the most wonderful atmosphere. Anyway, here is the tenor part.
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It's not quite the earliest source available though if I were making a modern edition of it, I would have to consult this one. And this might be the primary source. I don't know. It's 1558, it's dated. So it's just a little bit down the line. And as I was saying earlier, because Josquin wasn't alive anymore, he couldn't correct any mistakes in it. This is a printed source and mistakes may have crept in. The mistakes, matter of interest are usually in the rests.
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So when you're writing it out in score, you have to count up very carefully where the first note is going to come, and sometimes it doesn't work. So you have to shift it around in a way. That's one of the things. So here it is very clearly laid out a two parts as it is, and the notation contains nothing particularly troublesome. There's a two written there at the beginning which suggests duple time.
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There's a three there which suggests obviously triple time and that's how we do it.
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The person transcribing would have to be careful with that. >> Nicholas Brown: Does anything jump out at you from this that's significantly different from the edition that you performed from? >> Peter Phillips: Well. Not really, except that, of course, the tradition of notation has to be understood, shall we say. These black notes and-- They're filled in notes and the ligatures they're called. You've got to understand what was meant by them, by the original scribe.
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But that doesn't take too much special effort.
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They didn't like doing inked in notes because the danger was with the water in the ink. It would go through the parchment. I wonder whether it has. No, it hasn't. So this is obviously good. The technique of paper making improved and got much cheaper as the 16th century went by. When they were dealing in vellum and original parchment, it was very expensive, which is why I think there are no what's called a holograph, which is in the handwriting of the composer. It's always at one remove at least.
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Which is a pity, of course, but I think it was just too expensive to sort of jot down as we do on paper. They didn't have paper like we've got it. It was too expensive. Anyway. This is a really beautifully managed source here. And I would just mention I was looking through it. The next piece is another note. These are six voice motets that Praetorium is in six. And this is Benedictus Scholarum and this was the next most famous piece by Josquin in the period.
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And there are mass settings on this, most notably by Palestrina. >> Nicholas Brown: How would the music have been disseminated back then for someone like Palestrina to be prompted to set it? >> Peter Phillips: Well, he may well have seen this very book. 1558. It's perfect. The timing is perfect. He may not have seen this copy of it, but this is a printed source so that it was mass produced up to a point, not our sort of mass producing, but there would have been multiple
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copies of just exactly that. A manuscript source, of course, was going to get distributed less because it had to-- I mean, I suppose he could have got a printed source and then got people to copy it out. I don't know how expensive it was to buy one of these because this is just one apart book of a set. It would have to have at least five more to make the thing work because they've all the six voice pieces have all got their own book. So, I mean, you know, that's an exciting thought.
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I don't know what the provenance of this particular copy is, but if it came from Rome, which is quite possible, most things seem to have come from Rome in those days.
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Palestrina might have seen it anyway. Because Palestrina's own music was in part books. So in that format too. And so he would have probably made a transcription himself, probably roughed it up and then written his mass on it. >> Nicholas Brown: This might be a slightly tangential question, but in this period, were the leaders in the clergy promoting specific works and composers to other members of the clergy and maybe other cities in the way that now maybe the U.S. Catholic Church
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backs a certain composer for a certain responses and that kind of business. >> Peter Phillips: Yes, I mean the main composers were hot commodities. Josquin in particular, the Renaissance Courts of Italy wanted the best. They wanted to show off. They wanted to be the most cultured and civilized. And the best way of doing that was to hire painters and musicians and writers, poets and so on. Who were the most famous, the most desired by everybody. So envy came into it, and the Duke of Ferrara was
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particularly good at this. For example, the Sistine Chapel was good at it, which of course had a rather sort of special position. But the Duke of Ferrara. Yes, he did a very good job. He got Josquin and he was advised there's this famous story that Isaac was also in the running for quite a few of these jobs. These were the two main, Isaac and Josquin. And Isaac was said to be cheaper and to write when you wanted him to write. And then he wrote really good music.
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Josquin was very expensive, more expensive, and only wrote when he felt like it, but he wrote slightly better music. >> Nicholas Brown: Sounds like things we deal with now. As a commissioning entity. >> Peter Phillips: Very modern situation. Definitely. Fascinating.
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Palestrina is a rather special case. Since we're talking. This is the motet that formed a model for his Missa Benedictus Cheltenham.
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He just had a vocation, basically. He wanted to stay in Rome and write for the pope. That's what he wanted to do. And you have up there a perfect example of that. This is a very famous frontispiece, which I've seen copied many times.
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It claims to be a portrait of Palestrina himself.
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Offering this book to Pope Julius the third, who was sort of his pope, because before he became pope, he was cardinal archbishop of Palestrina. Palestrina being a town, it might just be this town here illustrated. I'm not sure. I've been there. Yes, it's called Palestrina. And it's funny because everyone from Palestrina might be called Palestrina. He was known at the time as Giovanni Pierluigi, duh from Palestrina. And if you go there, there's a there's a statue of him in the
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main square which doesn't refer to his surname. It's just got his Christian names on it. Principe de la musica. Wonderful Prince of Music. Anyway, I particularly love his music. It's got something in it that means a lot to me. But so I think when Julius became pope, he kind of took Palestrina with him, the composer. And that gave him the opportunity to be patronized at the highest level. And that's the result. The result is this book and probably other books.
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But I noticed as I was just looking through and I've never had the chance to do this before, there's a mass in here called Ecce Sacerdos Magnus, which is a wonderful text. It's behold the great priest, Bruckner set it, you may know, right, with trombones.
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Some of the priests I know won't have it. It seems to aggrandize them too much, but they might prefer this because this is a four voice mass.
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And the great priest is illustrated. This is Julius, the second, Julius the third at the beginning of virtually every movement on every page. The great priest is himself, Julius.
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There we are. It keeps coming. >> Nicholas Brown: So would he have had a special presentation copy of this for the Pope?
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>> Peter Phillips: You'd have to see what's in the Vatican Library. I mean, what I suspect might happen is that these initials or whatever they are would be in color. They would be illuminated as the word. And that beautiful is too pretty. There would be colored up if it was a presentation copy. The printing here is not quite as good as on the previous. You see it has [Inaudible] through. The paper is not quite the same quality as the example we had before and it's been used.
38:25
You can see it's got sort of, but interestingly, it hasn't been corrected so far as I know. The singers who used this, didn't find any fault in it because very, very often you get these part books, they get scrubbed out and the right notes. Now, this is not incidentally, a part book. This is what's called a choir book,
38:51
which means that I think I haven't examined it carefully, but I think you'll find that all four parts. Yes. Are on the same opening. So this would be put up on a lectern, unlike what we had before, because everyone had their own little part book which they could read like this and this would be put up on a lectern and the singers would gather around the lectern. Someone would probably keep time like this,
39:17
not the grandiose way we do it today. And they were just off. They would go and then they'd sing this. What's on this? These two pages like that. The boys parts rather beautifully are tend to be at the bottom of the page because they were shorter and then someone's job when everyone assuming the scribe had got it right, you would turn on every part is exactly the same moment and then you just carry on the next page. >> Nicholas Brown: Great. Would it have been one singer per part at this stage?
39:51
>> Peter Phillips: No, not in the Sistine Chapel anyway. I mean, how they-- Well, that's I don't know the answer to that, but that choir in the Sistine Chapel in the 16th century had about 90 singers in it.
40:03
And most of them weren't there most of the time, which gives us the clue that they weren't a very good choir. And that's interesting in itself, because I often wonder what Palestrina would say if he could hear the way we do his music. Which he'd say, That's what I always wanted, you know, it's ideal. We never had circumstances like that in the employment, didn't work like that. It was much more haphazard. Or would you say this is absolutely outrageous? I mean, I didn't write it.
40:33
I wrote it for these people. Sing it like we sing it. They sang it at the time in the 16th century. I'm sure we don't sound like the 16th century choirs. Not authentic. What we do is not authentic. >> Nicholas Brown: But it Sounds like it's better. >> Peter Phillips: Well, that's the plan. And there's no one can tell us we're wrong. >> Nicholas Brown: Which is convenient.
40:54
>> Peter Phillips: It's a little bit haphazard, and slightly arrogant, but, you know. And here we go on. You have to turn the page at the right moment. You'll see that the clefs are different. That's just one thing that you have to get used to as a modern performer. If you're going to read off part books or choir book format, you've got to get used to the clefs and then most of them are C clefs. That's just one of those things. This is a proper soprano clef and the bass clef often is
41:20
there. It's not here in this case. >> Nicholas Brown: Are there ever any issues with the alignment of the text? >> Peter Phillips: Yes. [Laughing] >> Nicholas Brown: Is that the biggest issue? Well, it's actually an issue that no one really bothers with because it's just understood that the Scribe's very often couldn't be bothered with it, which is a problem for the modern, you know, the modern editor, they have to decide how the syllables should be distributed.
41:45
I mean, this is actually very careful. I can see that this would all work quite well. But sometimes as a Kyrie, if you've got a Kyrie, there's a Kyrie here somewhere. He's probably-- This looks rather-- No, you see. No. There you go. They just put-- They put KYRIE at the beginning.
42:04
Then there's nothing. And Chris stay the same.
42:10
>> Nicholas Brown: So then presumably your editor who's going to prepare this for you would go in and make decisions about how to place the text and then you would let him know if you like it or not. >> Peter Phillips: Yes, the singers let me know whether they like it or not. And then I have to ring up the editor who can't ring up the composer, and we try and sort it out. But actually, this one, the Kyrie starts there. But he just puts a lays on in it at the end there.
42:33
But he doesn't do it in this part and you've got to the double bar that's that's typical carelessness but they just didn't care. I mean you know that's there, that's not there. So the original singers would have to-- if there's more than one to a part, they'd have to agree what they're doing with it. I mean, it does suggest that there was only one singer to a part, but historically, that's not accurate. It's not the case. So I don't know how they used this in that case to do with that.
43:05
Yeah. >> Nicholas Brown: Are there any other specific works by Palestrina in here that you're fond of? >> Peter Phillips: Well, funnily enough, this particular copy is of four voice masses, and we tend not to sing four voice masses. That's just one of our things. If I can sing in 5 or 6, I would rather, it's going to be more interesting. That's not true of Josquin. He's at his best, I think in Four Voices. Josquin is like a string quartet. It's sort of four voices, really intense detail and very
43:39
having a wonderful conversation. With Palestrina, it's different. It's a later period, and the most interesting music by him is really in 5 or 6 and it suits our sonority as well. You get more sonorous music out of six well tuned voices than you do out of four and four is very difficult to tune, actually. But I don't know. I don't know these masses, I'm afraid. It looks wonderful. >> Nicholas Brown: Have you ever just for fun, tried to perform or rehearse off
44:11
of a source in this sort of state without the text being laid out in that kind of business? >> Peter Phillips: Well, yes, we have, if you try to do this, the least of your worries is the text, initially. And the problem is, is getting the notes in the right place. When you can't see at a glance what the other parts are doing. You're rooted to your part. Absolutely no point looking at somebody else's part because there are no bar lines where that person is. It's not going to help you.
44:47
Whereas in the modern edition, it's all laid out for you with bar lines. So you can immediately see if they come in. You will come in two beats later. It's not going to work like that with this.
44:58
This is actually going to be quite easy. Frankly, it looks as though it's beautifully written out and it's only in four parts, but it looks as though everything is accurate, as I say, the rest of the problem. But they look good.
45:13
We have come terribly unstuck with trying to read off part books. It's extremely hard.
45:21
You don't worry about the words I tell you. And maybe they didn't. Maybe they also were struggling away trying to get the notes right.
45:31
>> Nicholas Brown: Was there ever a point where the congregations would have been singing along with any of the mass sections?
45:41
>> Peter Phillips: No, I think that's true also of chant singing. This certainly wouldn't join in with any polyphonic music. This is all polyphony.
45:52
There is chant here. This is the chant just written out like that. But they wouldn't even join in with that because they wouldn't know how to when to come in and so on. But I mean, with congregational singing, which definitely took place in those days, that would have been all chant. They would know the tunes. Maybe they did. I don't know.
46:18
>> Nicholas Brown: When would you say there started to be significant differences between the Catholic and Protestant settings of sacred texts? >> Peter Phillips: Immediately. >> Nicholas Brown: Immediately. Unsurprisingly. >> Peter Phillips: Yes. It's all rather evened out now. The problems were when the Protestant church first started.
46:39
Luther in particular, came up with rather radical ideas about. And next year is the anniversary.
46:47
About how singing should be and all this kind of thing was reckoned to be elitist.
46:57
Sort of out of touch. It's all in Latin.
47:02
All that kind of and the very art of polyphony, with all its subtleties and mathematical difficulty, was held to be unacceptable for ordinary worship.
47:16
In the initial stages, the music was made as simple as possible so that the people could follow it and join in with it. And that's where the tradition of chanting, psalm chanting to those the Geneva Psalter kind of chanting started with a part for the people to sing.
47:38
Yeah, it's as simple as possible in the vernacular. And for every syllable a note, as Cranmer put it, so that there was none of this melismatic writing sort of swirled around which no one could follow or understand. The idea was that you had an important text and you gave it a note, every syllable a note so that everyone understood exactly what they were singing about. The whole thing about the Reformation was to bring everything down to earth, cut out all this airy fairy stuff,
48:08
which was for clever people who were educated. >> Nicholas Brown: So then how did the Catholic Church react to losing numbers? And people may be preferring that more populist approach to the music. >> Peter Phillips: Well, they reacted by trying to do the same in their own terms. The Council of Trent spent 20 years, I think it was trying to find a way to stop the Protestants running off with their congregations and trying to counter the ideas that the Protestants were coming up with.
48:40
The Catholic Church-- Well, they had the chant tradition. I mean, that's what they majored on. I imagine the amount of chant being sung in the services went up and the congregation was invited to take more part, but it remained in Latin. I would have thought that was a problem. I mean, these people couldn't read most of them. That's why you've got these wonderful depictions of the biblical stories in paintings to show people what the texts were about.
49:15
What happened in Catholic music towards the Counter-Reformation music is very exciting. I mean, Gabrieli in Venice was the classic case. He he just made a big sound. It was very impressive.
49:28
Whereas the Protestants tended to reduce and reduce. So it becomes really ordinary in every sense. >> Nicholas Brown: Would the Bach cantatas and his contemporaries cantatas or passions be considered
49:44
Satisfying that ordinary factor, or is that more specialized and intended for more sort of high church settings? >> Peter Phillips: This is 200 years later or more.
49:59
So my mathematics have gone. But if the Reformation was in 1520, say 1620, 1720, Bach was, Yes.
50:08
Well, I don't know what was going on at Saint Thomas's Leipzig, but the Bach cantatas are all in German. That's the first thing. People could actually understand what was being sung. And Bach's music is very expressive and it dignifies the text and the service that's taking place. So by that time it had become a more-- the Reformation and the whole Protestant ethos had become a more sophisticated business without, I think, leaving the ordinary people behind. That was important to them that they
50:39
didn't, that it was all explicable. And I would say Bach's cantatas
50:46
join in with that process rather than with this process, which is airy fairy counterpoint.
50:54
>> Nicholas Brown: Equally delightful to listen to, though. nowadays. >> Peter Phillips: For us? We're so fortunate, aren't we? Exactly. >> Nicholas Brown: And one last question going back to this period, if any, were the differences between this music being performed in cathedrals and basilicas and in major seats of the church versus the more provincial churches? >> Peter Phillips: I think the first thing to say about that is that none of this sort of music was sung in cathedrals,
51:22
at least not in the first instance. This music was written for chapels, smaller buildings.
51:29
The Sistine Chapel was perfect. Wonderful acoustics. I mean, we've sung in there. It's an amazing thing to do. It's not like singing Winchester Cathedral, where I grew up, which has the longest nave in Europe, where the sound just disappears and sort of reappears eight seconds later. It's not good for polyphony that you can't hear it properly. And the composers knew that quite well. What was sung in the cathedrals was chant and of course chant
51:59
with its-- you can take it any speed you can elongate, you know, it's just a melody at your service and you can make it very impressive. And so at Christmas and Easter, which was the big obviously the cathedrals were full. You wouldn't hear a mass like this. That's my understanding.
52:19
>> Nicholas Brown: Priest says tone deaf back then. Do you think, as they are now with their chanting. >> Peter Phillips: There are quite a few stories actually. Yeah. Oh, yes. Well, it's not exactly the same story as you would get now. You know, the priest felt it was his job to intone couldn't sing the note. The choir either comes in chaos or someone plays an organ note. Probably that's what happened in Chichester Cathedral, where Weelkes was organist. He had to play the note because
52:44
the priest couldn't get it right. >> Nicholas Brown: Wild. Yeah, some things don't change. >> Peter Phillips: No, they don't. >> Nicholas Brown: Excellent. So one of the things that's really fascinating in how some of these collection items relate to your work is that you are working on a recording cycle of Josquin's masses, and I believe it's nine CD sets in total, and we're building up to the 500th anniversary of Josquin's birth. Can you tell us a bit about that whole process
53:09
and the repertoire? >> Peter Phillips: Yes, I mean exactly that, that the-- Josquin died in 1521, and I'm hoping that 2021 will be a, you know, a big red letter day for composition of that period, but especially for Josquin. And in preparing for it, we decided to do a complete cycle of the Josquin masses, of which there are possibly 19, and that will take nine discs. So we're in the process of releasing those. And for us it's important because we actually started,
53:42
more or less started with the first of them at the beginning of our career. And right at the end, well, I hope it's not the end, but towards the end of our career we will come up with the last one. So it's also for the Tallis Scholars, a sort of defining career project. And we've issued Josquin masses at regular intervals through. So there'll be nine discs and I hope they'll be out by 2020 so that we're ready for the anniversary. We're recording the last one later this month.
54:08
And it's all on Gimell.com if you're interested in Josquin, they're the ones that are available now and the subsequent ones, of course, will appear there. >> Nicholas Brown: Do you know when the next one will be released? >> Peter Phillips: Yeah, we're working on it right now, actually. Next year sometime. Yeah. It'll be the seventh of the nine. >> Nicholas Brown: Great. Excellent. That sounds like a fascinating project. >> Peter Phillips: Yeah, really. >> Nicholas Brown: Wonderful.
54:27
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to look at these collection items from here at the library and also to chat about the performance practice. Are there any parting words that you have for our audience as to how they can follow the Tallis Scholars, how they can perhaps listen to your recordings? >> Peter Phillips: Well, that's kind of you to ask.
54:48
To listen to the recordings, we've been a bit slow to do the streaming thing because we can't make any money out of it at all. It's a really disastrous scene, actually. What they could definitely do is buy a download and follow the music off the website, Gimell.com.
55:09
And or buy the CDs. If you get the CD, which is now going really out of fashion, you get the booklet with, you know, carefully put together notes and explanations and texts and so on. >> Nicholas Brown: I still buy the CD. >> Peter Phillips: Yeah. Good for you. So do I. >> Nicholas Brown: Great. And for those of you who would like to use the Library of Congress's resources to explore some of these materials, visit us at loc.gov and in the search box, type in Music Treasures Consortium.
55:36
Or you can also type in the name of any composer who you'd like to explore further, including Josquin. And you can also look up our Chansonnier Laborde, which we discussed a little earlier, and also for the recordings, you are welcome to use the Naxos Music Library Service on site at the Library of Congress. We have many of your Gimelll recordings available through there as well as the booklets, which is great in PDF format. And then of course if you have access to a local public library
56:01
or a local academic library, they frequently have access to streaming services as well. We'd like to thank you for joining us today. Again, my name is Nicholas Brown from the Music Division of the Library of Congress. And thank you so much, Peter, for being here with us. >> Peter Phillips: Great pleasure. Thank you.
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