Larry Kart

One that I never want to hear again, not as an instrumental, is "Lush Life." As an instrumental it seems to go on forever.

The Tallis Scholars get dissed, when they do, for several reasons. Size of the ensemble (too large), and the rather New-Agey emphasis on the ensemble's ethereal upper-register female voices, which allegedly distorts (it certainly colors) the overall sound picture. Conductor Peter Phillips, coming from the world of 16th Century English choral music (e.g that of Tallis himself), seems to interpret Renaissance polyphony from the top down, which is not, so the story goes, how that music should go.

Further information: According to Margaret Bent: "Renaissance notation is under-prescriptive by our [modern] standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness".[5] Renaissance compositions were notated only in individual parts; scores were extremely rare, and barlines were not used. Note values were generally larger than are in use today; the primary unit of beat was the semibreve, or whole note. As had been the case since the Ars Nova (see Medieval music), there could be either two or three of these for each breve (a double-whole note), which may be looked on as equivalent to the modern "measure," though it was itself a note value and a measure is not. The situation can be considered this way: it is the same as the rule by which in modern music a quarter-note may equal either two eighth-notes or three, which would be written as a "triplet." By the same reckoning, there could be two or three of the next smallest note, the "minim," (equivalent to the modern "half note") to each semibreve. These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve–semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve–minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively) when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as quarter notes) occurred less often. This development of white mensural notation may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than vellum), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enforce the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes. Accidentals (e.g. added sharps, flats and naturals that change the notes) were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering notations for guitar-family instruments (tablatures) today. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score correctly, even if the accidentals were not written in. As such, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." (See musica ficta.) A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together, musicians would avoid parallel octaves and parallel fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians.[5] Check out Ockeghem's "Missa Prolationum" on You Tube, score plus music.

I know that Pythagorean tuning was involved, or is said to have been involved, at times, but that's tuning, not the interweaving layers of separate voices, as described in the post from the guy on Amazon that I quoted above.

Because it fit the way the way they heard music/wanted it to sound. Was that way more or less "natural" to them or did they also have a taste for/put a value on difficulty per se, on tying themselves in knots and solving puzzles? Both at once I would guess. As far as "to begin with" goes, the way they wrote music and performed it undoubtedly flowed in some way from what was there beforehand, i.e. "to begin with." They certainly didn't know how we would write music 500 years later.

A post on Amazon ( re Cinquecento's recording of Richefort's Requiem) from a very knowledgeable guy: Here's the learning process: * First listen to any track on the CD and count the separate voices. You will hear six on most tracks; just five 2, 10, & 12; just 4 on 11; but 7 on track 14. You WILL be able to separate them, and that's one of the criteria for considering this performance a paragon of polyphony. * Now listen to the separate voices and note that each one has its recognizable timbre; you could identify each singer in a blind test, perhaps even over the telephone. Each voice has character and musicality of its own, and that's a second criterion for excellence. * Now choose one voice, other than the highest (superius) soprano/alto, and follow that one voice through the whole piece of music. You WILL be able to do so with all five or six voices throughout every piece. You'll hear each voice as an emotive statement in itself. You should note that the voices don't "fill in" in the manner of a large choir. The "transparency" of the vocal lines permits you to hear rhythmic and harmonic complexities and interactions. It also allows you to hear the harmonic logic of dissonance resolving to perfect consonance at cadences. * Now the coup de grace: Listen and try to hear all the voices at once, not as a big whoosh of choral chords, but as a synchronized conversation of voices, each one interesting in itself. That, my friends, in non-technical terms, is how Renaissance polyphony should sound!

What I seem to do is turn the interweaving lines into something that's more or less vertical, with friction around the edges, which can be nice, but that's not the language of the music, no? OTOH, when Willaert sent one of his more complex motets to a Italian nobleman, the story goes that the nobleman's expert vocal ensemble couldn't figure out how to sing it.

Willeart -- Cinquecento I'm going to keep listening to Renaissance polyphony until I get it. Four or more lines at once seems to be more than I can handle.

You're right --oops on my part. Whatever what BH does is called, I remember that I found it entertaining.

He also sings on "Slow Drag" from Lee Morgan's "Caramba."

Wish I still had it. IIRC the pairing of Jenkins and Kyner was nice -- two similar players but different enough to be different and a good contrast with Lady Q; players of the styles of Q and the two altos seldom if ever were matched on an album. The cover goes without saying.

Sorry -- I got confused

Probably the Cubs. At the root of it all was that Ray was/could be a dick, and that he was contemptuous of Martinon. OTOH, Ray played under Reiner when Reiner was at Pittsburgh, and when Reiner, now with the CSO, admonished Ray for not playing a tricky passage properly and Ray shot back that Fritz had praised him for the way he had played that very passage when he was at Pittsburgh, Fritz replied, "Was that with the Pirates?"

It came down to a union matter, and Stills prevailed in arbitration. OTOH, no way could Ray or any other CSO member get another CSO member fired unless it was for gross incompetence or outrageous extra-musical behavior. Peck was a fine player, and again he was not the only CSO member who sided with Martinon in the Stills-Martinon dispute. Co-concertmaster Victor Aitay was another. IIRC, one of Martinon's complaints was that Stills listened to a ballgame on a portable radio (albeit through earphones) during a performance when there were passages where Stills didn't have to play -- Stills being quite visible to the audience when (and if) he did so. If so, again, I'd say that was pretty outrageous.

Brilliant oboist Ray Stills demanded that the CSO reflute several decades ago because he hated flutist Donald Peck. When Still had his big dispute with conductor Jean Martinon (Martinon wanted to fire him for insubordination -- Stills for sure could be a dick), the undeniably talented Peck, along with some other members of the orchestra, sided with Martinon. The dispute eventually was decided in Stills' favor. That Stills and Peck sat side by side didn't help. BTW, a former pupil of Stills told me that Ray's favorite musican was Lester Young.

Cecil Payne Jodie Christian What? They played different instruments. Jodie over Higgins Ira

Headline today: "NFL refutes NFLPA’s assertion the league never asked for vaccine mandate" "Refute" means that one PROVED, through evidence or argument, that the assertion was false. All the NFL did here was DENY that the NFLPA’s assertion was true.

I quote this not be a troll, but because John is John, and I pretty much agree with him. From a 1964 John Litweiler review of "Criss Cross" (Columbia): "Frankie Dunlop is certainly the major liability in this quartet. He is an exceptionally facile drummer, but it is amazing how a drummer can be so insensitive to Monk's playing. He has learned all the tricks from Roach, Blakey, Philly Joe, Elvin Jones, Baby Dodds, Joe Podunk and the rest of the gang, and he feels compelled to use every trick in his voluminous bag on every song he plays. It seems that way, anyway; good intentions do not a drummer make. John Ore is an asset to the group, in spite of his unwillingness to solo (he has an appealing habit of playing his solo choruses entirely in double stops); since he plays slightly on top of the beat, he keeps show-off Dunlop from dragging the tempo."

Yeah, that accounts for the '52 version, but in '41 at some points the melody Jo sings is different from any version I've ever heard before and not, lovely though it is, in a way that suggests an influx of personal expression on Stafford's part, as the '52 version does. Could it be that this is the way the song originally went? Also, I don't think Dorsey was the kind of bandleader who would let a newly featured singer alter "Embraceable You" that way. After all, what Jo changes -- the four notes that go with "...braceable you" -- is (or has become?) virtually the signature of the song as we know it.

Known to be among the most scrupulously accurate, by the book singers, what's with the different ways she sings the melody of 'Embraceable You" in 1941 and 1952?

The personnel listing for this piece says the trumpeters are Ziggy Elman, Chuck Peterson, Jimmy Blake, and Al Stearns, and again, none of them is known to me as a high-note man, although that may just point to my lack of knowledge. From the "Net': "Peterson gradually became a master of the high register of the trumpet."

Shavers was my first thought, but he didn't join Dorsey until 1944.

on the tail end of Tommy Dorsey's 1941 recording of Sy Oliver's "Swingin' on Nothin,'" with Oliver and Jo Stafford on vocals? He's pretty impressive, no? Trumpet section was Ziggy Elman, Chuck Peterson, Jimmy Blake, and Al Stearns, none of them known to me as a high-note specialist. BTW, the sound on this You Tube video is rather constricted. On the 4-CD set where I ran across it, "The Jo Stafford Collection," the band virtually blows you out of the room.

I like Timmons, but Perkins had a unique soulful approach.