I went today to an interesting little exhibition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. On display are scores of choral music from mediæval times to the present day, from the Bod’s own collections or on loan. They include the Eton Choirbook, autograph scores of the War Requiem, A Child of our Time and works by Blow and Purcell, and a surviving ms. copy of Spem in Alium. A Tudor organ book containing reductions of anthems which are otherwise lost must have provided hours of work for musicologists in reconstructing these pieces. There are also many other mss., printed scores of interest and a few recordings to listen to.
http://www.ouls.ox.ac.uk/news/2008_dec_01
I learnt more than I expected from going round this exhibition, as well as being reminded of pieces I’d performed or heard (the pages at which volumes are open have been carefully chosen). You are frequently reminded by conductors that early part-books did not have bar-lines, but only when I was confronted with one did the implications of this sink in. How did they manage to rehearse – did they have to sing the entire piece straight through over and over until they got it right, or was there some way to just go over one tricky passage in the middle? I did not know that choral societies used male altos, with women on the top line only, until well into the 19th century. There were several printed scores using sol-fa according to various systems. The sol-fa in printed scores of Britten was the tail end of this way of presenting music, and shows why it was inadequate. And, astonishingly, none of Oxford’s three choral foundations made a recording before the 1960’s. Was this thought a rather vulgar thing to do?
The exhibition runs till 25 April 2009.