Choral Monuments

Abstract

This book provides extensive and in-depth material about eleven epoch-making choral masterworks that span the history of Western culture from the Renaissance to the modern era. Included are Missa Pange lingua (Josquin Desprez); Missa Papae Marcelli (G. P. da Palestrina); B Minor Mass (J. S. Bach); Messiah (G. F. Handel); The Creation (Joseph Haydn); Symphony no. 9 (Ludwig van Beethoven); St. Paul (Felix Mendelssohn); Ein deutsches Requiem (Johannes Brahms); Messa da Requiem (Giuseppe Verdi); Mass (Igor Stravinsky); and War Requiem (Benjamin Britten). The works are presented in separate chapters, with each chapter divided into three basic sections—history, analysis, and performance practice. Discussions of history include biographical information about composers related to the work at hand, historical perspectives, and text sources. Analyses are focused on formal and musical structures, salient compositional techniques, and elements of music particular to the work being discussed, including parody and motivic organization. The discussion of performance practices includes primary source quotations about a wide range of topics, from performing forces, tempo, and phrasing of each work to specific issues such as tactus, text underlay, musica ficta, metric accentuation, rhythmic alteration, recitative, fermatas, and ornamentation. Musical examples and primary source quotes illuminate the material.