On 16 Apr 2006 at 14:16, Lon Price wrote: > I'm currently studying Benjamin's > "The Craft of Modal Counterpoint," so I downloaded works by > Palestrina--"Missa Papae Marcelli" for 6 voices and "Mass for 3 > Voices" by William Byrd. I have recordings of these works, and when > comparing the MIDI versions to the recordings, I found numerous > discrepancies, like completely different cadences (V-i in minor > instead of major V-I), accidentals in the MIDI file that don't occur > in the recording, or vise-versa. I expect that the recordings are > accurate-- the Palestrina is performed by the Oxford Camerata, and > the Byrd is performed by the Tallis Scholars. Being unfamiliar with > music of this period, my question is: Are there different editions of > pieces from this period that are inconsistent, or are these MIDI > files just inaccurate?
I'll answer this question, since others have moved on to a different issue. Many of the common editions of Renaissance choral music were produced around the turn of the 20th century (with the big Palestrina collected edition dating from 50 years earlier or so). However, since that time, there has been a sea change in the understanding of "musica ficta" (which is a term itself that has multiple meanings). It turns out that many of the older editions "modernize" cadential figures, prefering leading tones in situations that we now believe would not have been used. Also, in the English style, there's the stereotypical clashing cross-related cadence, where one voice has the leading tone and another the non-raised note. This would not be so common in Byrd, but certainly in Tallis and other earlier English composers. Not knowing the edition used for the MIDI files, I'd definitely go with the Tallis Scholars' interpretation. They are not necessarily always "correct," but certainly within the realm of acceptability within our modern understanding of how these things worked. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
