Many take for granted the standards of choral performance that regulate choir singing today. This kind of ensemble sound is characterized by cleanliness of attack and articulation, uniformly blended tone within each part and from one vocal section to the next, pitch precision and percussive clarity of diction, and often a sense of rhythmic straightforwardness. Historical recordings and writings from the Romantic era reveal something quite different, however: a choral sound that blatantly contradicts and challenges the way in which the best choirs perform today in any repertoire.
This video, made from a paper I gave at Indiana University, unpacks and examines choral singing before modern influence. There are several examples from historical recordings to illustrate how choirs sang in the past. Just click the Youtube link to watch and listen to the presentation.
*note: there is a bit more distortion in the louder passages for a few of the recordings than I would prefer. This is a notorious condition of historical choral recordings. Improvements made to our audio system at Yale would probably address that better today, though this would mean redoing the entire video. Perhaps a project for the future.
