florida state university college of music performance practice

4. 7 recordings (18%) featuring 20-29 member choir
5. 2 recordings (5%) featuring 30-39 member choir
6. 2 recordings (5%) featuring 40-49 member choir
7. 0 recordings (0%) featuring 50-59 member choir
8. 1 recording (3%) featuring 60-69 member choir
9. 1 recording (3%) featuring 70-79 member choir
While there are numerical differences in the choral ensembles as well as all-male
choirs versus mixed choirs, the choral sound is virtually consistent throughout the
aggregate recordings. Given the dramatic gravitas of the work the choral sound
consistently found on the acquired recordings is full and commanding (degrees of
fullness depends on the movement). Overall, the recordings demonstrate a high level of
artistry but this too is heard in degrees. Tasteful vibrato is used but is never so overt as to
distract from the vocal line. Several recordings feature choirs singing with a voluptuous
sound like Guttenberg (1991), the well known traditionalist Helmut Rilling (1996) and
Hempfling (2004), but even this sound is far from the excessive vibrato in early twentieth
century performances that many early music pioneers found objectionable.
The recordings show an aesthetic of sound I believe is a conciliatory middle
ground from two polar extremes that has been present throughout the past couple of
centuries. The two polar extremes can be best described as a large full vibrato void of
informed historical practice as characterized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
leading up to and sometime after World War II. The other extreme is the senza vibrato
stage that became popular after World War II but has since been attacked by voice
pedagogues and vocal scientists. Contemporary conductors recognize neither extreme is
particularly desirable. This point is demonstrated in Martha Elliott‟s 2006 book, Singing
in Style,
In recent years both taste in singers and ideas about appropriate voices for certain
repertories have changed dramatically…Bach Passions, for example, can be
presented with a full modern orchestra, large chorus, and “opera singers” as
soloists or, on the other extreme, with period instruments and a smaller
complement of singers who are “early music specialists,” or with any kind of
combination of elements in between. Even within the early music world, the quest
for authenticity, which was primary goal ten or twenty years ago, has lost some of
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