The Training of Choristers to Sing Unaccompanied Renaissance Polyphony

Whatever the focus when dealing with choral training methods, there seems to be an overlapping and interweaving of aspects of vocal production, ensemble blend, diction considerations, tuning skills, and general musicianship of the choristers, to give only the beginnings of the list. To focus attention on one aspect of choral training inevitably covers many other aspects. Choral conductors thus are skilled practitioners with much to tell about choral training methods. Because they are practitioners and not research writers, their methods are largely an untapped source of information. To interview conductors is one way of extracting some of this practical knowledge; to watch them at work is another. Both these methods will be used in this investigation, but, to date, only interviews have been conducted. It is hoped that after analysis of the data the resulting document will provide a guide for conductors on techniques that are used successfully by proven conductors to draw from the choir a performance that captures the essence of the Renaissance style. Because the Renaissance Style itself is a much-discussed and elusive reality, the Renaissance musicologist also has much to contribute to our picture of Renaissance performance practice. Areas of agreement and disagreement between musicologists and conductors vary, although specialist singers of Renaissance unaccompanied polyphony feel that the answers lie in the practical performing conditions of the Renaissance period. This Round Table Presentation provides a summary of the question areas used in the interviews, and attempts to analyse the collected information pertaining to three focus areas thrown up by discussion with leading world conductors and Renaissance ensemble singers. These focus areas are: the importance of performing editions used in rehearsal, the central function of the text, and tuning.