What's your opinion on choir music? Classical music kind of fits into this category, but the stuff that sounds like it's in a cathedral, what do you think of it? See below for examples:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvPynMI6Umc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yd5EE0hAB8&list=FL_wAmrYqlcC9ifzMLB0UBSg&index=50
Personally I usually use it to relax when studying, but I wondered what your opinion on it might be. Only in Sleep(first link) brought me to tears.
You might get more love in classical as opposed to your own thread.
It's excellent, I believe choir composing forces the composer to focus on a very clear central message and to use very concise devices of delivery. You can't make something more clever and intriguing by adding/stacking different technical elements on one another.
Caveat: It's hard to enjoy choral music when you speak the language they're singing in once you realize how shit religious lyricism is.
Check out Thomas Tallis if you get a chance, great example of what I'm talking about.
I really like the backing choir in Björks Vespertine. Anyone know anything that sounds like that? Less cathedral and more ethereal and sensual.
The reverb of the cathedral and Latin lyrics, just take me back to Sunday school and being dragged to church.
About a week ago I went to my sister's choir recital, and while it wasn't that great, it reaffirmed to me how much I adore polyphonic vocals. I feel it's severely underused, and really only a handful of people have understood how to use the voice as an instrument (Brian Wilson being a notable example).
Pic is half related, it's psychedelic pop made entirely out of vocals.
>>65478068
Give us examples where Brian Wilson uses the voice as an instrument.
>>65478165
Heroes and Villains, Cabin Essence, Surf's Up, All I Wanna Do are the ones that immediately come to mind.
>>65475836
Monteverdi -> Palestrina -> Lotti
You don't need anyone else for choral music.
>>65475836
I really like it. My favorites are Leonin, Perotin and Gounod. Einhorn also makes good modern choral. It's very intricate like the beauty of the Lord.
Medieval and renaissance era choral is some of the best music ever created. Specifically because it was so restricted in composition and theme, it forced a technical specialization in invoking the divine that could never be achieved again. It was like creating a culture of forced species counterpoint, which led to an absolute mastery of that limited palette
It's also home to the best music qt's
>>65477617
>It's hard to enjoy choral music when you speak the language they're singing in once you realize how shit religious lyricism is.
Thankfully all the good stuff is in latin, and its a dead language.
Russian sacred music is pretty boss too:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD4wyKOAd0w
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn9JkJHRiZ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It6XaReAZUY
>>65477617
>>65480024
What's with the meme that choral music is automatically "restrictive"? You make it sound as if the composer sat down and wanted to do something, but then said to himself "I really wish I could do that but I can't". This may have been true for, later, lesser composers writing in the fossilised style of Palestrina, but definitely doesn't hold in general. Do these kind of music really sound "restricted" and "concise" to you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnqKzMYKbAY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bulM1q3ZkZY
>You can't make something more clever and intriguing by adding/stacking different technical elements on one another.
But you can. One of the more celebrated examples was Richafort's requiem, and in all the movements, there are three layers of these "technical elements": a canon between the two middle voices on the circumdederunt chant, the highest voice paraphrasing the requiem chant, and the three free voices weave free counterpoint around them. These are in a constant struggle for supremacy, and it's exhilarating to listen to, in a requiem mass no less.
>>65480654
>"I really wish I could do that but I can't"
That's not what I'm saying at all. Culturally, music (outside of the sparse and much less consistent folk music of the time) was purely a utility used to worship God. Particularly during ars antiqua, the idea of music serving anything other than worship of God wasn't in the minds of most if not all composers at the time. This wasn't artists being oppressed by a system of composition, but a fact of what was important to the average person at the time, which was God. Music as art just wasn't brought about, because giving praise to God took precedence before that was even considered.
You're assuming that I'm saying if the conceptual palette is smaller, therefore the music will be less expressive. But my point is that a smaller palette allowed them to hone their skills at utilizing it and gain a mastery at their particular utilitarian goal - invoking the divine and worshiping God, making it even more expressive than perhaps any era since
15th century choral music is the only truly important thing humans have ever done
Ayyyyyyy when i was in my HS chamber singers we did sicut cervus
good shit man
>>65481023
>Culturally, music was purely a utility used to worship God.
It doesn't follow that the music composed in this way would be restrictive. Since this utility says nothing about what the music itself ought to be like, and indeed, many didn't care. Even people from the immediate surroundings of the pope were indifferent about the details of the music, as long as it plugged the silence during the liturgy.
>But my point is that a smaller palette allowed them to hone their skills at utilizing it and gain a mastery at their particular utilitarian goal - invoking the divine and worshiping God
I'm debating your claim that the early choral composers had a "smaller palette" to start with. There was a bewildering variety in the texture and form in music of the day, and compared to composers writing vocal music in the 18th or 19th centuries composers there certainly wasn't anything lack in the toolbox of the earlier composers. In fact, just the opposite, the writing of the later ages would seem far more homogeneous in comparison.
Only gregorian singing is better than choir. Medieval = superior to all, in its way. Move over, unbeliebers!!!
