[TPIN] antiphonal brass

[Tim Phillips]

I agree with the other posters.  If you have a great deal of distance, 
then getting the players to ignore what they are hearing and to follow 
the stick is an issue to the player.  The conductor on the other hand 
has to keep great time and ignore what he is hearing, because everything 
will seem late from the podium.  When brass players are doing the echo, 
it's often an additional problem to keep the balance in check (who wants 
to hear the singers anyway? :).  Another problem is one of speech...  
Brass instruments tend to speak more quickly (more crisply) than the 
human voice.  The instrumentalists will have to be cognizant of this and 
keep the articulations less pointed - and the singers will have to sing 
with lots of aggression on the beginnings of words (not that good 
diction isn't a standard mantra for choral people anyway), especially on 
entrances after rests.  Getting the "speech" of the choirs to compliment 
each other is IMO the biggest challenge for the conductor and performers 
- and a lot of that is dependent on the acoustic.

Tim Phillips
iplatrpt at unifourbrass.org
http://www.unifourbrass.org
 
tnlongrifle at juno.com wrote:

>Has anyone ever played antiphonal brass vs. choir? I have my finaly conducting recital in November and we're doing a couple of Gabrieli pieces written for antiphonal choir. I'm using brass for the coro secondo. My question(s) is (are) this (these?): Have you seen any unique challenges that I as the conductor ought to be aware of? What literature of this type have you played? For what it's worth, my recital is in the chapel at Southern Seminary, which has balconies running down each side wall. I plan to put brass in one and singers in the other. This is supposed to be like St. Marks in Venice, but there's some question as to whether or not they actually did that.
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>Charles Priest
>tnlongrifle at juno.com
>http://www.geocities.com/charlestpriest
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