In ecclesiis - Gabrieli

Context

• In ecclesiis would have been performed for a major service in St Mark's church, which provided echoing spaces and multiple choir galleries
• New style of church music in which spatially seperated choirs of instruments and voices echo and answer each other in antiphony
• Dramatic new style towards the end of the Renaissance and continued into the early years of the Baroque period, known as polychoral music

Resources

• Gabrieli wrote for 14 independent parts in In ecclesiis: - four solo vocal parts - four choral vocal parts - six parts assigned to a group of specific instruments: three cornetts, two trombones and a violin (then a new instrument but the range is closer to that of a viola)
• In addition, a bass part for organ, from which the player improvises chords - doubles the instrumental or vocal bass when everyone is performing - origin of figured bass
• Choir have relatively simple parts
• Solo voices are expected to cope with more elaborate lines
• Instruments are required to play dotted rhythms and repeated notes (like those in bars 31-33) that are totally unlike vocal melodies

Other useful terms

• The divided choirs of polychoral music, with singers placed in different parts of the building, are sometimes called cori spezzati ('split choirs)
• Compositions of the early 17th century that combine and constrast vocal and instrumental ensembles, supported by a continuo bass part are often described as being in stile concertato (concerted style)
• The combination of a solo voice and continuo accompaniment was a new type of texture in music of the period and, when used in…