alternatim

This usage, called alternatim, probably goes back to the 11th century and was observed until the 19th century.

Archive 2009-04-01 Lu 2009

Dies Irae was sung in octave alternatim by 250 people to create a beauty of enormous power.

The Awesome Beauty of Silence 2009

They are alternatim settings of even-numbered verses, cycles of short polyphonic motets alternating with and freely based on the given plainsong Magnificat tone.

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

In style, Wert's hymns resemble his other alternatim settings for the basilica; their extreme simplicity, evidently designed to allow the texts to be clearly heard, is reminiscent, in their combination of careful declamation, attention to text and restrained counterpoint, of the hymns and the Preces speciales of Jacobus de Kerle.

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

De Wert wrote a throug-composed Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei and used the alternatim form for the Gloria and the Credo.

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

This appeared in a collection of six alternatim settings all based on the chant Kyrie orbis factor, and all by composers connected in some way or other with S Barbara and Mantua.

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

Partly proclaimed through the deployment of special texts at least two of the hymns were written by Marc' Antoine Muret and cantus firmi derived from the S Barbara liturgy, its distinctiveness was additionally underscored by being set in alternatim fashion.

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

All but a few are alternatim settings of the even verses, leaving the odd verses to be chanted, as was customary, or perhaps played on the organ.

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

From an aesthetic point of view this loss is not too serious, since the imposition of the alternatim form and the stressing of imitative counterpoint have made these compositions rather impersonal.

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009

Those which do survive show that Bruck composed in the Josquin tradition and was a master of liturgical cantus-firmus treatment seen for example, in the sequence Dies irae as well as in the Te Deum, an alternatim setting in which with the exception of verse 16 the even numbered verses are set polyphonically.

Archive 2009-06-01 Lu 2009