Choirbook

What it means

A choirbook is a large-format manuscript from which several singers sing at the same time. It contains polyphonic music but does not arrange the voices one under the other like a present-day score; instead it distributes them over the surface of an open double page. The form arose from practice: a single book stood on a lectern in the middle, and the choir grouped itself around it.

In the notation

The layout is fixed and at first unfamiliar to present-day eyes. On the left-hand page the upper voice typically stands at the top and the tenor voice beneath it, on the right-hand page the remaining voices correspondingly. Each voice runs through on its own, with its own clef, its own key signature, and its own text; nothing that sounds simultaneously stands vertically one under the other. Bar lines are absent in the sense of present-day metre, and the note values follow mensural notation with its ligatures. The script is accordingly executed large so that several people can read it from some distance; many books are, moreover, artfully decorated.

Musical use

This book form was widespread from the late Middle Ages into the Renaissance, above all for sacred polyphony in churches and court chapels. It brings with it a particular way of making music: whoever sings from it sees their own voice but only hears the others — ensemble arises through listening, not through reading along in other voices. For research, choirbooks are central sources, because a large part of the surviving repertoire of this period is found in them.

The choirbook is to be distinguished from the score, which shows all the voices one above the other, and from the partbook, in which each voice receives a small book of its own.

Performance practice

When an ensemble sings from a facsimile, plan considerably more rehearsal time than with a modern transcription: mensural notation, missing bar lines, and the text underlay have to be learned to be read. Settle the mensuration and the distribution of the text together beforehand, so that not every voice brings along a solution of its own. For the study itself a modern transcription is sensible; afterwards the facsimile is worthwhile as a check at disputed passages.