Bach’s Chorus

Abstract

In virtually any choral performance today, a singer will read from his or her own copy of the music. Simple practicality dictates this arrangement; not surprisingly, therefore, its history reaches back a considerable distance. Indeed, vocal groups seem rarely if ever to have sung any other way since at least 1600 – or so we may conclude from the surviving performance materials of such composers as Schütz, Biber, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, to name just a few. These materials, samples of which we shall examine shortly, differ from ours in giving singers individual parts instead of vocal scores; but as notational, theoretical and documentary evidence all make clear, they invariably provide a separate part for every singer.

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