Hassler's Four Voice Cantate Domino

Today's blog post brought to you by the piece "Cantate Domino" by Hans Leo Hassler.

I conduct this tomorrow morning in conducting class.  I am the last one to conduct this piece, as I am second to the end in this round.  We conduct in a pre-established order and the pieces in each round vary.  So I am conducting the same things that two other classmates conducted.  Since I am the last one to go, I better have some good musical ideas and I better be ready to clean up any thing that sounds muddy yet.

First, some background.  Based on Psalm 96:1-3, Hassler would often set multiple versions of the same text.  "Cantate Domino" he set for four voices, five voices, eight voices, and twelve voices.  I may have missed a voicing in there.  I am conducting the four voice edition.  I like the edition we are using- it's Arista Edition.  They are very clean.

The music is not so "clean" anymore, as it has all my markings on it.  Groupings, text stress, breaths, glottals, dynamics, articulations, a few diction reminders, translation, etc.  This piece is fairly straight forward.  There will not be much for the singers to think about tomorrow except just making music.  There are no dynamic markings in the score from the edition.  I put in a few, put they are fairly conservative dynamics.

So I am struggling with two things on this piece.

One: Tempo.  It's easy to start too quickly.  Or start a good tempo and speed up.  Or change tempo when I go through the triple/duple modulations.  I do not want to snowball to the end and I certainly do not want to be taking the tempo too quickly during the last section, or there is no way the choir will put on a phrase-ending "s" together.  And breaths will sound like gasps before moving forward.  On the other hand, if I start too slowly, the piece drags.  It loses livelihood.  Needless to say, I have been thinking a lot about the tempo.

Two: Dynamics.  I know it's a Renaissance piece.  But I really do not think I want the group to sing it mezzo-mezzo.  As mentioned earlier, I have fairly conservative dynamic markings written in, but I actually think those markings are less conservative when I hear it in my head.  So I am pretty sure I will ask them to give me more (and less) tomorrow morning than what the page is showing.

So, I am exhausted.  But before I sign off, I think that Hassler is very subtly clever in his writing.  The only time the word "populis" is sung (which means "people") is the only time Hassler borrows the Bb from a different hexachord.  It's as if the people are in a different realm (literally, a different hexachord realm) from the rest of God's praise.