Media Vita
January 1, 2021 6:26 PM Subscribe
From a 1550s Pandemic, a Choral Work Still Casts Its Spell. "We know remarkably little about John Sheppard and his “Media vita.” But it has become a cult favorite of early music."
“Media vita” starts low, rising as if from catacombs. The tenors begin, sounding the slow, steady chant that will occupy them for more than 20 minutes. Countertenors come in above them, also rising step by step. Then the highest line enters, then another, another, still another, until all six parts take flight — rich yet somehow fragile, even lonely, and full of fear.
“Media vita in morte sumus,” they sing: “In the midst of life we are in death.”
“Media vita” starts low, rising as if from catacombs. The tenors begin, sounding the slow, steady chant that will occupy them for more than 20 minutes. Countertenors come in above them, also rising step by step. Then the highest line enters, then another, another, still another, until all six parts take flight — rich yet somehow fragile, even lonely, and full of fear.
“Media vita in morte sumus,” they sing: “In the midst of life we are in death.”
Added to my funeral playlist.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:45 PM on January 1, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:45 PM on January 1, 2021 [3 favorites]
Had never heard of this. Pretty amazing.
posted by Windopaene at 7:10 PM on January 1, 2021
posted by Windopaene at 7:10 PM on January 1, 2021
Thanks! I am not educated about, but enjoy, polyphonic choral music, and this had some nice gloom and soaring and bizarre dissonances to it.
Plus the samples from the various recordings gave me some names of ensembles to snoop on.
posted by janell at 11:03 PM on January 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
Plus the samples from the various recordings gave me some names of ensembles to snoop on.
posted by janell at 11:03 PM on January 1, 2021 [1 favorite]
Non-Spotify Link, including the score in the video.
I've always been drawn to polyphony in old music and new. When I improvise on Christmas carols I often drop into something like this.
And we don’t know how accurate the copy is. Are some of the dissonances — “piquant,” said Robert Quinney of the Choir of New College, Oxford — that make it sound so modern actually errors? Or are they a faithful account of what Owen Rees, director of the vocal ensemble Contrapunctus, calls Sheppard’s “extraordinary harmonic imagination?”
My vote is for authentic. This is a couple centuries before Bach, but it seems possible to likely that Bach's ASMR-inducing dissonant harmonies had their roots in earlier music.
posted by hypnogogue at 6:56 PM on January 2, 2021 [8 favorites]
I've always been drawn to polyphony in old music and new. When I improvise on Christmas carols I often drop into something like this.
And we don’t know how accurate the copy is. Are some of the dissonances — “piquant,” said Robert Quinney of the Choir of New College, Oxford — that make it sound so modern actually errors? Or are they a faithful account of what Owen Rees, director of the vocal ensemble Contrapunctus, calls Sheppard’s “extraordinary harmonic imagination?”
My vote is for authentic. This is a couple centuries before Bach, but it seems possible to likely that Bach's ASMR-inducing dissonant harmonies had their roots in earlier music.
posted by hypnogogue at 6:56 PM on January 2, 2021 [8 favorites]
Thank you for the Non-Spotify (utube) link. I don't listen to the others and this is good (and unknown to me).
Appreciate it.
posted by aleph at 9:24 PM on January 2, 2021
Appreciate it.
posted by aleph at 9:24 PM on January 2, 2021
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