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Daniel Friderici’s RULES FOR CHORAL SINGING

acus. There is still dispute as to how it relates to the foundation and form false consonances like fourths
26
Kurrende, chorus symphoniacus, and the Cantorei. It also and sixths under the Bass. 31
seems to have possessed a more inclusively “civic”
character, at least in some instances, and was related
27
to the Cantorei. This latter was usually a group co- Rule 15: In the Bass there must be no more coloratu-
32
operatively created by school, church, and town with ras made than those set by the composer. Otherwise,
members provided from each source, directed by the the foundation of the song is destroyed and the oth-
church’s cantor, and supplemented by honorary mem- er voices remain without support and nothing is then
bers whose main function, discreetly implied, was heard except a horrible dissonance.
mainly to provide fi nancial support.
Rule 16: The other voices should make coloraturas
so that they introduce no faults. They could distinctly
Rule 13: In a Privat Musica, it is not proper that two prevent such if they stop on the pitch on which they
sing one part when the other parts are set singly. It began (Figure 3).
may happen in the Bass or in the Discant with appro-
priate instruments and in particular, appropriate tonal
qualities. 28

Commentary Rule 13: I find no help for translating

Privat Musica, not even in MGG. Since Privat can refer
to a private home, a pure speculation is that it may
refer to one of the different types of external perfor-

mances, such as weddings, at which members of the
chorus symphoniacus performed. Another alternative is
that the term refers to a private concert such as was
usual at certain times for a cantorei to produce for and
by its membership, which included the chorus direc-
tor, members of the chorus and the town instrumen-
talists and featured the new “concerted” style of music
combining voices and instruments even as early as the Figure 3

29
first half of the seventeenth century. This rule seems
worded particularly vaguely so that it isn’t clear wheth- Commentary Rule 15 and 16: In 1638 the dim-

er Friderici offers the specific doublings as examples of inution technique of improvising florid passages in

violation or of acceptable exceptions. small note values by breaking up long notes in the

composition seems still to be sufficiently alive in cho-

ral practice that Friderici feels the need to address it.
Rule 14: In no voice must the lower octave be sung. The issue of performing such a passaggio in the Bass
At times the octave may be allowed to the Bass, but voice is a matter of contention among the German
done in a suitable manner. Those careless cantors go authors. Friderici accepts it when it has been written
no less wrong, who when the Discantists cannot sing in by the composer but not otherwise. Finck explicitly
fi cta voce [falsetto], immediately [have them] sing the accepts the improvised practice in the Bass as well
30
octave and create a Tenor out of a Discant, and it is no as the other voices, as does Bernhard implicitly. The
less a vice to introduce fifths. The Tenors are grossly usual objection to Bass diminutions by both Germans

wrong when they sing the lower octave and upset the and Italians is that they disrupt the harmony.

26 CHORAL JOURNAL June/July 2021 Volume 61 Number 11