YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

THE ROLE OF ACOUSTICS IN THE PERFORMANCE OF RENAISSANCE POLYPHONY
surface occasioned by the removal of the east wall of the Carolingian building reduces
the reverberation time by approximately half a second, but other features of the
acoustic remain the same (compare Figure 10 to Figure 5). The difference between
the acoustic of the octagon and that of the Gothic choir was thus a marked one.
The notion that the Gothic choir might be preferred on the basis of acoustics
alone is, of course, specious. The part of a church called a choir is, at least in principle,
a designated space for singing, and its preference as such generally has more
to do with liturgical concerns than with acoustical ones. But performance traditions
in Aachen permit us to say more. The longstanding practice of singing responsories
and antiphons under the large octagonal chandelier in the center of the octagon (or
sub corona, as it was known in the ordinals) continued even after the Gothic choir
was completed (see Figure 7). Singers regularly processed to the middle of the
octagon, often singing as they did so, and sang a responsory verse or antiphon there
before returning to the choir. Often the ordo specifies one cleric who was to sing the
verse or even the entire responsory, suggesting that plainchant was preferred for this
practice. In no case do the ordinals copied after the completion of the Gothic choir
mention polyphony in connection with these processions, though this is hardly meaningful,
since the ordinals seldom mention polyphony at all. 9
More meaningful in this context is the repertory of the Mangon Choir Books,
three books of polyphony dating from the 1570s and housed in Aachen’s Domarchiv.
Assembled by Johannes Mangon, a composer from Liège who was employed as succentor
at the Marienkirche from 1572 until his death in 1578, these codices contain
liturgical polyphony for the entire church year and, when consulted in conjunction
with the ordinals, shed additional light on the question of preference for one space
over another. Choir Book I preserves twenty-one masses, Choir Book II contains 101
motets, and Choir Book III is a compilation of sixty-five works – primarily Marian
antiphons, magnificats, and hymns. Much of the repertory of Choir Books II and III
is based on specific chants from Aachen’s liturgy, using the chant melody as the subject
of imitation or occasionally as a cantus firmus. My study of this repertory has
revealed that such polyphonic elaborations were consistently substituted for their
chant models in the liturgy. 10 Significantly, with the exception of Marian antiphons,
I have not found polyphonic settings of any of the responsories or antiphons for which
the ordinals prescribe a sub corona performance. In the case of the Marian antiphon
settings, one may infer from their position within Choir Book III that they were
intended for use at the conclusion of compline, by which time procession to the chandelier
and back – if prescribed – would have already occurred.
9 RICE, Music and Ritual, pp. 240–245.
10 RICE, Music and Ritual, pp. 442–461.
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