Deryk Barker wrote:

>I'll stand corrected, although the 5 came from an interview I read
>a while back

It's a common enough statement, but doesn't stand to scrutiny.  The
post-Restoration choirs may have had intentions to recreate certain
sonorities, and they certainly had the rhetoric, but evidence suggests
otherwise.  As I mentioned, Potter's book is one of the first to tackle
this particular hot-button subject.

>Now that's a whole nuther matter.

I suppose.  I can't stand the sound of these choirs in medieval music.
It sets my teeth on edge.  If other people like them, that's their
business, but I just want to make clear that there isn't any real
evidence that medieval choirs sounded this way.

The whole "vibrato or no vibrato?" question circumscribes vocal technique
about as well as "do you want fries with that?" circumscribes gourmet
cuisine.  It's a tiny question in a hugely varied landscape, and thankfully
many groups which specialize in medieval music have moved away from this
particular fixation.  The main problem comes in when more popular ensembles
who do mostly later music dupe the public into thinking medieval music
sounds so awful.

Todd McComb
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