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 [log in to unmask]