Lesson 79: Advanced Ensemble, Part 1 — Renaissance Consort

Play one part of a four-or-more-part Renaissance consort piece against recordings (or live performers) of the other parts.
Read a full score (all parts at once) before practising your line in isolation.
Match tuning, articulation, and phrasing to a section even when your line is exposed.

Lesson 30 — ensemble playing introduction.
A recording or live partners for the other parts.

Full-score reading.
Section tuning discipline.
Articulation matching across voices.

A consort is one instrument with four heads. The tuning is between the heads.

Renaissance consort music — four, five, or six recorders in a family group, each part on a different-sized instrument — is the recorder's native ensemble context. The music is older than the solo-with-continuo sonata; it is what the instrument was designed for. Lesson 30 introduced ensemble playing on the duet scale; this lesson scales it up to a full consort, where four or more lines move independently and the listener's pleasure is in the texture as much as in any single voice.

The disciplines are different from solo playing. Tuning matters more (you cannot lean toward a continuo that follows you). Articulation matters more (an outlying tongue stands out against the section). Phrasing matters more (a phrase that does not breathe with the section breaks the texture). This is the most demanding form of ensemble work a recorder player undertakes.

Reading the full score

Before practising your part, read the full score — all parts on the page at once. Do not play; sing through one line, then another, then a third. The goal is to know what the other voices are doing when yours is silent, and to know which line carries the melody at any given point.

Most consort scores show the parts top-to-bottom (descant or soprano at top, bass at bottom). Mark, in your part, every passage where you have the melody, every passage where you accompany, and every passage where you are silent. Those three categories determine how you play any given bar.

One part — a soprano excerpt

A representative descant (soprano) line from a four-part Renaissance fantasia. Play it as if three other lines are moving below you — even if no one is in the room.

Tuning — the section discipline

The recorder is the wind instrument with the least pitch flexibility. Once you have built an instrument, the pitches it produces are largely fixed. This means ensemble tuning depends not on bending pitches (as a string or vocal ensemble does) but on:

Breath pressure. Higher pressure raises pitch slightly. Use it minutely on long notes that sound flat.
Alternate fingerings. Some notes have multiple fingerings with slightly different intonation. Pick the one that fits the section's tuning.
Choosing the right instrument size. A consort of mismatched manufacturers tunes harder than a consort of matched instruments. Match where possible.

Tune to the section, not the soloist. There is no soloist.

Articulation matching

A line tongued differently from its neighbours stands out as a foreign body. In a consort, every player uses the same articulation pattern within a phrase. Decide as a section before rehearsal:

Sixteenth-note motion: all double-tongued, or all slurred-pairs-tongued-third? Choose one.
Dotted figures: how sharp the dot? Each player approximates the same length.
Cadences: trill or no trill? If trill, by whom? Trills do not need to be in every part.

Mark the choices in everyone's part. Standardise them before the first run-through.

Practice plan — two weeks

Week 1 — your line, alone: Standard hardest-bar procedure on your part. Play it as if it were a solo. Tempo, articulation, ornament — all in place.
Week 2 — your line against a recording of the rest: Find a recording of the piece. Play your part with the recording, listening for tuning issues and articulation mismatches. The recording is the reference section.

Now play these

Baroque Music for Recorder Ensemble: A multi-part ensemble piece in the library. Use it as your application piece for this lesson; learn the descant line first, then practise against a recording of the others.
Pavane — Belle Qui Tiens Ma Vie: A simple Renaissance four-part dance, traditionally played as a recorder consort. Easy to read full-score; useful as a first-consort piece.

When you can play your line of a four-part consort piece in tune with a recording of the other three, with matched articulation and phrasing, and you can describe what each other voice is doing in any given bar, move on to Lesson 80.