S×4, Ax4, Tx3 Bx2, but attendance is spotty. We do the Dubois and Arcadelt. I also looked at Elgar, Parsons, and Dubois. The Dubois has deceivingly tricky entrances if your members learn by rote. You also need good tenors for the Sancta Maria section. There are also a lot of unprepared entrances or leaps to a dissonance which are difficult.
Looking back I wish we had done Elgar, because I think we could have done it better than the Dubois. The Parsons I think is also doable of you have a choir that does some ground work with practice videos. We didn't have the time for a major challenge when we learned the Dubois, however.
liam, thanks for your comments - the Elgar score I see is accompanied, which would reduce our already small ranks, so it's probably going to be out for us.
At full strength right now, 7 voices (2 men including me) plus a dedicated organist
Perosi a2 (ed. Simone Olivieri, CPDL) Giocomo Fogliano (d.1548), unison and organ, ed. me from Historical Anthology of music "Arcadelt" a4 (Or as many as we can manage that day) from St. Gregory Hymnal Gerald Near a2 M/W (Morningstar).I did this while guesting and was taken enough with it to actually BUY MUSIC. Unison outsides. A few tricks in the middle, culminating in a descending minor 7th for the women. First time, this Sunday; wish us luck. Going through the folder, out of maybe 25 Marian selections, only 4? Surprising.
Ave gratia plena of Cornelius Verdonck is our go-to Ave, even though it does not set the full traditional text. (Nice recording here.) It's great to tell the choir that the music is uniquely preserved on a copper engraving from 1584.
Besides the ones listed above, I've also sung SATB settings by Mouton, Palestrina, Fogliano (arr. for SATB), and have programmed the Guerrero for a Mass on February 11 (Our Lady of Lourdes).
We sing Bruckner (more often when we were 12-14 instead of 6-9), Stravinsky and Handl/pseudoVictoria, but mainly Josquin's …Virgo serena and Rachmaninoff's Bogoroditse.
If you have two strong voices you can do the Saint-Saens, or the Faure...Chorally speaking, the Monteverdi is only 3 part but you need competent singers. For SATB, there is the Victoria, Elgar, Arcadelt, etc...if you have more singers you can try the adaptation of the Rachmaninov (from Vespers)
I once sang a setting by Albert Dooner that I liked. It's tonal with some "mildly modern" harmonies (7th chords and chromaticism) in the middle, and an unusual cadence at the end. It was published as one of "Three Canticles" by the St. Gregory Guild in 1954.
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