I believe this was the custom in France in the 19th century, but many musicians rejected this. C. Franck talks about this practice with disgust.

"Apparently this led to lots of comments about "brays" and "moos"."

Well, then, it ought to fit in just fine with the human voice as heard in many choirs...;oP

(Save the Liturgy, Save the World)

JL,

Three serpents in one place at the same time. Wow! I'll look out for them.

Whatever happened to "she shall crush thy head"...?

Or, even better, Psalm 57:5: "Their madness (i.e. of the wicked) is according to the likeness of a serpent: like the deaf asp that stoppeth her ears" ;-P

And don't get me started on bagpipes inside huge granite-and-marble churches or at university field-house Baccalaureate Masses...there was a good reason for the old classification of instruments into 'haut' and 'bas', and don't let some of them in the door!

Actually, I heard serpents in a period-instrument concert or two back in the day, and they were surprisingly pleasant as used then. And I have a wonderfully musical and good-humored tubist who plays at my 'work church' every Easter, and what he does for the sound of the choir and of the organ is splendiferous. Not a moo, bray, or um-pah in sight! (But I don't ask him to accompany chant; I am not fond of isons, but he's so musical I'm betting he could play the chant by ear if asked.)

Sadly, Berlioz took the serpent out for his revision of the Symphonie fantastique. A loss IMO.

There are traditional hymns in the Gather Reprehensive hymnal. You could leave out the bad ones and only do the better ones. How much control do you have over music selection? Could you do this?

There is some genuine garbage in that hymnal, so reprehensive is accurate. ;-) But some of the traditional standard hymns are also there. My school uses it, but they are starting to wear out. When the new missal translation is out, I plan to buy new hymnals for the church. I will send all our RitualSong hymnals to the school. Maybe we could have a ceremonial "Gather" burning. LOL.

If anyone is interested in plainchant with serpent parts written out as well as method for teaching how to accompany plainchant, there is a great Urtext available from www.hickeys.com. "Ouvrage Complet pour l'Education du Serpent" Metoyen, 1807.

Good for anyone that wants to learn how to play a bass accompaniment to chant, not just serpent!

Gabe

I love this board, I really do.

Aw, geez Margie, I hate to put a Capt'n Crunch nugget in everyone's souffle here, but if you need a little density to edify the bass (or any other line)...uh, we have the organ. Or any decent synth. No offense to professional serpentines intended.
I swear I'm packing a lute to the Madeleine next June and all will be enthralled. Or not.

How about a decent synth with a serpent sound?

I have indeed used a soft organ stop to double a single (usually bass) line in what would otherwise be a cappella polyphony ... use of a serpent, sackbut, or organ for such purposes has an established historical precedent. Somehow, a lute doesn't quite fit Renaissance polyphony ... but I absolutely love the lute (and theorbo) for madrigals and other late Renaissance works that are meant to be accompanied.

CHGiffen, Actually the organ probably accompanied polyphony a lot more than we are willing to admit. The position of organist in a Renaissance cathedral was an important one and the job description suggests that the organist accompanied polyphony in addition to alternating with it. This still needs study. We certainly know this to be the case in Venice, though.

Yes, there are present day curtal players, quite a few; I play tenor myself (bass is a little big for my hands).
Immaculate Conception in Cleveland once did a Du Mont mass with serpent support by Craig Kridel. Unfortunately, that was before my time.
I heard the London Serpent Trio several times live...great fun.

The problem is that colla parte playing in polyphony for areas besides Venice has very little hard evidence. The writers of the time seem almost to have gone out of their way to frustrate us. They tell us what instruments are to be used in church and some places where they play alone, but so far there is no smoking gun document that says "trombone play along with the sextus singers". We can infer and experiment, but as of yet, we can't prove.

There's a fairly recent recording (June 2017) by David Ponsford & L'Ecole de Nivers (Vol. V of French organ music on Nimbus) with the alternatim accompanied by serpent. The Hymns are particularly interesting

Michael

Is the mouthpiece/embouchure for the serpent close enough to the exquisitely, um, focused such for horn that a horn player would undertake that mission willingly? (Former horn player here. For folks not familiar with differences in brass instruments: the mouthpiece/embouchure for horn is quite different than for other brass instruments - while horn players can transition more easily to playing other brass instruments, the reverse is not as easy.)

@Liam

Bearing in mind that I am no expert: a little of both. The rim of the mouthpiece was narrow like the rim of a horn mouthpiece (and unlike the rim of other typical brass instruments). (At least, such was the one that I was given, and I was told it is 'military' style as opposed to 'church' style, but I believe this distinction had to do with the shape of the bowl rather than the thickness of the rim.) However, the bowl was more bowl-like (closer to a trumpet's mouthpiece in shape) than cone-like, as a horn mouthpiece is. Overall dimensions are larger than a horn mouthpiece.

For me, the challenge was less about embouchure (though it was certainly not an immediate transition) and not even so much about learning a new way of manipulating (fingering), but getting a solid feel for where the harmonics are, subtle things that must be done to keep it in tune while playing, and generally just getting a good feel for how to make it sound musical and not like a bicycle horn. Years of making all of that knowledge second-nature on a horn did not translate to this instrument, at least not in the short time that I had to learn it (about 6 weeks).

No doubt our resident professional can chime in and shed light.

Edit: And your observation is correct. I was 'honored' with this task because of some minor facility in switching from horn to other brass instruments.