Sicut Cervus
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    My dedicated choir sang this for the first time today!
  • chonakchonak
    Posts: 9,160
    Palestrina? Bravo!
  • Jeffrey TuckerJeffrey Tucker
    Posts: 3,624
    As our schola calls it, "the old stag" -- with great affection of course.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    Ha! 'The old stag'! --- this may catch on. (How about 'the dear old stag'?)

    And, bravo, Kathy, for your fine achievement. This motet may well be polyphony's most perfect little jewel. It's too bad that the second part is seldom heard.

    (Isn't it a pitiful irony that our hero Palestrina had such unfortunate views of the recieved chant repertory?)
  • Mark M.Mark M.
    Posts: 632
    MJO, could you elaborate a bit on the "second part" you mentioned, and on Palestrina's views?
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    It's taken awhile, but we've made it out of the St. Gregory hymnal finally. Now here comes the good stuff! Er, the good ole stag.
  • Erik P
    Posts: 152
    .
  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    Mark, the pars secunda of "Sicut..." was the subject of a Joseph Jennings (Chanticleer) lecture I attended at an ACDA event. Joe was long on pairing the two pars and the musicology attendant, but simply put, P2 doesn't, IMHO, easily compliment what I regard as the "romantic genius " of P1. I know that it is almost heresy to ascribe the term "romantic" to the High Renaissance, but if the adhesion of counterpoint and some parallel duets, etc. doesn't stir the soul in the listener, well....

    Eric, I attended JO's lecture the second night. He was motoring through it like it was a Grand Prix road race and a treasure hunt combined. I believe that JO could defend that proclamation to a jury made up of 12 Victorias and win the day. But, I hope and do not, as yet, believe that JO's relatively short burst of a statement totally reflects his true regard for GPdP's contribution to the Sacred Treasure.
    Perhaps Doug or Mike could elaborate, but that statement, out of context and not dwelt upon by JO, seems as irrelevant as the mirror legend that Palestrina's Missa Marcelli "saved" polyphony circa Trent. YMMV.
  • David Sullivan
    Posts: 355
    Kathy, great news for your choir! Really stepping things up just when everyone else is taking a summer break.
    Wonderful!
  • Erik P
    Posts: 152
    .
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    Thanks, David. Step by step.

    Charles, was ist das, YMMV?
  • marymezzomarymezzo
    Posts: 236
    go, Kathy!

    I hope I can say the same of my B16 schola in a couple of months. They just started learning "the old stag," and I've been surprised at how well they're sight-reading it.

    Interesting: I've read through but never performed the second part. It never really captured me.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,368
    Charles is right. The secunda pars doesn't possess near the infectuous charm and intellectual purity displayed in the prima pars. And, he is right about a 'romantic genius' (using 'romantic', I trust, in a very broad sense) attendant on the prima pars. Still, the usually absent secunda deserves its place with what Palestrina conceived of as complimentary parts of a whole; particularly since it completes Psalm 42 (41)'s analogy of the hart and the human soul with such eloquence:
    Like as the hart desireth the water-brooks * so longeth my soul after thee O God.
    My soul is athirst for God, yea even for the living God: * when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?
    (Coverdale)
    Prima pars almost demands secunda pars.
  • Charles in CenCA
    Posts: 2,416
    Mon cher Kathy, YMMV is the tetragrammaton for:
    "your mileage may vary." ;-p
  • Kathy
    Posts: 5,500
    :)
  • ossian1898ossian1898
    Posts: 142
    Sicut Cervus - I call it "Our choir theme song" because we sing it whenever we have nothing else, or need something quick to fill the rest of communion time. But strangely it never gets old.
  • JL
    Posts: 171
    Hmm--we always called it the "Secret Service" motet.
  • rich_enough
    Posts: 1,033
    Yes! - same here.

    (I thought I was the only one.)

    Sam Schmitt
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