Cantare super librum 

Undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and enlightening RU-vid music channel by far. I am personally expecting more videos about Sweelinck and maybe also some about organums from Perotinus Magister...

I couldn't say more than that... Thank you so mutch!

Agree.

That's one reason why I recommend this channel to my students as one of the best ever.

That the rise of Western polyphony owes itself to improvisation also points to what it owes to choral ensembles of men and boys. That gender and age matter here is suggested by the quote here from Johannes Tinctoris: "I have known not even one man who has achieved eminent or noble rank among musicians if he began to compose or sing super librum at or above his 20th year of age". What about gender? Here's a quote from Florida State University psychologist Roy F. Baumeister from his talk, "Is There Anything Good About Men?" (easily found online). QUOTE Creativity may be another example of gender difference in motivation rather than ability. The evidence presents a seeming paradox, because the tests of creativity generally show men and women scoring about the same, yet through history some men have been much more creative than women. An explanation that fits this pattern is that men and women have the same creative ability but different motivations. I am a musician, and I’ve long wondered about this difference. We know from the classical music scene that women can play instruments beautifully, superbly, proficiently - essentially just as well as men. They can and many do. Yet in jazz, where the performer has to be creative while playing, there is a stunning imbalance: hardly any women improvise. Why? The ability is there but perhaps the motivation is less. They don’t feel driven to do it. I suppose the stock explanation for any such difference is that women were not encouraged, or were not appreciated, or were discouraged from being creative. But I don’t think this stock explanation fits the facts very well. In the 19th century in America, middle-class girls and women played piano far more than men. Yet all that piano playing failed to result in any creative output. There were no great women composers, no new directions in style of music or how to play, or anything like that. All those female pianists entertained their families and their dinner guests but did not seem motivated to create anything new. Meanwhile, at about the same time, black men in America created blues and then jazz, both of which changed the way the world experiences music. By any measure, those black men, mostly just emerging from slavery, were far more disadvantaged than the middle-class white women. Even getting their hands on a musical instrument must have been considerably harder. And remember, I’m saying that the creative abilities are probably about equal. But somehow the men were driven to create something new, more than the women. UNQUOTE It astounds me that the early music world has been uniformly silent as centuries-old foundations in the UK -- with a direct historical continuity to Western music's utterly unique polyphonic Big Bang -- are vandalized and converted to mixed-voice groups -- just in the last few years, St John's, Christ Church, Chichester, Magdalen, St Paul's, St George's, New College, and on and on. (German-speaking Europe, so far, seems to resist the trend.) Presumably this means more work for the UK's professional women choral singers, who, in the future, will find few men to join them, as would-be choirboys, quite understandably, are getting the message that they're yesterday's chopped liver. (Current RU-vids of UK cathedral choirs show the top lines as overwhelmingly female.) Of course, of course -- everyone should be encouraged to sing, and the largest bulk of recordings and performances of Renaissance repertoire are now by mixed-voice ensembles. But must every traditional choir be put to pasture? In the UK, college, church, and crown -- and the Early Music crowd -- seem to think so. Listen to the former New College choir sing Couperin or Purcell or the former Christ Church sing the Eton Choirbook or the former King's College sing Tallis or Tye and rue what is now lost forever.

That's exactly what I was thinking as I watched this video!

Definitely signing up for the Patreon asap

Yes, it would -- although, to learn the technique properly, the composition students would probably need to do something like what was done centuries ago: spend at least a year doing it every single day, with multiple services on most days, and lessons in between. I have a hard time believing that most composition students today would be willing to devote a year to doing only that.

@@mwnyc3976 There's lots of things you have to endure if you want to properly learn the craft, and I don't think adding that would be that much harder than having to do your "obbligato" combinations (i.e.: "Cantus Firmus" in Semibreves, one voice in Minims, one in Quavers and one in suspensions) for months at an end. It might even be less arid, a bit of fresh air time by time.

@@TenorCantusFirmus They make students do species counterpoint for months on end, even now?

@@mwnyc3976 Here in Italy, yes - And I have to say, I actually find it to still be useful.

I learned this way. That’s why i speak about improvisation for composers a lot on my channel . Most musicians and teachers don’t know how learning musict truly works, and this video gives a better insight on this. Great video

Lol

I believe Georgian sacred music is basically singing super librum, although I'm pretty sure that the practice developed locally and wasn't imported from elsewhere in the Christian world.

I am a musicology student and we were advised to read 'Renaissance music' by Alan Atlas - very easy to digest, written with a very simple language, covering various topics :)

Elam is based in Basel now, but he is Israeli.