A long time ago, churches were kind of annoyed at Josquin des Prez for making music too good. It was distracting people from the word of God!
Rumour has it the church, the most powerful entity at the time, was considering banning polyphony - the notion of multiple notes playing together in harmony - to mitigate this problem.
Then, along came Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina and was like 'no way, man, watch this', and used polyphony in a way that better complemented the word of God in his music. They listened and were satisfied. This allowed such composers as Claudio Monteverdi to shine, and boy, did he shine.
One of my favourite pieces from Monteverdi, Beatus Vir, or 'Blessed is the man', uses biblical text ending - of course - in Ahhh-men. No surprise there. However, it just happens that it's one of my favourite-sounding Amen's there is.
I found myself listening to it repeatedly on my commute home a couple of days ago, and realised that the rest of my evening would definitely be consumed by re-creating that very Amen with my viola.
So here it is:
This is the final cadence in the song, and the whole thing is worth a listen whether or not you're into this kinda music
Now, you may notice the video doesn't very well represent the quality of sound going on, and you'd be right to think that.
This recording is actually 12 viola tracks, with an additional 10 vocal tracks for good measure.
The reason it needed so many tracks is because the harmony consists of 5 independent parts, and I wanted to double each track to give a bit more oomph, and with a couple of extras which I tuned an octave down to match the Cello to cover the bass.
Then, well, it's a vocal piece of music, so vocals just had to be included while I was at it. I just covered the exact same harmonies and doubled up likewise with my voice.
I'm a little frustrated that I forgot to actually sing 'Amen', and just sang 'Ahhh', but I guess it's fine since I'm an atheist. Still...
Well, hopefully it sounds like I'm improving! I had to cheat with some tuning somewhat, but to my surprise I actually prefer the sound of the totally un-mixed, un-correcetd original.
I've provided a secret link to it here!
Which do you prefer?