Consort Music: Best Practices, Parameters, and Perspectives

Consort music is a conversation between musical minds, but when you’re in the midst of playing it’s hard enough to execute your part with certainty, much less to listen or speak musically to others at the same time. But it’s no wonder: we are managing the technical realities of playing the viol, often while sight reading an unfamiliar work, all while trying to expressively and intelligibly perform an often-dense polyphonic composition. Though this can feel overwhelming, below you’ll find some of my insights that have helped me organize the consort experience in a way that allows me to quickly make sense of it while enjoying myself and the music.

Take tuning seriously. Tuners are a great investment and are objective.

Play a work at least two times compassionately  before discussing the work or the performance. Be fair and kind to the music, your colleagues, and yourself by building at least a small sense of familiarity with a work before entering upon critique. Allow for mistakes of all manner from all parties, including yourself. Help the disoriented with bar numbers spoken when possible. Feel free to stop and restart rather than endure frustration. 

Agree on tempo. Counting out loud clears this up quickly. I’ve found it beneficial to have the entire consort count two measures aloud before beginning. This gets everyone on the same page rhythmically and can give the ensemble a stronger start.

Maintain tempo. Do your best to not slow down when notes get longer, and do your best to not speed up when they get shorter. Again, counting out loud can help. This might seem simple, but even the most experienced players can succumb to rushing and wallowing.

Play loud enough to be heard, but quiet enough to hear others. Any good conversation is as much about listening as it is about being heard. Polyphony benefits from a more transparent texture than other types of music, allowing the listeners and players to hear the complex interplay between the various parts. If volumes are too loud we lose the sense of musical weaving that makes polyphony so alluring.

Know your role in the music, and know that role can change quickly. Are you playing the primary motive, or are you playing secondary material? Often the part that is carrying the main theme only holds that role for a few measures - or less - at a time. Be quick to listen and respond to the changing musical focus of the work you are playing.

Cadences are weak, with rare exception. Cadences are often moments of musical release and repose, and usually make room for new iterations of a motive, for new motives, or for a new section. If there is text in the music take a look and see how it sounds when you speak it aloud, shouting the last syllable of the last word of the line. That will tell you a lot about the phrase and the cadence.

There are different types of cadences in consort music. I refer to these as finial, medial, and interior cadences. Finial cadences signal the end of major musical episodes and signal strong musical release and repose. Medial cadences happen within a musical episode but are not moments of strong musical repose. Interior cadences occur within individual parts, and while they might read or sound like a finial or medial cadence in isolation, they do not form a cadence within the larger harmonic structure. Often cadences are best observed through weakened dynamics rather than distorting the pulse. 

Maintain tempo, and feel for organic tempo relationships if there are meter shifts. To my knowledge there isn’t evidence from primary sources that contemporary performances of consort literature had wild tempo swings like we enjoy in later music - so keep it straight, though don’t be afraid to let it flex in measured response to the affect. Tempo relationships and proportions can be quite the DEEP and CONTENTIOUS subject. I’d suggest going with what feels easy and don’t worry about being “correct.” 

Consort music is often rhetorical music. In this sense rhetorical music refers to compositions that are text oriented, whether literally or inferred. More specifically I mean that most consort music is either modeled upon or was originally a vocal composition. With mindful use of the bow even music without words can be organized through a text oriented approach. 

Consort music is sometimes dance music. Dance music demands that rhythmic gestures and musical structures be clear, meaning that some beats and bars are louder than others. It is this unevenness that gives the music a kinetic feel, so organize your bow to make rhythmic gestures clear, and listen for clues within the music to find high and low points. If unclear, a quick Google search can often clear up most questions.