On my tablet the link merely led to the wiki home page. I had to find the Obrecht page, and then download the Maria Zart from that.
Perusing the provided incipits, if they are faithful to the original, no bar lines were provided but time and key signatures were.
But one question of performance practice struck me.
Obrecht many times wrote long lines, over three or more measures, for a single syllable. For an immediate example, in the opening Kyrie, the soprano/discantus starts the second syllable of "eleison" on the first note of bar 5 and continues it through the middle of bar 10 before devoting the last third of the bar to the final two syllables*. Obrecht seems to have expected his singers to either use a relatively quick tempo or have very good breath control. But my question is this: the modern editor uses no slur lines. Would the singers of Obrecht's day have sung those parts as if slurred, or more staccato, with each note separated, as a modern musician might if confronted with the lack of slurs?
*If my count is right, the discant and altus are short one quaver/eighth note in that measure, while the tenor and bass have a full count matching the time signature of 3/2. Deficit editing?
