Contextual Considerations
To understand older styles of singing, we need to imagine those times before:
• large concert halls (2000 – 4000 seats) had become the norm
• the modern grand piano
• conductors
• large, loud orchestras
• the metronome
• musicians prized “literalness,” “evenness of expression,” and invariable tempo
• the “school of sensuously pretty voice-production” dominated the vocal soundscape (bel suono instead of bel canto)
• the lowered-larynx technique and vowel modification became common
• people knew anything about formants
and recognise times when:
• performance spaces were smaller
• instruments were quieter
• scores were never meant to be read literally
• composers sometimes wrote down the notes they did not want vocalists to perform instead of the ones they wanted them to sing
• performers personalised the music through all sorts of modifications to the notated text and completed the creative process the
composer had merely begun
• singing was based directly on speaking, and rhetorical principles of spoken delivery governed sung delivery
• singers performed with the larynx in the neutral position used for speaking and retained the vowels of speech
• the voice was regarded as a registral instrument and tonal contrast was the norm
• singers felt that an “addiction” to vibrato, as well as “forcing” the voice, would rob music of its emotional significance
• messa di voce, rhythmic rubato, tempo pliability, and prosodic delivery were the pillars of good style
• improvisation was the crowning glory of all training
• singers applied the devices of expression flexibly to suit the emotional content of the text.