National Singing Styles

Divers Nations have divers fashions, and differ in habite, diet, studies,
speech and song. Hence it is that the English doe carroll; the French sing;
the Spaniards weepe; the Italians . . . caper with their voyces; the others
barke; but the Germanes (which I am ashamed to utter) doe howle like
wolves.
—Andreas Ornithoparcus, Musicæ active micrologus (1515),
translated by John Dowland, 1609

As to the Italians, in their recitatives they observe many things of which
ours are deprived, because they represent as much as they can the passions
and affections of the soul and spirit, as, for example, anger, furor, disdain,
rage, the frailties of the heart, and many other passions, with a violence so
strange that one would almost say that they are touched by the same emotions
they are representing in the song; whereas our French are content to
tickle the ear, and have a perpetual sweetness in their songs, which deprives
them of energy.
—Marin Mersenne, Harmonie universelle, 1636

Although one might assume that the human voice has not changed over the centuries, many elements of seventeenth-century vocal performance practice differed considerably from modern singing. There was no single method of singing seventeenth-century music; indeed, there were several distinct national schools, each of which evolved during the course of the century. The differences between French and Italian singing were widely recognized in this period, and the merits of each were debated well into the eighteenth century.1 There were also distinctive features in German, English, and Spanish singing.

Though the Italian school was the most influential outside its borders, much less source material by Italians survives than by Germans. In reading the sources, confusion inevitably arises regarding terminology and the repertories and regions to which it is applied. Writers use the same term, such as tremolo, with different meanings, which in turn may not correspond to modern usage. Though laryngology was not an established science in the seventeenth century, some writers ventured into the area of vocal physiology, frequently creating more confusion than clarification.

Examining the linkages among treatises reveals both continuity and evolution within a national style over time and crosscurrents among regions. Figure 1.1 shows this linkage for Italian and German sources. While there was considerable musical exchange between Italy and Germany, there are still characteristics that give the music and its performance style an Italian or German “accent.”

Most of the defining characteristics of national styles of singing derive from language. As Andrea von Ramm has observed,

The characteristic sound of a language can be imitated as a typical sequence of vowels and consonants, as a melody, as a phrasing. There is an established rhythmical impulse of a language and a specific area of resonance involved for this particular character of a language or a dialect. In German one can say instead of ‘Dialekt’ also ‘Mundart.’ . . . This causes a different sound, a different resonance and a different
singing voice, depending on the language sung.

Seventeenth-century writers on singing also recognized the importance of language. Christoph Bernhard discussed Mundart at some length in Von der Singe-Kunst oder Manier:

The first [aspect of a singer’s observation of the text] consists in the correct pronunciation of the words . . . such that a singer not rattle [schnarren], lisp or otherwise exhibit bad diction. On the contrary, he ought to take pains to use a graceful and irreproachable pronunciation. And to be sure in his mother tongue, he should have the most elegant Mund-Arth, so that a German would not speak Swabian, Pomeranian, etc, but rather Misnian or a speech close to it, and an Italian would not speak Bolognese, Venetian or Lombard, but Florentine or Roman. If he must sing in something other than his mother tongue, however, then he must read that language at least as fluently [fertig] and correctly as someone born to it. As far as Latin is concerned, because it is pronounced differently in different countries, the singer is free to pronounce it as is customary in the place where he is singing.

The importance of Mundart makes it essential to open the Pandora’s box of historical pronunciations, which in their specifics are beyond the scope of this essay. While Italian (a language full of dialects) has changed little in its pronunciation in the last four centuries, French and English have changed profoundly. As a literary language, German was in its infancy in the seventeenth century; it did not achieve a standardized pronunciation for the theater until the late nineteenth century. Even the same language, such as Latin, was pronounced differently in different places (and still is). Research in historical pronunciations yields many revelations in the poetry and expands the palette of sounds available to the aural imagination.

The singer’s art was closely aligned with the orator’s during the Baroque period. The clear and expressive delivery of a text involved not only proper diction and pronunciation, but also an understanding of the rhetorical structure of the text and an ability to communicate the passion and meaning of the words. How this was achieved differed according to the particular characteristics of the language and culture as well as the musical style. The swing of the pendulum between the primacy of the words and the primacy of the music that occurred during the seventeenth century is important to bear in mind as we survey singing in Italy, France, Germany, England, and Spain.

(by A Performer's Guide to Seveteenth-Century Music)