John Playford’s translation of Caccini’s preface to Le nuove musiche (1602) was not published until the 1664 edition of A Breefe Introduction. Playford’s glosses on Caccini are of considerable interest, particularly with respect to the trillo. Playford indicated that one can approximate the sound of the trillo by shaking the finger upon the throat, and also that it could be done by imitating the “breaking of a sound in the throat which men use when they lure their hawks.”
Playford’s “Directions for Singing after the Italian Manner” lasted through the twelfth edition of A Breefe Introduction (1694). It seems that the early Italian methods persisted in England until at least ca. 1680 and likely into the early1690s, considerably longer than in Italy. According to Ian Spink, the trillo had become obsolete in England by 1697.
During the Restoration there was a resurgence of interest in Italian music. The king had his own group of Italian musicians, and castratos and other Italian performers arrived bringing the music of Giacomo Carissimi and Alessandro Stradella, among others, to the awareness of the English. The existence of Pietro Reggio’s treatise The Art of Singing (1678) further suggests that in the last quarter of the century, the English used a fundamentally Italian singing technique, but it would have accommodated the English language and the mixed musical style of the period.
Pronunciation of English changed considerably during the seventeenth century: Restoration English, for example, is even further removed from modern “BBC” English than seventeenth-century French is from its modern counterpart. There was significant interest in England in establishing a standardized orthography during this period, and as a result there are some very useful sources for historical pronunciation. Among the most detailed is Christopher Cooper’s The English Teacher or the Discovery of the Art of Teaching and Learning the English Tongue (1687). Using Restoration pronunciation changes the vowel sonorities significantly from modern English and restores many rhymes that are now considered “eye rhymes.” In comparison to Italian, seventeenth-century English was regarded as problematic for setting to music. Playford wrote:
The Author hereof [i.e., Caccini] having set most of his Examples and Graces to Italian words, it cannot be denyed, but the Italian language is more smooth and better vowell’d than the English by which it has the advantage in Musick, yet of late years our language is much refined, and so is our Musick to a more smooth and delightful way and manner of singing after this new method by Trills, Grups and Exclamations, and have been wed to our English Ayres, above this 40 years and Taught here in England; by our late Eminent Professors of Musick, Mr. Nicholas Laneare, Mr. Henry Lawes, Dr. Wilson and Dr. Coleman, and Mr. Walter Porter, who 30 years since published in Print Ayres of 3, 4, and 5 Voyces, with the Trills and other Graces to the same. And such as desire to be Taught to sing after this way, need not to seek after Italian or French masters, for our own Nation was never better furnished with able and skilful Artists in Musick, then it is at this time, though few of them have the Encouragement they deserve, nor must Musick expect it as yet, when all other Arts and Sciences are at so low an Ebb.Playford is referring to a quality of smoothness in singing the text, reflecting the Italianate “singing on the vowel.” Depending on the style in a late seventeenthcentury English piece, I sometimes slant my text delivery to include aspects of both the Italian and French schools.
Vibrato was a vocal ornament in English singing as it was elsewhere in Europe.
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