National Singing Styles - France (I)

We are fortunate in having several detailed sources on French singing from the seventeenth century, the most important of which are Bénigne de Bacilly’s Remarques curieuses sur l’art de bien chanter (1668) and Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle (1636). French singing did not undergo the radical changes seen in the Italian school at the turn of the seventeenth century, though the French were certainly aware of developments in Italy. Mersenne, for example, mentions Caccini, who performed at court in 1604/1605. There were notable champions of the Italian style of singing in France, as demonstrated by various efforts (ultimately unsuccessful) to establish Italian opera there. One of Louis XIII’s favorite singers, Pierre de Nyert, the teacher of Bacilly and Michel Lambert, studied briefly in Rome, and a handful of castratos sang at the court of Louis XIV prior to 1700.50 Although Italianisms became increasingly present in French music toward the end of the century, in the main the style and technique of French singers differed considerably from those of their Italian counterparts.

Early seventeenth-century French singing retained many aspects of sixteenthcentury technique, particularly with respect to breathing. I have described the French approach to breathing as a “steady-state” system, where air pressure, speed, and volume remain virtually constant. Such a system is perfectly suited to the quantitative nature of the seventeenth-century French language and to the chanson mesurée and air de cour. Throat articulation, known in France as disposition de la gorge or simply disposition, was also used in the elaborate doubles, ornamented second verses of airs, as well as for agréments.


Airs de cour were published in great numbers throughout the century and served as the model for the operatic airs of Jean-Baptiste Lully. They were often performed in the salons of the précieux, for an elite audience as preoccupied with the refinement of language as with dress and manners. Singers had to be as concerned with pronunciation as with any other aspect of their art. The French took the concept of Mundart very seriously.

Pronunciation meant more to the French than just the accurate delivery of the sounds of speech. It involved (1) proper execution of the sounds of the language without foreign accent; (2) clear delivery of those sounds so that the words could be understood in a room of any size; (3) the proper observance of syllabic quantity; and (4) inflection of the words in a way that facilitated perception of both their meaning and their underlying passion. French actors were highly skilled in these aspects of pronunciation. We know that Lully developed his style of recitative in part by hearing the declamation of the actress Marie La Champmeslé. Singing required a more heightened and exaggerated declamation than speech, one that conveyed both the character of the words and the passion they expressed. Perhaps it is the spirit of Cartesian rationalism that explains why French writers on singing—Mersenne and Bacilly in particular—codified and preserved the art of French singing diction in detail.

Any thorough investigation of French singing diction must confront the differences between the seventeenth-century and modern versions of the language, as well as the differences between the quantitative character of French at this time and other qualitative European languages. Because of its defining importance to French vocal style and technique, one can make a strong argument for using historical pronunciation in performances of seventeenth-century French vocal music. The details of pronunciation with respect to both vowels and consonants are available in the primary sources. Bacilly also discusses syllabic quantity in great detail. The most striking difference between seventeenth-century court pronunciation and modern French in terms of vowel sounds is the -oi vowel, which was pronounced oé or oué until the Revolution.

Even before the publication of René Descartes’s Passions de l’âme (1649), Mersenne (Descartes’s schoolmate and correspondent) had observed, “each passion and affection has its proper accent.” Mersenne outlines three primary passions, each with varying degrees of intensity: anger, joy, and sadness. Anger, for example, is best conveyed by abruptly cutting off end syllables of words and by reinforcing final notes.

The projection of a particular passion was chiefly achieved by the degree of emphasis given to the consonants—either through duration or forcefulness of articulation. Bacilly outlines a technique of prolonging or suspending consonants, later called “consonant doubling” by Jean-Antoine Bérard. The Italians, by comparison, centered their expression in the vowels, which could bloom and color with the qualitative inflection of the words.56 If we regard Italian singing as “singing on the vowel,” then we can view French singing as “singing on the consonant.”

Bacilly devotes a chapter to the technique of consonant inflection to express the passion of the words. Consonants that are to be prolonged can be sung (i.e., given pitch, in the case of voiced consonants) and sustained (for voiced consonants and fricatives) longer or shorter and articulated harder or softer, depending on the passion being expressed. The force of the consonant articulation would not alter the dynamic level of the subsequent vowel(s), which was governed by the steady-state airstream onto which the consonants were placed. The prolongation of the consonants would affect, however, both the duration of the subsequent vowel(s) and the relationship of the vowels and consonants with respect to the rhythm. Prolonged consonants can bleed over into the beat, rather than coming slightly ahead of the beat as is normally done in singing Italian. This technique, which is similar to some styles of pop singing today, should not be confused with the plosive, aspirated consonants associated with some schools of modern choral diction or with the German approach to consonants discussed below.

Because consonants contain much greater expressive information in the French school, the interaction between singer and accompanist(s) is different. The accompanist must listen in a different way to coordinate with the consonants—both in time and character—more than with the vowels. The resulting articulation matches quite well with the style brisé of plucked instruments, which is perhaps why Bacilly preferred the theorbo for accompanying the voice.

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