National Singing Styles - Italy, ca. 1600–1680 (III)

In the absence of a mid-century Italian source on singing as comprehensive as Tosi’s Opinioni of 1723, the music itself can provide clues to the evolution of vocal technique. In order to accommodate the wider ranges, singers likely used more than one vocal register. Falsetto and head voice would have been necessary to achieve the upper extension of the range. For female singers, head voice alone may have sufficed, though there is nothing from a laryngeal point of view to have precluded the use of falsetto at any point in the range.41 Tosi is the first source to discuss this issue, though it is unclear whether his equation of voce di testa with falsetto extends to all voice types.42 We can only surmise how smoothly blended was the transition between registers before the end of the seventeenth century. It was certainly of the utmost importance to Tosi, who preferred head voice for executing passaggi and other ornaments. A blended register transition still did not mean that the Italians preferred a unified color to the voice; composers exploited the contrasts between the top and bottom. Like pop singers today, Italian Baroque singers were adept at switching between different registers, laying the foundation for the cantar di sbalzo techniques so essential
for singers in the eighteenth century.



The predominance of speech mode that characterized the stile rappresentativo began to reach its limitations with the need for more sound and the development of a more lyrical aria style; it continued, of course, as the technique for recitative. Recitative style evolved into a more rapid, parlando character, though vestiges of the older stile rappresentativo can be heard in Antonio Cesti’s Orontea (1656), for example, alongside the newer arioso and parlando styles. Throat articulation also continued into the eighteenth century. There is no reason to think that the flexible airstream so characteristic of Italian Baroque vocal technique would have changed, either, as the qualitative aspect of the words did not lose its importance altogether. Singers added
to these resources a more cantabile style of singing, capable of a wide variety of colors and dramatic characterizations. If their breath technique and laryngeal position were not fundamentally changed in order to execute the glottal action of throat articulation and to project the qualitative aspect of the Italian language, then this style of singing would have involved increased use of subtle adjustments of the vocal tract itself to achieve greater intensity of sound and more variety of sound qualities.

This cantabile style continued to allow singers extremely fine pitch control. Any increase in sonority would not have been so great as to lead to pitch distortion or to constant pitch-fluctuation vibrato. While singers then and now might agree that it is important to sing in tune, the definition of what is “in tune” has changed considerably.

For those of us raised in a predominantly equal-tempered sound world, unequal temperaments can be a revelation. Modern computer technology and tuning boxes now make it possible to access exactly all sorts of different tuning systems with precision. Of chief importance for singers is not only developing the ear to match the pitches of the continuo and obbligato instruments, but also recognizing the implications of accurate pitch and temperament for how one sings and how one responds to the music. Temperament itself has expressive dimensions.

Chromaticism was also an important expressive device, used by many Italian composers. In the seventeenth century, the major and minor semitone, such as D♯ and E♭, were distinctly different pitches, as Maugars indicates in describing the singing of Leonora Baroni: “When she passes from one note to another she sometimes makes you feel the divisions between the enharmonic and the chromatic modes with such artistry that there is no one who is not greatly pleased by this beautiful and difficult method of singing.”

The distinction between the major and minor semitone has strong implications for the amplitude of pitch-fluctuation vibrato. In order to preserve the distinction between the major and minor semitone, the total amplitude of pitch fluctuation could not have exceeded a quartertone—substantially smaller than what we hear today. In comparison to modern operatic singing, this involves a completely different vocal aesthetic, a different technique, and a different way of conceiving of vocal sound altogether. One cannot sing this repertory successfully using a technique that requires suppression of vibrato in the vocal tract to “straighten” the sound, which may cause tension and fatigue. In order to maintain pitch control, one must use much less air pressure than in modern operatic singing. Any “straightening” of the sound must be done at the point of imaging the sound before one sings, not after it has been initiated.

As opera developed, a singer’s skill in acting became increasingly important. Maugars observed that Italian singers “are almost all actors by nature.” The anonymous author of the acting treatise Il corago (ca. 1630) reminds us that “above all, to be a good singing actor, one must also be a good speaking actor.”

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