The Bel Canto Singing Style (III)

The Appoggiatura

Tosi devotes an entire chapter to the appoggiatura and recommends practicing this ornament in scalar passages, with an appoggiatura on each step of the scale. Agricola, strongly favoring on-beat execution of the appoggiatura, is careful to stress that the location of the syllable or word of the text underlay should occur on the appoggiatura itself rather than on the main note under which it is habitually written: “when a syllable falls on a main note, which itself is notated with an appoggiatura or any other ornament, then it [the syllable] must be pronounced on the appoggiatura.” Agricola’s rule referring to the on-beat performance of the appoggiatura must be understood in the context of earlier Baroque practice, in which the phrase anticipatione della syllaba referred to a situation in which an appoggiatura or a onenote grace similar to it actually preceded the beat and bore the syllable.

The Trill

For Tosi the “perfect” trill is eguale (lit., equal), battuto (lit., beaten), granito (lit., distinct), facile (lit., flexible), and moderamente veloce (lit., moderately quick). Some of these terms have already been encountered in relation to divisions. Eguale refers to the volume level of the two notes in relation to each other. When the two notes of the trill are not sounded equally, the resultant defective trill is often described as “lame.”

Battuto refers to a specific vocal technique (essential to the trill) that involves the up-and-down movement of the larynx—that “light motion of the throat” that occurs simultaneously with the “sustaining of the breath in executing the trill. When this “beating” movement of the larynx is not present or cannot be maintained, the trill of two notes collapses into a smaller interval or makes a bleating sound on one note alone; conversely, the larger the interval of the trill, the bigger the movement must be. Various Italian writers, including Tosi, use either or both of the terms caprino or cavallino to describe this sort of trill, in which the intended interval (major or minor second) cannot be maintained and which collapses unintentionally into a single pitch (or an interval smaller than a half step).

When the interval of the trill is smaller than a half step, or when the two tones of which it consists are beaten with unequal speed and strength, or quiveringly, the trill sounds like the bleating of a goat. The precise place for production of a good trill is at the opening of the head of the windpipe (larynx). The movement can be felt from the outside when the fingers are placed there. If no movement or beating is felt, this is a sure indication that one is bleating out the trill only by means of the vibration of air on the palate. An insufficiently open trill might also yield the comic effect with which the following Venetian poem described the trill of Giuseppe Pistocchi, the famous castrato and voice teacher:

Pistocco col fa un trill’ se puto equagliare
A quell rumor che’ é solito de fare
Quande se scossa un gran sacco di nose
(What sound did the trill of the great Pistocco make?

The sound of a sack of nuts when given a shake.)
                    Translation by Lawrence Rosenwald

The eight types of trills that Tosi enumerates are the trillo maggiore,31 (trill of a whole step; Example. 2.2a); the trillo minore (trill of a half step; Example. 2.2b); the mezzotrillo (short and fast trill; Example. 2.2c); the trillo cresciuto and the trillo calato (trilled slow glissandi—the first ascending and the second descending); the trillo lento (slow trill); the trillo raddoppiato32 (which involves inserting a few auxiliary tones in the middle of a longer trill; Examples. 2.2d and 2.2e); and the trillo mordente (a very short and fast trill that is effective in divisions and after an appoggiatura; Example. 2.2f).33 Of these, only the trillo cresciuto, the trillo calato, and the trillo lento were obsolete in Tosi’s time; the rest were prominent in current performance practice. Also popular was the chain of trills, which places a trill on each note of a scale passages (Example 2.3).