Vibrato
There are several mechanisms in the human voice for producing vibrato. One of these occurs in the same manner as the trill, that is, by the up-and-down movement of the larynx in a manner less exaggerated than the trill. Vibrato was considered an inseparable feature of the human voice in the seventeenth century. It is very difficult, for example, for a singer to execute a messa di voce or crescendo totally without vibrato. An important clue regarding this phenomenon is the vox humana stop in Spanish and Italian organs, which was always a trembling stop, as early as the 1500s. Yet this does not necessarily mean that vibrato was constant. In the twentieth century a concept of singing as a string of “beautiful pearls” developed. This is very different from the seventeenth-century aesthetic, in which the finest singers could alter their technique and their sound in order to adapt to the musical or dramatic context.
Singers today modify their technique so that the placement, color, and timbre of a note matches exactly the note before and after it, the textual or dramatic context notwithstanding. There are certain situations in which a seventeenth-century singer would have sung without vibrato—perhaps on a dissonance, a leading tone, in a
messa di voce crescente (a glissando within a half step), or on a particularly expressive interval such as a tritone. While consistent vibrato can homogenize the sound on all notes of the singers range, it does not allow for a demonstration of harmonic intelligence and expressivity that a seventeenth-century singer would have demanded. The disposizione della voce—the ability to sing fast notes in a glottal fashion—was a highly admired and necessary skill for the professional singer. This light, almost giggling technique, audible in the more intimate performing spaces of the seventeenth century, surely contributed to a softer volume and to a faster vibrato, since coloratura speed and vibrato speed are interrelated.
Rubato
Tosi, one of the first writers to discuss tempo rubato, mentions two types. In the first, time that is lost is later regained, while in the second, that which is gained is subsequently lost. It is difficult to accomplish, yet according to Tosi, its mastery is the mark of an outstanding performer, self-assured and expressive. He does not allow for the slowing down of a section with a subsequent return to the original tempo; the bass was generally expected to maintain a firm beat. Tosi recommends the use of rubato in the varied repetition of the A section of a da capo aria and praises the virtuoso Pistocchi for his mastery of it.
Registration
For the Italians the two vocal registers, voce di testa (head voice) and voce di petto (chest voice), were to be united. The falsetto, which Tosi considered essential for beautiful singing, is apparently included with the former. For Tosi, the falsetto must be completely blended with the natural voice. In vocal music of virtually every style or era, it is essential that the singer be able to blend the two registers in the vicinity of the break—to be able to produce certain notes in either register and to move easily into the head voice as the musical line ascends. A singer who persists in using the heavier (or chest-voice) mechanics to produce his high notes will sound as though shouting—much like the “belting” of a Broadway singer. Seventeenth-century singers were encouraged to sing the high notes lightly, rather than blast them out in the chest register.
In literature on the human voice one sees a great deal of confusion even today regarding the matter of registration. In untrained voices a sharp “register break” can be easily identified by a change in tone quality and pitch as the voice moves up the scale, as for example in the contrast between the natural chest voice of the male and the head voice; there is a similar phenomenon in the female voice. Tosi says that one sometimes hears a female soprano singing entirely in chest voice.
It is now commonly accepted that the vocal mechanism itself, not the head or chest, is the origin of the register.38 The terms “chest voice” and “head voice” are at best vague and metaphoric terms, coined in an age when it was thought that “the voice left the larynx and was ‘directed’ into these regions.” Early writers—extending as far back as Hieronymus of Moravia, and including more recent Italians such as Lodovico Zacconi, Caccini, and Tosi—distinguished the registers according to perception of sound. They made little or no mention of unifying the registers, which makes the voice sound more homogenous, corrects problems of intonation, and increases the singer’s range—matters that became more and more essential with the changing styles in singing and the increased expectations of the voice. While an early seventeenth-century solo motet for soprano by Monteverdi or Luigi Rossi might have a range of an octave and a fifth (from c' to g"), contemporaries of Tosi such as Alessandro Stradella employed both higher and lower notes of the voice with some frequency. Still no mention is made of unifying the registers, although it became more and more essential in the bel canto style to blend the chest and head registers.
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