Importance of Text

Good singing is also an artistic pursuit. The technical skills of the singer need to be brought to bear on the expression of the text (“the soul of the vocal art”) in ways that complement and enhance the mere notes on the page.

Vocal and choral music in the seventeenth century are text centered. This may seem obvious, but it bears repeating. The ensemble director should understand the literal meaning of every word of text in the program, as well as any metaphoric or symbolic baggage carried by the text. The singers should learn the meaning of every word they are singing from the very start. The director should know the correct pronunciation of every word, so that rehearsal time is not wasted. And he or she should provide the audience with both the original text and the translation in parallel.

Beyond good pronunciation, all subtleties of expressive singing—dynamic contrast, phrasing, variety of articulation, added embellishment—should be rooted in the performers’ comprehension of the text. Thomas Morley grumbled that “Most of our churchmen, so they can cry louder in the choir than their fellows, care for no more; whereas by the contrary they ought to study how to vowel and sing clean, expressing their words with devotion and passion.”


Marin Mersenne agreed:

One of the great perfections of song consists of good pronunciation of the words and rendering them so distinctly that the auditors do not lose a single syllable . . . The voice should be softened or reinforced on certain syllables to express the passions of the subject.

Bacilly, Playford, and Dowland, translating Ornithoparcus, all make similar statements, telling us explicitly that the text was paramount in the seventeenth century and implicitly that performers needed frequent reminders of this basic truth.

Historical Pronunciations

There have been some recent investigations into historical national pronunciations. There are also recordings—the Hilliard Ensemble’s recording of Thomas Tallis’s Lamentations of Jeremiah, for example, or Les Arts Florissants’ recording of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Le reniement de St. Pierre — that provide aural models. Indeed, this is an area of performance-practice research that is far better communicated by sound media than on the printed page. Historical pronunciations can make startling differences in vowel sound and line articulation. They may help us achieve a closer approximation to the sounds the composer expected to hear—if we can correctly calculate regional variants, variants over time, and the wildcard effects of, say, a French choirmaster’s having studied in Italy. While historical pronunciations can add distinction to a performance, they should have a lower priority in your budgeting of rehearsal time than well-matched vowels and clear, precise consonants.