Principal Seventeenth-Century English and French Singing Treatises

Bénigne de Bacilly’s Remarques curieuses sur l’art de bien chanter (1668) provides a window on singing and vocal pedagogy in seventeenth-century France. Though the author’s expressed main purpose was to deal with the esoterica of applying quantitative rhythm to French poetry, over half the book is devoted to general principles of good singing.

John Playford’s An Introduction to the Skill of Musick contains, in editions of 1664 and later, a “Brief Discourse of the Italian Manner of Singing,” much of it lifted from Giulio Caccini’s Le nuove musiche (1602). Playford’s handbook went through nineteen editions, many thoroughly revised, spanning the years 1654 to 1730, so we may surmise that Caccini’s advice on singing — attributed by Playford to “an English Gentleman who had lived long in Italy” — remained pertinent as the decades and the editions passed.

Pier Francesco Tosi’s Opinioni de’ cantori (1723) distilled a lifetime of experience as a successful professional singer and teacher. It was translated into several languages; the English translation, John Galliard’s Observations on the Florid Song (1743), adds explanatory annotations and examples. Though Galliard was German, both his translation and his footnotes are in clearer English than Playford’s.