Vocalist.org archive


From:  Linda Fox <linda@f...>
Linda Fox <linda@f...>
Date:  Sat Apr 21, 2001  8:42 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Mozart in falsetto/ how styles change (was: grumpy mozartia...


Greypins@a... wrote:
>
> In a message dated 4/20/2001 12:45:47 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
> linda@f... writes:
>
> <<
> There are plenty of male baroque singers who use a straightER tone.>>
>
> i bet for some of them, that's all they are capable of.

I think that's a little unkind. Nobody is capable of the full range of
possibilities in the human voice, not without distorting their
accustomed technique. With many Verdi singers I might use the same
expression as you just did.
>

<snip>

> But we do have some other evidence. We have the instruments they would
> have been singing with. We have the buildings they would originally have
> performed in. And we certainly have a lot of writing from the period on
> which a lot of the research has been based. That's what an educated
> guess is. It's not the same as a shot in the dark. And those musicians
> who have researched have so often gone for voices which were naturally
> smaller and straighter (that _doesn't_ mean they're not capable of
> tremendous subtlety) when they felt the circumstances called for it.
> They had plenty of opportunity to use modern "over-vibrant" voices had
> they so chosen.>>
>
> that's not enough if scholars disagree on the use of vibrato based on
> the same material. i'd call it an educated shot in the dark.

I'm not really aware of any scholarship which suggests that vibrato
should be ever-present and almost unvarying from the moment the sound
starts, as is common in many operatic singers. I think there's enough
evidence to suggest it was considered as an _expressive_ device, which I
would think means anything from "mostly suppressed and only brought out
on birthdays" to "subject to control in the same way as dynamics, pitch
and tone-colour are"

I'm sure there were many different shades of this in operation at the
same time. I don't think you can ever be certain you are "right". What
you can more safely say, is that no directors who have based their
practices on research can be certainly pronounced "wrong" - which is
what Isabelle was suggesting.

cheers

Linda


  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
11286 Historical use of vibrato in baroque music Isabelle Bracamonte   Sun  4/22/2001   2 KB

emusic.com