H E D W . J . N E R S O N

EARLY HISTORY OF SING ING

wn v Cro 8 o .

MODERN MUSICAL DRIFT

Crown 8vo .

PRELUDES AND STUDIES

I amo .

THE STORY OF MUSIC

Crown 8vo .

LONGMANS , GREEN CO NEW YORK EARLY HIS T O RY O F S IN G IN G

B Y

W HEN DERSON . J.

AUTHOR OF

” ‘ THE STORY or MU IC M ODERN MU ICAL D f ETC S , S w , .

R E E A D L O N G M A N S , G N N C O .

F URT H VENUE T H TREE T N E\V YO R K O A 30 S , 3 9 P A T E R N O S T E R R O W L O N O N , D B O MB Y T A ND MA D RA S A , C A LC UT , A

“ 51 9 2 1

To J JBI . f rank EBamrozcb D IRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE OF MUSICAL ART NEW YORK CITY

PREFACE

TH E aim of thi s book should be ea sily deduced to from its title . The author has endeavored trace the development of the modern a rt of S ing ing from the beginning of the Christian era to the time of Aless andro Scarlatti . He has treated o f vocal fo rms only to the extent requisite to make clear the character of the technic and the style of each period . His main object has been to Show what singers were expected to do and as far as possible how they prepared themselves for the delivery of the music placed before them . The interesting changes brought into vocal art by the advent of opera and la ter by the action of public taste on the new form of amusement are described and a general survey O f early ideals of lyric interpretation and their modifications by the alterations in the demands of audiences is made . Special attention has been given to vocal technic and teaching in the last yea rs of the six teenth and all of the seventeenth centuries . In treating of this subject in Cha pters VIII and IX the author has leaned heavily on the scholarly a nd G admirable work of Hugo oldschmidt, Die Italienische G esa ngsmethode des XVII Jahr h nd r u e ts . The numerous other authorities consulted in the preparation of this volume a re mentioned from time to time in the text . The materials for this work have been accumulated by a Slow process of accretion during fifteen years of study of this subject . The author is not acquainted with any other book In which they are thus as a sembled , and therefore cherishes the hope th t

this history ~ will prove welcome to singers ,

S . teachers of inging, students and music lovers CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAP TER

THE DA F THE I . WN O ART

TE I F T E II . VOCAL CHN C O H EARLY HANTE RS 1 C . 9

THE CHOLA ANTOR M III . S C U 3 1

V THE TROUB A OURS D E S T ME I . CAN A ND N D ,

SURAL MUSIC

V VOCA L TEA CHERS AND E ULAR N G . S C SO

V PPROA CH OF THE M ONO IC STYLE I . A D

VII B IRTH OP DRAMATIC RECITATI E . V

V HAT THE EARLY MA STERS TA U T III . W G H

IX THE ORNAMENTS AND PA S SAG E S .

MALE SO RANI A ND THER IRT O SI X . P O V U

XI THE E E N T E E N T H C E N T U R Y ITA LIAN . S V

OPERA

I D ISTRIB UTION OF VOICE S IN OPE RA XI .

X EARLY EA LS OF SING ING III . ID INDEX

EA RLY H ISTO RY O F SING ING

CHAPTER I

TH E DA W N OF T H E ART

TH E modern art of S inging began with the establishment of schools for the study of the correct manner O f delivering the liturgical chants of the Roman Ca tholic church . These chants were derived from still Older music used in the ceremonials of Jewish congregations or in the worship of the gods of Egypt and . of Greece . a Secular song also had a me surable , but compara tivel y small , influence in the formative period of a vocal art , for some of the e rly fathers found it necessary to warn their followers against the

. St. seductions of this style Clement , the second “

. : successor of St Peter , wrote It must not be possible to confound us with the S ingers and buf foons who for a piece of bread or a cup of W ine come to divert people who are feasting . Before the foundation of Christianity the a n c i ents sang in the Temple , in the theatre, and 2

In the home ; but we do not know whether they possessed anything which we would call “ ” method . Nor does this greatly signify to us . Our own art is the child of the Catholic Church and its history must be tra ced from the moment S when that church became a ingle organization, its functions centralized under the dominion of mus1c a l s one monarch , and its tyle informed by fi a well de ned purpose . Until that time this music wa s uncertain in its progress , which was distracted by the operation of numerous agencies, not only musical , but also

religious and political . It is not essential to our purpose that we Should rehearse in detail the various steps in the march O f church music from the hour when Christ and the apostles sang at the Last Supper the “ Great Hallel of the Jewish n service . To undertake such a study would i volve us in endless difficulties without bringing f su ficiently remunerative results . We should find ourselves confronted with a mass of fragmentary O f information , much it leading to no conclusions . Basic facts of vital import would be too often u missing . The most skilful scr tiny of scientific research has ser ved on ly to demonstrate that n e they are lost beyo d recovery . Our best cours , o f therefore, will be to note some the most sig THE DAWN OF THE ART 3

nific ant facts nea ring on the earliest history of S w modern vocal art, and to ho briefly how the various influences which gathered about its cradle made their presence felt .

We must, then , recollect that Christianity was born in Judea , where the ceremonials of Moses reigned in the temples devoted to the worship o f Jehovah . The country , however, was under O f R the dominion ome , and its borders were incessantly crossed by the children of that in domitable empire . At the same time the wily and G restless reeks , both those of the motherland and those of the even more sophisticated , blend of in the Alexandria, were not unknown land o f

Benj amin and Manasseh . Furthermore we must , not forget that the excursion of the religion into the world began early . It was at Antioch in Syria a little more than forty years after the birth O f the Saviour that his disciples were first Wa s called Christians , and it in this city that a brilliant and powerful branch of the Catholic u church speedily grew p . We need hardly be r to o eminded , that in the middle of the first cen t tury St . Paul was writing epis les to churches G in reece itself , and we have what many his to ria ns regard as satisfying evidence that St. d r n R e Peter visite the Ch istia s in om . 4 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

It will be understood readily that the ea rly influences brought to bear on Christian church b w a nd G music were chiefly He re reek , and that out of the materials of these two kinds O f song

the first chants O fthe church were made . Of this formative period we can attempt hardly an o ut T O line . LLS inner history is too bscure and com e dific ation plicated for our , even could we be certain that we are in possession of all the fa c tst] We may with profit turn as ide for a moment to glance at the moment of solidification of the

elements . To do this we must look for an instant R a h at the movement of the om n world . H e story of music has habitually been told as if it had developed without relation to general history o r

in fluence by it . But no one can be blind to the tremendous significance of the events which cul A D 2 In R mina ted . . 3 4 the unification of the oman “ e mpire under Constantine . That these events had a bearing on modern music cannot be ga m b e said , but in a work such as this they cannot deta il recounted in /j We have already intimated that no general system of liturgical chant could R exist while the oman empire , and consequently R n the oman church , were divided into so ma y r pa ts . Nor was the church itself an established institution until Constantine had crushed his great

6 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING introduction of characteristics entirely dissociated

from the Hebrew . Those who wish to trace the entire history of this movement of Christianity in its absorbing details Should refer to the cele ’ “ b ra ted fifteenth chapter of Gibbon s Decline and R n ” Fall of the oma Empire, where the story is told with graphic brilliancy and the philo sophy O f

the events discussed with penetrating . insight . W e may now take a swi ft survey O f the early church music with the purpo se of determining

its nature and the tendencies of its progress . From the very beginning vocal music was en gaged in its life - long effort to r each a perfectly artistic equipoise of the two fundamental ele

ments , the literary and the musical . The oldest form of modern art musIc IS the chant and in mOvement that form the rhythm , accent and of

the music are those of the text . This principle followed vocal music into the service of the Chris f o rf tian church , and the early liturgy included p J ons chanted in a style which possessed melodic

sequences of tones , but which had no rhythm , no r measure, and naturally no harmonic basis . S n But we hall see that even at the outset , whe the fathers of the church had no thought of vocal u or musical art , the art principle was present, n b flo ridit recognized y them . The element of y, THE DAWN OF THE ART 7 which passed into the service % of the church even ’ as early as St . Paul s time , was the agent of musical O f freedom . Through it independence movement eventually found its way into the music O f the O f church , for soon after the singing several notes to a syllable became permissible the purely musical expr essiveness and decorative quality of that style became patent to the fathers . From the time when they found that the beauty o f the chant could be heightened in this way we may date all the experiments in real composition .

One feature of the Byzantine chant , adopted from the chants of Syria and Persia , and traced b e also to the religious song of the Hebrews , comes significant here . In the intoning of certain texts to fixed chants it was the custo m to retain carefully the accented parts of the melodies by joining them to S ingle syllables . When it was impossible to sing the text to the melody without d o ubling notes the repetitions were always made on the unaccented portions . Here we discern the elementary form of the syllabic chant , the form which endeavors to give — o r two — one note not more than to each syllable . This fo rm may be called the recitative O f church m music . It is the for in which the S imple com munic a tions of the liturgy are set forth . In its 8 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

the the earliest period , as in its latest, music of church reserved its most decorative style for the expression of the higher religious emotions ; and in the infancy of the art we find the congregation S inging florid phrases in the Utterance of the responses which formed essential parts O f the antiphonal service . But the progress of congregational S inging did not end here . About the end of the third century it assumed in the church of Persia an impo rtance B a rde sa nes quite significant . , a leader of the l o heretic sect of gnostics , brought a new ife int the services of his people by composing psalms and hymns in which the congregation had a much larger share than it formerly had when its singing was confined to the responses . The Catho lics found it necessary to confront this movement and did so by adopting the new method , which thus Spread from Persia into Antioch and thence to the entire Orient . The plan was to divide the congregation into

- O f two demi choruses , one of men, the other a women and children, e ch delivering a verse of the psalm . After these two deliveries , one by a S re fra in e ch choir, both united in inging the . C Sometimes this refrain was o ne of the ancient new C responses , always brief ; sometimes hants , THE DA WN OF THE ART 9

s . somewhat longer , were compo ed The new style “ ” a nti h onia odu was called p , and was intr ced ~ ' “ R PO e D a m a sius into ome under p , who was pon

f 66 8 a . ti f from 3 to 3 4 , into Mil n by St Ambrose

86 . in or about 3 , and at Constantinople by St

John Chrysostom in 390. This antiphonal S ing ing was certainly as old as the Psalms , and prob ably was known when Miriam sang her song of i tr umph . At any rate it belonged to the Jewish church and came thence into these early Christian ceremonials . We have now before us the two basic elements O f modern vocal art , the plain chant and the he florid . In the earliest liturgies t latter is found only in the portions allotted to the people , while the syllabic style appears to have been used Wholly

for the utterances of the priests . In this fact there is a significance which in my opinion has f r not received su ficient conside ation . The singing of responses more or less florid by the congrega

tion , when taken in connection with the texts

used for these responses , indicates a tendency,

whether conscious or unconscious , to move to a O f ward purely musical expression emotion .

The early church had two principal liturgies . That of Alexandria and adjoining Egypt was

arranged by St . Mark ; that of Jerusalem by I O EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

. n . St James , the second bishop of the Judea city In both O f these liturgies the Greek exclamation “ ” Kyrie eleison appears as a congregational In response . We find also ( at least the liturgy “ O f the H w St James ) ebre interjection, Alle h R luia , whic St . John in his evelation heard s even the celestial choir Singing . We find thi triumphant praise of th e Lord in these eastern

liturgies at the close O f the Cherubic hymn . Naturally we have no record of the music which these oriental congregations employed in m their alleluias and kyries . But fro historical developments of a little later date we were justified in the inference that from the very beginning the restrictions of the rigidly syllab lic chant did not apply to the jubilati ons or the supplica tions of the w people , who were al ays accorded a wider lati tude of musical utterance until the m elOdic ffi elaborations became too di cult for them . Then S the inging of the responses , as well as other rv wa s parts of the se ice , confided to the choir, but the extended manner of treating the syllables

handed down from the earliest times was retained .

“ ' The florid kyrie, amen and alleluia began with th e responses of the congregation .

. A e G a stoué the M med e , professor of chant in THE DAWN OF THE ART

S ha s chola Cantorum of Paris , put forth the latest and most convincing examination of the u early church music , and his concl sions embrace the important determination that some chants have come down to us in the forms known in ’ “ ’ ” G L A rt G é regory s time . In his r gorien he has ably discussed this ma tter . To set forth R briefly his points , the books of the oman chant which have come down to us Show a distinct t unity of charac er . We have not many manu scripts , but the fidelity with which they were reproduced from the second half of the eighth to the ninth century assures us that we possess the chants of the Gregorian antiphonary in the form which they had acquired a t that period . Can we go back further - perhap s to Gregory ? himself Most proba bly ; for beside the unity of a tradition, which is demonstrated, we h ve a criterion in the chants themselves . Internal criticism reveals differences of style in certain chants . We have the knowledge that in the second half of the seventh century some chants were added to the primitive Gregorian

. H repertory ence , when we find chants revealing a style of a period anterior to these , we are justi fied in believing that they were preserved in their 1 2 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

authentic form , which the Schola Cantorum guarded and of which that school attributed the G editorship to its founder regory . In his masterly articles on the chant in the ' Enc yc lope die de la Musique et Dictionnaire du ” Conservatoire the same author, writing at a later date , defines more clearly his conviction that we have in our possession not only chants of the so - G a called regori n, but even some of the earlier, s period , the Ambrosian, preserved with jealou

care by the diocese of Milan . He says : “ a The character of the Ambrosian melodies , p ro a c hin G R p g the allican and oman styles , is

nevertheless wholly individual . The matter can be summed up briefly thus : in comparison with the Gregorian Chant the simple melodies a r e very sim Th ple and the ornate ones very ornate . e S imple chants have in general much charm : the luxuriant the vocalises , on the other hand , do not present artistic distinction which the Roman melodies

ordinarily Show . The study of the Ambrosian repertory is of puissant interest when one com i R ff t . pares with the oman In. e ect the liturgy of Milan has preserved a sufficiently great num ber of pieces which one finds again in the Gre gorian ritual , pieces going back to the formation o f these repertoires . The Milanese chant gives

1 4 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

the mass ; the others, which are variations of

first, are for minor festivals . These forms were already traditional throughout the Latin church h a oué . G st in the tent century, and M believes / that they b elonged originally tot the antiphonary a n of Amb rose . At y rate it seems safe to say that they belong to the most ancient relics of Gregorian chant and that they preserve early ae s formul employed in congregational re ponses .

e 10 8011.

i SOD .

Ky - ri - e

Men had groped after a vocal expression of emotion long before the birth of the Christian church and it is not astonishing that the influence of older manners of praise and jubilation affected

the infant song of a new worship . Over two centuries before the Christian era Demetrius Pha lerius had noted that the Egyptian priests THE DA WN OF THE ART 1 5

sang on the vowels in honor of their gods . A little later Nic homa c hus is telling us that the seven planets produce each a certa in sound and that the priests in glorifying their divinity in voked him with inarticulate tones and without ro i consonants . One purpose of this was to p p tia te the genii who inhabited the stars of our system . The singing of the proper vowel set in vibration the necessary sympathetic waves . Engel in his “ Music of the Most Ancient ” Nations pictures an Assyrian sculpture repre S enting vocal and instrumental musicians wel “ n c oming a returning co queror . One of the ” “ female singers , he notes , is holding her hand to her throat in the same manner as the women of Syria , Arabia and Persia are in the habit of doing at the present day, when producing on festive occasions those peculiarly shrill sounds of rejoicing which have been repeatedly noticed a by Oriental travellers . Dr . Cl rke ( Travels in

r . L 1 8 10 Various Count ies , E . D Clark , ondon, ) ‘ says , They are caused by trilling the tongue against the roof of the mouth without the utter o Yet ance of any distinct w rds . this singular mode of expressing joy is all that constitutes the alleluia of the ancients . When Lord Hutchinson e a first ent red Cairo fter the capture of the city, 1 6 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

he was met by a number o f women who greeted him with alleluias ; they accompanied him through e m s the streets , clapping th ir hands and aking thi

extraordinary noi se in a loud and shrill tone . It seems to be a constant reiteration of the same ’ syllable uttered with the utmost rapidity . It is unnecessary to our purpose tha t we should trace the successive steps in the early expansion o f the florid element in the musical ritual of the c hurch . We Shall see later that florid singing became of large importance an d that the ancient practice of carolling on vowels reissued in the m for of prolonged cadences on alleluias , amens ,

kyries and other words , and furthermore that

elaborate vocalizations of single vowels , such as “ ” A a the in alleluia or amen, had ssumed per The manent positions in the service . attitude of the church toward such song is formulated in

some word s of St . Augustine written in regard “ to the jubili , one of the types of wordless praise . He says “ e He who jubilates does not utt r any words , b ut a joyous sound without words : for it is the S n w pirit lost in joy, expressi g it ith all its power, ” b ut not arriving at a definition of its sense . We ma y now make a brief enumeration of the THE DAWN OF THE ART 1 7

steps which led to the clearer definition of the

modern art of S inging . Early in the fourth century Pope Sylvester

the Council of Laodicea forbade congregational singing and placed the musical serv ice in the hands

of the trained choir . Naturally we know practically nothing about ’ the method of Pope Sylvester s singing school , though we see one of its fruits In the transfer i of the service to the choir . But it s safe to con c lude that the school was instituted for the study

of the chants themselves , and not for that of

vocal technic . As we shall see later, the business of committing the chants to memory was one of the most arduous and prolonged tasks of the

church singer of these ancient days . But it is

as certain as anything can be that, since unity

in delivery had to be attained , the schools speedily discovered that they must impart the rudiments of a style . And as soon as this was recognized , the subject of uniform phrasing h a d to be taken up , and this inevitably led the instructors directly to the consideration of management of the breath . And so from the endeavor to form a style O f delivery for the church cha nt must have come the 1 8 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING discovery of the fundamental elements of vocal technic .

Chant is a smooth and flowing kind of melody.

Hence its singing requires a perfect legato , and it is beyond question that the rule recently re pea ted with so much emphasis by the Solesmes sta c fathers , that there must be no approach to r cato in the delive y, was formulated in the earliest days of vocal study . When the instructors in the school of Sylvester had recognized the vital nec es sit y of a pure legato , they must have found them selves confronted with the difficulty O f uniting this with a clear enunciation , without which a church service would become a piece O f empty sound . r a r o rrec t Thus then , the sea ch after style of chant singing carried the early singers directly to the fountains of vocal art . All that remained to be added was a moderate amount of facility in the florid passages , a facility which was destined to develop into unexpected and amaz ing brilliancy. CHAPTER II

VOCA L TEC H N I C OF T H E EA RLY CH A N T ERS

IN C E n S , whe we view them from the distance O f the present , the various threads of the early story of singing seem inextricably tangled , a strictly chronological account of the progress of f a . the art is formid bly di ficult , i f not impossible Furthermore we are not in possession of suffi cient information to enable us to trace conclu sively the details O f progress through the cen t ri D 1 u e s A . . 00 600 between 3 and , when the modern opera originated . It seems , then , more practicable to take a rapid V iew of the condition of vocal technic in the early centuries and after ward to introduce details when they are accessible b and applica le to the general story . Of the state of singing in the formative period of the ecclesiastic chant most students of the history O f music have a conception which i s ff largely a ected by error . Their conception presents to their minds a chant entirely plain , b a sung with a road , sust ined legato and with a I 9 2 0 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING w noble simplicity , alternating ith kyries and “ alleluias ” sung in florid music of much elegance and temperate brilliancy . a i n The truth , however, is th t almost in its c eption the chant was touched by the luxurious taste of professional singers,%land was decorated with those flowers of song which the Italians call “ ” fi ri r o tu i . The erroneous belief that modern singing was born somewhere near the close of s the sixteenth century has ob cured the facts . Singing as an art is probably as old as the Chris

. A tian era and perhaps much older t any rate , much of what we regard as belonging to the time of the famous operatic virtuosi came down to us from remote centuries . We may therefore specify three influences which speedily effaced the original simplicity of the chant . These were The employment of professional singers in the church . The existence from antiquity of a large stock of vocal technic .

The development, or at least the preservation , of vocal skill by the schools of chant . ’ Pope Sylvester s school , mentioned in the pre ceding chapter , is said to have been founded in 1 3 4 . Its purpose and the inevitable results of its r search after a correct style have been set fo th .

2 2 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING with the words prescribed by the fourth council “ of Carthage : See that thou believe in thy heart s in est h what thou g wit thy mouth , and approve ” in thy works what thou believest in thy heart .

These men were solo chanters , and the appear ance of the church soloist is one of the significant ' events in the history of vocal art . That these solo chanters quickly began to introduce Into their S inging the ornaments which had existed since a time long before their own is certain . That they speedily acquired the self glory which ha s clung to singers ever since is proved by the records of contemporaries . to e They began sw ll with vanity, a product n h s o f their position , and soo s owed a fondnes o ne for certain personal adornment . For thing “ luxuri they cultivated long hair, of which the ance , displayed on the soft silken tunics , as the

- beautiful semi Byzantine mosaics of St . Come w . S and St Damien ho us , added without doubt, f as they thought, to the e fect produced by the V O f voice , when in iew all the people they de livered from the ambon the verses o f the sacred

The employment of trained S ingers in the service of the church in its earliest centuries led

“ ’ L Art G re ori en Am dee G a stoué . g , a VOCAL TECHNIC 2 3

to the institution at a later period of the famous G Schola Cantorum of regory, of which a sketch will be hereinafter given , and this school supplied the the singers for Sistine Chapel , the Papal

Choir . Errors of various sorts have crept into the meagre and scattered references to the first years of church singing . Chief o f all mistakes have been that which represent the art as without any substantial body of technic and that which depicts the method of delivering the chants as entirely choral , though in unison . The inflated singers above described were soloists and so were G some of their successors in the schools of regory, as we shall see . There was a very considerable store of technic ready to be adapted to the uses of the early church . That the chanters developed a style unit ing technical finish with elegance is beyond ques tion , and they had accomplished this before the period at which we obtain evidence o f the b e the ginnings of part singing, to wit, the end of ninth century . a re c on In a mass of details , some of which n fusing and others contradictory, one conclusio

shapes itself clearly , namely , that the chants were o not sung in a dull and mon tonous manner . The trained singers filled them with richness and 2 4 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

variety . M . Lemaire has well said the caprice of the artist has always existed The chanters assumed the right to give freedom to their fancies in the treatment of the melodies and to embellish them just as later singers orna mented madrigals

and airs . The passages , vocalises , appoggiaturas

and portamenti , of which records have been found in the musical monuments preserved from the

early centuries , constitute a body of technic form i ng the foundation of the entire system of modern

florid singing .

The trill , for example , is said to have been

known in the first century . It was surely known P om on ius in the third . p Festus , the grammarian, “ : Vib ri s who wrote at that time, defines it thus ” m t ri r sare est voc e in can ando c spa e . The term “ vib ri ssa re which he here explains is , a technical “ ” c ri s a re term of singing, and p means to shake

w . back ard and forward , to brandish The portamento undoubtedly entered into the delivery of the chant very early, for singers whose training was so largely devoted to the formation of a standard style must soon have discovered the adaptability of the liquid con ff sonants to the creation of a vocal e ect . But we find no written record o f the matter till that VOCAL TECHNIC 2 5

G of uido of Arezzo , who flourished in the first half of the eleventh century . He said “ Li ue sc unt e litter a rum q in multis voc s , more , ita ut inc eptus modus unius ad alterum limpide ” tra ns iens nec fini ri videatur . ( The voices melt together in many after the manner of the letters , so that one tone begun seems limpidly flowing into another and not to be completed . ) Emilius a n It is true that Probus , grammaria “ u r li ue s of the fo rth centu y , had used the verb q ” m 1n cere to describe the melting together of , , o a and r with other c nson nts , but this passage from Guido is the first account we h a ve of the ff musical e ect . Undoubtedly this portamento was r “ not far away when Probus w ote . In their Gre gorian Music” the Benedictines of Stanbrook describe the effect as used in our own time : “ A S in the alphabet there are liquids so there

are liquid sounds . These occur at the passage from one syllable to another when a note which

began full and entire expires . as it were , and ” is fused with the next note . Diminutions or divisions existed in an ele mentary form from the very beginning of florid e chant, as shown in the previous chapt r . It re 2 6 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING mained for them to a cquire that special treat “ ment which entered with the art of descant . In the eleventh century we find the first use of ’ wa s these vocal variations . The singer s method to take the prescribed notes Of the chant and divide them into shorter ones .

S im l p e.

This species of embryonic counterpoint wa s i nn b ec om mprovised in the begi ing ; and , rapidly ing extremely ornate, it not only gave great lati b ut tude to the singer, demanded of him skill , taste and sound musicianship . Its use obliged singers to make serious studies and to exercise their imaginations . The exacting courses of the

schools made almost every singer a composer, and the facility in invention acquired through constant practice prevented their vocal virtuosity

from b ecoming cold and dull . VOCAL TECE NIC 2 7

Marks of expression were known at least a s far back as the closing years of the eighth cen

tury . That the graces of expression itself were employed earlier cannot be doubted in view of the history of these marks . When Charlemagne R 8 he was in ome for the Easter festivals of 7 7, was so impressed by the superiority of the Roman chanters that he begged Pope Adrian to assign to him two cantors of the Gregorian school and to furnish each of them with an authentic Copy of r the antiphonary . The chosen men were Pete

R G 8 . and omanus , who set out for ermany in 7 9 R At the monastery of St . Gall omanus fell sick

and remained behind . Peter went to Metz and ll . G a founded a famous school The monks of St . begged Charlemagne to leave Romanus with them . He finished his life there , established a G a n school of regorian chant, and left his ti hona r p y to the abbey . In training the heavy and rebellious voices of the Germans he intro duc ed l the marks of expression ca led after him, ” romanian letters . The letters were written in small text above o i . s the neumes , the n tation of the period It unnecessary to go into all the details of the sub t jec . The most important were those which f a fected tempo or rhythm . These were C, stand 2 8 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

c ele rite r ac c eler ing for , which called for an o to and ; T , meaning tenere ( hold ) ; M , medio ri r c te . , or moderato There were also letters denoting degrees of force and others indicating “ n ” “ modifying words , such as be e , or medio c riter u . For instance b is freq ently used to m . wa lk) odify T, thus giving an equivalent to our Ti t r d0 a da n . The study of the voice itself undoubtedly began I 00 early, for before 3 the division of the scale into registers was known . At what time atten tion was first directed to this much discussed matter cannot be determined . But from various hints we m a y reasonably conclude that the teachers , while recognizing the registers , made no attempts at equalizing the scale , except such as would occur naturally in the search afte r smoothness and beauty . Marchetto , a writer of 1 00 about 3 , tells us that one of the ornaments of singing in his day was to pass from the chest

— to the falsetto after the manner of a jodel . The student of the subject may find something to ponder in the words of Jerome of Moravia ( 1 3th century) : Different kinds of voices ought not t to be mingled in the chant , whether it be ches with head or throat with head . Generally

30 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

Italians, have now been given and they serve to show that the art had made no inconsiderable h progress before t e twelfth century . The mo st potent agency in forwarding the development of singing in the middle ages was the R G Schola Cantorum of ome , founded by regory G the reat, and it now becomes essential that we examine the influences which produced this school

and then the methods of the school itself . CHAPTER III

TH E S C H OLA CA N TORU M

TH E western empire of Rome reached its in glorious end when Odoacer dethroned Romulus Augustus and proclaimed himself King of Italy A D n in . . 476 . From this date we recko the period m n called the middle ages, which ter i ated with 1 the fall of Constantinople in 453 . The over O fR h throw ome completed the ruin of her sc ools , which had been gradually disintegrating during the continued attacks of the barbarians . R Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus , a oman of senatorial rank , father of Boethius , the celebrated writer on music , flourished in the middle years u of the sixth century, and aboutM S3S ndertook h the reorganization of the sc ools . He raised funds by sub sc ripion and himself wrote the u manual of instr ction to be used by the teachers . The fifth chapter o f this work treated of music and was the basis of the musical study of the time . The treatise is lost, but there can be no doubt that Gregory was acquainted with its doc 3 2 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

o o h l trines . Cassiod rus to k o y orders and founded G wa s a monastery . regory a student there and became the first abbot . The musical method in use was that of Benoit ( died about 540) and in this were brought together the usages which came to have the force of law throughout the western church . This method , or practice , set forth numerous details as to the execution of the chant . Now the abbot had general surveillance of the

f . o fice , and also had charge of the singing boys G t regory became a deacon , which means hat he was one of the choir singers ; and soon after he became Pope in 590 he founded the Schola Can the d torum , school of singers which establishe the authoritative delivery of the musical liturgy for all Europe . From the various schools directed by the church pupils with good vo rc es were selected for train ) in ing in the Schola Cantorum . They became mates o f the dormitories of the Pontifical estab li shm ent ensiona i res and p , except in the cases o of children of noble birth , who received no pen sions . All were educated in the several liberal arts . They were under the immediate direction h i a ra on sts . of the masters of chant , called p p

These were four in number, named , in order of rimic ier sec undi ier r c f . ank , p , , and so orward In THE S CHOLA CANTORUM 33 due course the title of pa ra phoni st was conferred w on the most skilful of the pupils , such as ere “ ” competent to sing the solos of the alleluia . The period devoted to the studies of the Schola

Cantorum was nine years . The instruction was both theoretical and practical , but the length of the time of study was demanded chiefly by the requirement that all the chants should be m em o r i z d e . Only the director or the soloist was per mitte d to have a book . In the classes the teacher was seated at the monochord , from which the pitch was communicated to the students .

All t e - h ~ , _ singers , boys as well as men , had their ro c es heads shaved and wore chasubles . In the p in sion the singers marched in two ranks , the struc to rs outside , the boys inside , and in the chancel they retained this order . The choirs were small . They were generally in groups of about twenty or thirty soloists . The ensembles of the 01 the service were sung by ch r, the clergy and b ut the congregation , the most important parts were reserved for the trained vocalists . It is not difficult to present to the imagination the char acter of the singing of these artists , selected with scrupulous care and rigorously trained . The voices must have possessed the power and flexi b ility which we have long associated with the best EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

Italian singing . Something of the ancient style is preserved in the present choral body of the Sistine Chapel and certain other churches in

R - C ome . The visit of the so called V atican hoirs to the United States in the autumn of 1 9 19 gave many music lovers opportunity to hear the masterpieces of the later church composers sung G n by a choir of this kind , but of pure regoria n f music othing was o fered . Upreme test of vocal progress in the epoch making school was ability to sing solo music of an now a type eleg tly , i f not what we should ‘ r flo rid f U on egard as brilliantly , p the history “ o fthe diffusion of the teachings of the Schola

Cantorum we need not linger . The story would B ut prove neither entertaining nor instructive . we may pause to make note of the s ignificant development of luxuriance of style in the eastern C to hurch , where the chant had already risen sufficient importance to command the a ttention o f Justinian . We must also take a ccount of the a ncient?

Spanish chant , called Mozarabic or Visigothic , which was submerged by the Roman chant before flo ridit the eleventh century . But y was a feature o f the Spanish church music , certainly a bequest

o f the Moors , if not of the Visigoths , whom they THE S CHOLA CANTORUM 35

i b succeeded . The art stic circle was completed y the reaction of Oriental influences on Spanish L music . eander, archbishop of Seville , author of C many pieces of hurch music all richly vocalized, passed some years in Constantinople during the period of the highest development o f the chant o f the eastern church . He became acquainted “ ” G e with regory, who at that tim was apocrisiary

( or papal representative) at the eastern court . Unfortunately few actual records of the Mo z a ra bian chant have survived , but the opulence of its flo ridity has been thoroughly estab lished by the researches of Pierre Aubry, and its direct in fluenc e on certain compositions in the field of R oman chant demonstrated . From the confused mass of fragmentary in formation that has come down to us we need select only two important facts . All the music o f the early eastern church was elegantly florid . In general these chants were for solo singers ; the choir sang only the refrain, the alleluia , and G the final doxology ( loria in excelsis ) . The in melodies , very free rhythm , were quite free in movement, like recitative . They were some times simple and at others decorated with long “ ” . r vocalises For instance the p okeimenon, a

responsory part of the liturgy, was sung to a 36 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

chant vocalised at length and introducing trills . “ ” The famous Parthenion of St . Methodius , arch bishop o f Tyre ( died 3 12 ) consists of a series of strophes written after the manner of the s psalms . There is a solo and the chorus repeat continually the same refrain . The history of the florid ecclesiastic music i s well told in other works and need not be re hearsed at further length here . Students of musical history are familiar with the story of the foundation of the famous school at St . Gall . The growth of the sequences also belongs to the general history of the art . The principle under ly1ng the music of the middle ages remained fixed until the advent of the art of descant, which we shall presently consider . This principle , as ex em lified a p in the pr ctice of musicians and singers , demanded, or at least invited , a free application of decoration to the chant and , at least in certain periods , to the portions which would most readily suggest such treatment even to the modern mind . Of the character of these chants we may get some idea from brief excerpts . Here is an ex in A ample two successive forms , first the mbro sian ( early fourth century) and second the Roman G or regorian ( sixth century) quoted from Prof . ’ G a stoué s article on primitive chant in the En

38 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

' g m ra de No strum de c us

s pe - ci a

These should be sufficient to satisfy the reader that the general character of the music of the Christian church from its be ginnings in the lands to the ea stwa fd of the Mediterranean was ornate . The syllabic chant survived because it was suited to the requirements of the utterance of the priest and we possess it to - day in the form of the i n toned service . But the musical portions of the liturgy leaned always to a style flexible and ele gant, a style which appropriately harmonized with the architectural surroundings of the devotiofia l e xercises . In the music itself we have proof that the a rt o f singing must have reached a level of cultiva tion far beyond that ascribed to it before the researches of recent scholars ha d unearthed so THE S CHOLA CANTORUM 39

many splendid relics of the middle ages . We have already taken a swi ft view of the field o f vocal technic and it will presently be necessary to consider what effect the introduction of the art of descant had on vocal practice . But before doing so we Should note that the chant main ta ined its dominance in ecclesiastic music till the t n eleventh century . It hen bega a slow retreat before - the advancing movement of polyphonic o a n c mposition , and finally receded to a position a logo us to that of seventeenth century opera

recitative which served to introduce the arias . Throughout this period the character of the chant remained unchanged except in exterior fea

. A a tures of style ssuredly , musical ntiquarians can determine with confidence an Ambrosian from a Gregorian chant and can with no diffi culty point out well - defined traits of the later

manners of the schools of Italy and France . But in examining old music with a view to arriving at a knowledge of the state of singing in the centuries between the infancy of Christianity and the advent of the polyphonic masterpieces of church music we need not concern ourselves with

peculiarities of local or sectional chants . All that

we require is the information , unavoidably drawn

from the music itself , that the technic of singing 40 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING to which the search after uniform style directed the first studies of Pope Julian’ s fourth century

schools , assumed a firmly outlined shape in the a Schol Cantorum . The familiar stories of the missions of the Gregorian teachers to Metz and even to Britain have revealed to us the methods \ b y which the singing of the chant was improved

through Europe . It is not essential to our pur

pose to repeat these stories . What we learn from the monuments of these early centuries is that singing demanded first of

all a command of long flowing phrases , the funda mental requisite of a vocal art S imilar to that d em a nded b ygthe classic operas of the Handelian

era . It is evident that a perfect legato was the base of all S inging for not less than eighteen cen turi e s , and that violent attack , forcing of tone , and the clarion delivery of high notes came to be popularly desired in the early part o f the nine t enth e century . Upon the basis of this elegant and fluent legato a flo ridit was re red the undulating y of the chanf. This flo ridity possessed none of the character i sti c s found in the amazing cadenzas of the eigh te enth not century singers . It was brilliant or u b ut s mo oth sparkling as later m sic was , , grace

ful , aristocratic in character , and frequently THE S CHOLA CANTORUM 4 1

f a s decorated with portamento e fects , described in the previous chapter .

pupils of the Schola Cantorum , possessing all the finesse of its art , naturally sought to enrich the sacred chant with ornaments which must have seemed marvellous to their contemporaries . Plain chant dominated all music up to the thirteenth century and there existed in the text certain words a t i on which the singe s were liberty to give re gn ,

' ’ ' to their Reference already has b eén “ made to the jubili . The vowels on which these “ ” were sung were called evovae, a title which “ ” insta ntly recalls the Greek evoe Later the “ f lri word alleluia filled the same o fice . S t. U da c writes “ The alleluia is chanted at the end of a sequence with a neume or a jubilus and the letter A is repeated through numero-Us modula tions . These embroideries were sometimes longer than the chant itself and many authors “ complain of the prominence accorded to this ” kind of vocal fantasia . Of the manner of singing them we obtain testi ’ “ mony from Walter Odington s De S pec ula tione ” Music a e ( about 1 350) in which he says that the ornaments of the chant Should be executed in a

. as light voice and without words Long, florid p “ ” “ A ” sages were sung on the Kyrie , the men, 42 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

sa ec ulo rum In saecula and similar texts . The “ manuscript of the celebrated mystery play, The W V ” ise and Foolish irgins , which dates from the

t . enth century, is rich in ornamentation This state of sacred music continued till the fourteenth century . Secular music now advanced to a defined place in art and the pope and sub altern church authorities perceived that ecclesias tic music could retain its distinction only by the abolition of its luxurious decorations . A vigor ous effort was made to restore the absolutely plain chant . At the beginning of the fourteenth c entury Pope John XXII ordered the discontinu n “ ance of all or aments . His famous bull , docta ” in 1 2 sanctorum , was issued 3 3 and applied not only to ornamentation but to the use of mensural Ro c kstro music . W . S . , the distinguished Eng t lish historian of the art , is doubtful whe her the order of John endured long, because his successor Benedict XII ( 1 334 - 4 2 ) was very fond of n elaborate ceremonials . The Papal court was ow at Avignon and the school in Rome followed its the ancient traditions , while at the new seat of H F oly See French and lemish singers , already

celebrated , were cordially welcomed . An important side light is thrown on the state o f singing in these centuri es by the words of THE S CHOLA CANTORUM 43

1 0 0- 1 1 St . Bernard ( 9 53 ) in his regulations of “ the chant at Citeaux : It is necessary that men sing in a virile manner and not with voices shrill and artificial like the voices of women , or in a ” manner lascivious and nimble like actors . He “ added cautions that singers Should manage their ” respiration and not sing through the nose .

The words of St . Bernard indicate pretty clearly that the male soprano was already em ployed in the church choir . When his entry into o f the b dy was e fected must remain doubtful , but it is reasonable to deduce from the passage quoted f i that these singers were not castrati but a ls ett sts . in Indeed historical research has , as already timated , led toward the conclusion that in western fa ls etti sts Europe the antedated the others . We S c hall recur to this topi in a later chapter . flo ridit n a To return to the y of the cha t , it p “ ” pears from the Salmi Pa s sa ggia ti ( 1 6 1 5) of Francesco Severi that in the S ixteenth century ornaments on the chants sung in the Sistine

Chapel were continually used . Without enter ing too minutely into the details of such in formation as we find scattered through various old works , let us endeavor to summarize the flo ridity of the chant from the time of Charle magne to the close of the sixteenth century . 44 EARL Y HIS TORY OF SINGING

Baini ( 1 775 the distinguished biog r a he r p of Palestrina , learned from manuscript R letters at heims , Metz and Soissons , written

to Pepin and Charlemagne , by some of the n Popes , the meaning of some of the romania letters and the terms which they represented . Several theoreticians of later date left explana tions of the technical terms applied to features o f the chant and in the final a na lys IS we learn a that all of them rel te to ornamentation . : c r i s a tio tre i In brief these are the terms p , p da tio reve rb e ra tio vinnula e tremula e , , , voces , “ ” h h i ri tio o c et . C s a copula , p may be translated readily by refe rence to the definition of Festus i already given . It was one of the terms s gni “ ” in fy g trill . Trepidatio was another term mean “ ” R r r ing a tremble or shake . eve b e a tio is me

dieval Latin , not classic , and probably means what

later came to be known as beats , the beginning ” Vinnula e of our vibrato . means sweet and its application to vocal technic can only be COIljn r v tu e d . It seems not extra agant to infer that it “ referred to the use of a soft mezza voce . Voces tremula e cannot well be misunderstood . The execution of this grace required breath control e of a high order , sinc it was usually employed in

the prolonged final cadences . It is worth men

46 EARL Y HIS TORY OF SINGING and each o f these offices carried with it musical duties . An abbot had charge of the school of his abbey , while deacons were the singers of the ornate parts of the liturgy, and were therefore vocal virtuosi . Many epitaphs of such deacons exist and inform us that they were celebrated for Re their voices and skill . Among others Leon , dem tu S a b inu p s and s are named . Of the latter “ his chanting is described a s sweet as nectar and ” ” honey . We read of placid modulations , of psalms chanted on “ melodies rich and with varied ” sounds . James , first master of chant in the N 6 0 churches of orthumberland , England , about 7 , m d is entione , as well as Theodore and Benoit, the two famous singers sent by Pope Adrian I into France at the request of Charlemagne . Several popes were graduates of the Schola Can torum and among those who gained renown as w G chanters ere Sergius I , regory II , Etienne II ,

L S . Paul I , eo III and ergius II r the Roman school had reached its zenith a nd wars terminated its development the further a dvance of the art was made in France , where musicians soon devised a larger and more elastic style than that of the Italians . Doubtless the same artistic spirit which conceived the French Gothic architecture wa s the inspiration of the Splendid THE S CHOLA CANTORUM 4 7 style of ecclesiastic music which glorified the liturgy of the new temples . But this topic lies beyond the confines of our subject . The next step in this study of early singing must be toward an examination of the introduc tion of mensural music and polyphonic composi ’ tion a nd , the character of the vocal art employed in their delivery . Again we must swiftly survey a large field and ask the reader to accept the general facts of musical history as already estab lish ed . CHAPTER IV

T H E ROU B A OU RS E S CA NT A N D E N S U RAL T D , D M M U SI C

TH E influences which combined to affect the development of song in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were so numerous and closely inter twined that the task of unravelling the threads im o sr le m of the web is well nigh p s b . They a y be classified as follows l Th e music of the troubadours . % Polyphonic composition . % The art of descant ( also called discant L M n r l ez su a music . The period of troubadour art extended from at least the middle of the twelfth century to the closing years of the thirteenth . Polyphonic com position may be said to date from the first crude experiments in harmony , of which our earliest

A D . 00 re cords come down from about 9 . The art of discant, as distinguished by the practice of singers from the written polyphony of com a s s posers , must have originated almost oon as 48 THE TROUB ADOURS 49

Huc b a ld part writing , for , the Benedictine monk A of St . rmand in Flanders , our authority on the

m entio ns g a beginnings of harmony, kind of florid improvisation by singers to which the title “ descant” was applied in the eleventh century by d e Salomon and the Latin appe llation c on tr a punc

‘ Im a m eme by Marchetto and Johannes de Muris

in the fourteenth century . The period of mensural music cannot be de te rmined , since it must have existed at least in dance forms from very ancient times ; but that

of its notation , which covers the time of our

written records of it , is set by Johannes Wolf “ G in the title of his important work , eschichte der Mensural Notation von 1 2 50 It is unnecessary to linger on the musicianship

of the troubadours . The long accepted belief that these knightly singers were poets and not composers has been proved fallacious by the A labors of Pierre ubry and Jean Beck . We know now that most of the troubadours were trained

musicians , educated in abbeys and receiving the courses of instruction followed by young men k preparing to ta e holy orders . These courses

inevitably included ecclesiastic song, and the crea tions of the troubadours show clearly that their art was the child of a marriage of sacred and 50 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING profane music with the language of the people as the uniting agent . Ancient secular songs going back at least as far “ a s Cous s em a ke r the ninth century ( see ) , Histoire ” de la Harmonie a u Moyen Age ) show us that the spirit of music moved among the people with its customary contempt for the teachings of the schools . But somewhat later, at the point whence we can trace the most ancient of the lays of the troubadours , we discover that the influence of ecclesiastic composition was not unfelt in secular music . Side by side with these lays we meet secular songs of whic h the music was palpably a mere replica of the ecclesiastical , as in the cases of the “ complaints” and certain settings of odes of “ ” Horace . The lai , which is probably the oldest s un urviving form of the ancient Celtic art, was questionably popular in character . Among these l t ays , written to verses of irregular leng hs , we

- in find ornamentations of cadenza like nature , dubitably suggested by the florid terminations of G psalms or the elegant exfoliations of the St . all fre sequences . On the other hand , we more flo ridit quently meet with simpler forms of y, clearly used for both expressive and decorative purposes . Here is an example of the most THE TROUB ADOURS 51

. G elaborate St all style , the termination of an “ ” b otker B a lb ulus r the Alleluia y N , the fathe of l : St. G all schoo

Allelui Notk er B alb ulus. a,

Turning to one of the earliest relics of troub a flo ridit dour song, we may note the simpler y already mentioned 52 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

%u a nt li lou s ei gnolz jo li s cha nte

’ s ur la fl or d e s te qu e n a i s t la 1 0 se

e t l l h l ee e t— ve r t re e y s e a S p . This old song antedates the works of the masters restudied and adequately revealed by

Johannes Wolf . As a piece of troubadour com position it exemplifies the kind of music written by a nobleman educated in an abbey and com posing under the influence of church music , but to secular text with clearly definite rhythm . In it we see some of the earliest specimens of an flo r idit c onven employment of y, which became tiona liz ed . The expansion of the melody in a decorative design on the words flor” and “ rosee: belongs distinctly to the type of vocal art which utilizes flo r idity to combine external imitation with fanciful suggestion . It is a direct endeavor to employ a grace of music to convey a thought .

It is primitive tone painting . Let us not suppose that this kind o f floridity

54 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

and decorative features of song both as elements o f pure musrc a l beauty a nd as means of sugges

tion or expression . They preserved the traditions of secular florid ity in their musical settings of such words as “ ” “ ” “ ” fio r , amore , paradiso, and all the others which had come to be conventionally associated with thrills of ecstasy to be expressed in a gor eous g exfoliation of the melody . One finds that “ ” the verb cantare invariably suggests the in trod t uc ion . of a display of vocal technic Indeed , the most extraordinary feats of the composers and vocal virtuosi of the baroque opera ( late 1 7th century) or of the post - Handelian decadence could not outdo the achievements of the A TS “ ” N ov a . The vowel sound ah is already estab lished as the favorable medium of display . Here is a characteristic example from a two - voiced L song by orenzo , of Florence , a fourteenth cen

tury writer . The text is taken from Wolf . On the other hand there are many passages which prove that these early writers had already

begun to disregard textual considerations . They respected conventions and continued them ; but

where no tradition governed , they wrote florid “ 3 , ( C un passages on such words as per, and C‘ e 6 ven . THE TROUB ADOURS 55

P ro se r pi na c a n ta

As already noted , the vowel sound ah , which ’ was so favorable to the Italian s emission of tone , was almost invariably vocalized at great length .

Arteaga, writing in the latter half of the eigh 56 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING teenth century , was astonished because Pasquale “ ” A n fo ss i ( 1 736 - 1 797) in his Antigone em 1 6 1 ployed nine measures of notes each , or 44 s note in all , on the second vowel of the word “ ” a Ye am to . t we have seen Lorenzo four cen turies earlier writing eleven and one - half meas ures in ancient time of three whole notes to the “ ” bar on the second vowel of cantava . It should be noted at this point that these extended p a ssages were not as long in duration

. of time as they look ,to us on paper The nota tion of the early period was pra ctised on a large scale The whole note S Ignifies a much longer tone now than it did in the days when composers set up a time signature of 3 . It would probably be correct for us to regard the 3 of Lorenzo as equivalent to our three - fourth or possibly three eighth measure But while this gives a just view of the breath support demanded of these our ancient singers, it does not in any way modi fy deductions as to the attitude of the composers toward the nature and purpose of the florid pas sage . The pages o fthe composers of the great epoch

' “ For a ma sterly exa mina tion of thi s matter see The Inter ” reta ti on of th e Music of th e XVIIth a nd XVIIIth C turi s p en e ,

b r ol o tsch Lo do 1 1 . A d D lm . y n e n n, 9 5 THE TROUB ADOURS 57

of polyphonic church music , masters who wrote a S lso secular songs , how no definite aim at florid setting of words or vowels . I have read many hundreds of pages of their scores in the vain effort to discern any organized system in the employment of flo ridity except that dictated by the immediate demands of the canonic subject . The fluent passages are all essential parts of the b e musical thought, and their creation seems to wholly the result of a feeling for the architectural r interdependence of the voice parts . In othe words , these masters were engaged in making beautiful musical designs with religious expres sion as the ultimate attainment . In the art of these writers one finds that combination of decora tion with general expression that is to be observed in the church architecture of their time . The expression is not reached by means of delineative ff details , but by the sum total of e ects , most of which are essentially decorative in themselves . The musicians of the formative years o f poly phonic writing conceived vocal melody as a un smooth flowing river of polished cantilena, f flo ridit a s ru fled except by an elegant y, well in keeping with its character as sun touched wave o f r lets with the surface a stream . The t oub a dours preserved toward song the same attitude 58 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

as the church writers , but their employment of the language of their people instead o f Latin ( used in the church texts ) compelled them to write in rhythmic manner and not in the prose

’ style of the chant . The results of this step are disclosed in the subsequent history of composition rather than that of singing, and hence do not properly fall within the province of this work . Polyphonic composition in the broad sense w means any kind of part riting, from the simplest two - part harmony to the complex creations of

Tallis or Byrd . With its development from the “ ” crude organum of Huc b a ld to the works of

Palestrina we have no concern . Attention , how ever , has already been called to the early drawn distinction between c ontTa punc tuS a penna and a m ente in , and the latter , the work of the singers , we are directly interested 1 1th Franco , a distinguished theoretician ( and r2 th centuries ) , has left us a definition of descant as the simultaneous and harmonious sounding of two or more diverse melodies , which are made equal to one another proportionately by the use

of sounds of three degrees of length , represented

in writing by the figures of the long, breve, and in semibreve . In the explanation of details he forms us further that among the several varieties THE TROUB ADOURS 59 of descant were that with the s ame words in all f the parts , that with di ferent words , and still another with words in one part and none in others . In order to understand what might be the musical outcome of such varying methods we must bear in mind that the authorities made a clear dis tinction between descant which was written in “ ” mensural music , and organum purum , in which the plain song tenor was “ ultra mensuram” ( out side of measure) . The term “ tenor in connection with the old ecclesiastical music means the voice which sang firmus a the cantus , or ch nt melody, and around which other parts grouped themselves ; and since in the early stage of the art this cantus firmus wa s customarily entrusted to the highest male “ ” voice , the word tenor slowly acquired its modern meaning . Originally it was regarded “ ” “ simply as a derivative of teneo ( I hold and a referred to the fact that this voice , to use l “ ” modern colloquia ism , carried the tune .

However , at the time when part singing became prevalent ( 1 5th century) women certainly en joyed the privilege of joining with men in the delivery of frottole and strambotti . Bartolomeo ’ “ ” T ro mb onc ino s frottola Signora , anzi mea dea , ’ “ ” P ifa ro s a Nicolo Pi ngete occhi dolenti , and 60 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

many others give the melody to the soprano voice . Unless we are willing to believe that boys or male sopranos were to be found in every chorus and a household , we must conclude that women s ng h in the polyphonic works of t e time . We Shall discuss this matter further . About the general rules of descant information besides that of Franco comes from several old

writers , and is well summarized in the writings Tinc o r 1 th of Johannes t i s ( 4 century) . He tells us that written counterpoint is ordinarily called “ ” “ ” res facta . The title counterpoint was more

exactly applied to improvisation . Without fol Iowing him into technicalities we learn that the principal law of descant was that the voices

should meet always on the consonances , and there seemed to be little concern about the notes b e s ec ific a ll tween these . He p y declares that when two , three , four , or more improvise on a chant, “ f no one is subject to the other . It su fices if each o f the Singers accords with the tenor in what c oncerns the movement and order of the con ” i cords . Somewhat na vely to our minds , he adds that he does not blame, but rather praises those singers who give their first consideration to the u placing of the concords , beca se thus they produce a more agreeable and smooth harmony .

62 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING same time as the tenor occupied in singing the firmus i o cantus . This d vision of long notes int figures formed of shorter ones came to be called “ ” “ ” diminution , and the running of diminutions was one of the feats of the earli est public singers of the lyric stage . Furthermore this method of varying a melody became common in instrumental music , and all music lovers are acquainted with one of its most beautiful examples , that of ’ Beethoven s fifth symphony , in which the melody of the Slow movement is repeated to us twice

in increasing diminutions . im Naturally this kind of counterpoint , rovi sed ff p and ornamented , a orded much liberty to the singer and in the end compelled him to give serious attention to his musicianship . The persistence of improvisation, despite the growth r of written counte point, is instructive because it invites us to believe the medieval music lover to be quite a s easily mastered by vocal virtuosity

as his successors of the modern opera house . For tuna tely for the art the most distinguished singers were theoreticians or composers and were com petent to improvise artistically . Among the most

famous may be mentioned Franco and Perotin , who lived in the last years of the 1 1 th and fi 1 2th e rst of the century , Philip de Vitry, J THE TROUB A DOURS 63

rome of Moravia , Marchetto of Padua , Johan Odin ton nes de Muris and Walter g , the Briton , I th Dunstede G all of the 3 century , Simon , lare ra nc hinus G a ffo ri 1 anus and F , of the 4th and part of the 1 5th . That all was not ideal in the realm of descant we learn from a stern rebuke administered to incompetent singers by Johannes de Muris . He “ says : How can men have the face to sing descant who know nothing of the combination of sounds % Their voices roam around the cantus firmus with out regard to any rule . They cannot tell a con ” sonance from a dissonance . This brief comment deepens our conviction that the art of descanting was one imperatively de manding musicianship on the part of the singer . Another impatient exclamation from the far o ff past satisfies us that the vocal virtuoso of the f time , who di fered so greatly from his modern successor in the matter of scholarship , at least r e sembled him in certain visible accompaniments

. O elred of his art The Scotch abbot , writing in 1 2 th the century, tells us that the singers whinny like horses , use gestures , sway their bodies , twist n their lips , roll their eyes and eve bend their

fingers with each note , CHAPTER V

VOCA L TEACH ERS AND S ECU LAR SONG

T H E survey of the state of vocal art in the period of the descanters should suffice to convince us that the path to the brilliant period of the late fifteenth century, when the Italian opera swam into the ken of southern Europe , was thor o ughly cleared” But if we turn our attention to the birth of opera , we find ourselves con fronted with a considerable army of secular singers equipped with a brilliant technic . Whence came these artists ? Whence came their art ? It is now our duty to seek the answers to these questions The subject has been dismissed curtly in funi h musical histories . We have been s ed with generous information concerning composers and

“ their works and their influence upon succeeding ? schools . But who were the masters of voice Whom did they teach and what ? Let the last inquiry have precedence . The ground has been cleared in the previous chapters . They taught 64 VOCAL TEA CHERS AND S ECULA R S ONG 65

a nd the kind of music that we have considered , we need henceforth refer to it only as it becomes an inseparable part of the story . The musical art of the golden age of church counterpoint was vocal . The masterpieces of B rumel L Josquin des Pres , Hobrecht , , asso , and ell In Palestrina were polyphonic a c app a works . strumenta l composition was in its infancy at the moment when the unaccompanied vocal works In were crossing their zenith . the development of the system of polyphonic composition the prae tice of the singer’s descant slowly retired from its rominenc e . p_ t inevitably gave way o the _ I t W ritten text , for only in recorded form could the S plendid masses of the Netherlands masters and their disciples be offered for habitual repetition in the services of the church . The improvisation o f the S inger ultimately confined itself to the - f I decoration o the written text . t assumed a position similar to that of the later ornamentation by the opera singer . But this decoration was created by vocalists who were already thoroughly schooled musicians , and these singers were also the teachers of the art which they practised . Ir the ea rlier L _ _ stages of the progress of vocal art singin g was taught only to those destined offic ia te to in the services of the church . But 66 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

it is probable that from the time of the troub a dours singing as an art a ttracted the attention

and invited the study of some laymen . Con sideration of this aspect of the matter may be postponed for the time in order that we may

first survey the work of the teachers . It seems to have escaped the notice of many historians that nearly every one of the great masters of church counterpoint was a singer and

a teacher of singing . It is unnecessary to go G further back than the time of uido of Arezzo , 1 0 who died in 05 . The histories record fully the nature of his labors in notation and in the invention of the system of solmization but despite the fact that they tell us that he devised this

system to aid in the instruction of his pupils , they neglect to emphasize the other fact that he was one of a long line of teachers of singing . He was engaged in singing and in training S ingers

for the glory of the church . It seems likely that his lab or tended rather toward improvements in in intonation than toward voice production, but his “ Micrology” there is a chapter on the puri fic a tion of style and this inclines us to the belief that he was also what we might call a coach in interpretation or manner . But without doubt his pupils , although they included no less a personage VOCAL TEA CHERS AND S ECULA R S ONG 67

than Pope John XIX , were professional singers

o f church music . By some of them the methods of Guido were handed down to a still later

generation . If we keep before our minds the fundamental fact that the famous masters of the period ex tending from the I 3th to the 1 sth centuries were u not players pon instruments , but singers and

composers of music to be sung, we shall grasp h NOT till Lt e essential facts of the story . the great o rga msts began to appear did composers of music other than vocal assume importance in

the development of the tonal art . Turning then to the golden a ge of church

counterpoint, we find that Johannes Okeghem , who is generally regarded as the father of the n Netherlands school , had attai ed the position of first singer of the chapel of Charles VII at an

early age . He was the teacher of the celebrated

Josquin des Pres ; but this master already , while still a member of the choir of the Collegiate “ Church of St . %uentin, had been called arte ” a nendi c la ris simu in fa ntulus 1 6 c s . In 48 Jos S quin became a inger in the Sistine Chapel choir . These facts are of particular significance because Josquin was the first real genius among the N etherlands masters , and without fear of radical 68 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING e rror one might deduce from the fluent vocal char acter of his compositions that he was a singer with a fine appreciation and mastery of pure legato style . Josquin was himself the instructor of several important masters , of whom none was more prominent in the advancement of the a c a ppella G s art than Nicolas ombert, of Bruge , a singer in the chapel of Charles V and master of the 1 0 I choir from 53 to 534 . Subsequently he went to Spain with twenty singers , doubtless trained f by himself , and became an o ficial of the Imperial c hapel in Madrid . Gombert was an ardent cul i t r t va o of secular composition . In the pursuit of this branch O f his art he developed remark able descriptive effects and methods of character io i z a t n . Indirectly these advances gave to his music and to those of his successors a charming variety which was lacking in the religious works of the time . The cultivation of part singing by all classes of people, which was carried on in this period , made the composer of the madrigal a welcome visitor among the cultured nobility of Italy and France . Gombert wrote often of pastoral delights , with imitations of singing birds, the love lyrics of shepherds and shepherdesses and the I terror of the always mminent wolf . He

70 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING dice usually cited as the parent Italian 1 6 1 opera , was born in Florence in 5 and studied music under Cristofano Malvezzi of Lucca . Mal 1 1 1 vezzi , born in 54 7, was in 57 a canon in the l church of St . Lorenzo in F orence and on the d eath of Corteccia succeeded him as maestro di

cappella to the Grand Duke of Tuscany . This means that he was a singer and a master of

. o Ma lvez z r voice C rteccia , whom succeeded , was bornat Arezzo early in the sixteenth century and 1 died in 57 1 . In 1 539 he became maestro di

cappella to Cosimo I , which signifies , of course ,

that he was a vocal master of the foremost rank . It is not essential to the purpose of this book : to follo w this line of investigation into furthe i

detail . The fact that the leading musicians of

the fruitful years of the thirteenth , fourteenth , fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were not only musIC composers of vocal , but also singers and i un nstructors of singers is established . The

’ frOin broken line of descent of the art of song is . 1 the schools of Pope Julian , founded in 3 4 , to the period immediately preceding the birth of

modern Italian opera is thus broadly, but clearly

traced . With Claudio Monteverdi , the first musical genius who wrote for the lyric stage of

‘

r wa s n r. Italy, we meet a compose who not a si ge VOCAL TEA CHERS AND S ECULA R S ONG 71

a nd He was a violist , an iconoclast in harmony an explorer in instrumentation . What has been set forth about the teaching of vocal art shows us that the singers of the first lyric dramas were trained in exactly the same way as the choristers of the church were .

However, we naturally inquire whence came the women singers whom we find in the enjoyment of a full blaze of glory at the close of the six teenth re dec es century . The search after their p sors will involve us in a general review of the o f spread singing among the people . It has been shown that the troubadours were among the earliest , if they were not the first, secular singers who possessed vocal training . It is not probable that all of them had studied sing

ing, yet those of the nobility ( and almost all of them were of that class ) certainly had the opportunity to do so when receiving their educa tion in the abbeys . Almost upon the heels of the troubadours came the cantori a liuto with a class of lyrics which

became familiar in all classes of Italian society, but were especially favored by the more cul ti a t d v e . In the Vatican there is a poem by one “ Lemmo of Pi stoja with the note Casella diede il suono This Casella was well known . He 72 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING was born in 1 300 and among other things he wrote music for Dante ’ s sonnet “ Amor nella mente There can hardly be any question that he was a S inger to the lute . These lutenists and

’ singers habitually composed in simple polyphony and after giving the melody to the voice arranged the other parts s o that they formed a supporting harmony and could be performed on the lute . The whole subject of the cantore a liuto i s treated elaborately by Ambros in his “ Geschichte der ” Musik . We need go no further here than is necessary to satisfy ourselves that the practice of singing songs of romantic character survived o the era of the troubad urs , which was ended about the middle of the thirteenth century, and that it existed so long afterward that its methods were adopted in the preparation of the solo parts “ ” of the first secular lyric drama , the Orfeo of A ngelo Poliziano , produced in Mantua about 1 474 . For an exhaustive examination of this work the author refers the reader to his “ Some ” Y Forerunners of Italian Opera ( New ork,

Co . Henry Holt , Bocaccio wrote the stories of his Decameron 1 8 1 8 in the years from 34 to 35 , and in them so c ra l we find a vivacious representation of life , in which singing appears to hold an accepted VOCA L TEACHERS A ND S ECULAR S ONG 73

i position . To the mus c of the song Io son si vaga della mia bellezza” the company dances and we are thus offered a clear picture of the ballata Dio neo to or dance song . Again Emilia invites Di o neo sing a canzona . Still again with a lute and Fiametta with a viol play a dance and yet again one of the company sings while Dioneo accompanies her on the lute . Singing among such an assembly as B oc c a c io paints may indeed have been largely of the “ nat ” ural type , but the probabilities are that it pre supposed a certain amount of cultivation . The practice of instrumental music , which he brings to a to our notice , seems indic te that there had been some study and we are further persuaded to regard music as a polite accomplishment by the fact that the entire tendency of the time was toward polyphonic composition . The period of the last troubadours and the earliest cantori a liuto was that in which the great polyphonic art of northern Europe was assuming definite form and there is no question that long before the art of the lute singer had yielded to the splendors of th e madrigal drama all the songs of the cantori were adapted from part music . This was the more easily accomplished after the frottola b e

- define d came a well Italian form . This kind of 74 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING %

part song was harmonized in simple manner , its

stanzas were strophic and its melody facile . The common people of Italy sang their frottole in harmonized parts just as the Russians and Welsh

of later centuries sang their folk songs . In a collection published by Petrucci in 1 509 there

is a frottola by Tromboncino , the most famous

master of this species of song, and an arrange ment o f it for solo voice and lute by Fra nc i sc us B o ssinensi 1 s . In a play of 539 with music by

Corteccia we find a solo for Silenus , a madrigal arranged for one voice and a ccompaniment of instruments on exactly the same fundamental plan

as the lutenists used . But in this case we have

the four parts fully developed , the melody being

sung and the other three played . Castiglione “ ” called this kind of S inging recitar alla lira . Of the spread of part singing through Europe

we have abundant testimony . In the fifteenth century it was practised by all classes and choral societies were more numerous than they were in h e modern Germany . From the Net rlands the

art spread southward into Italy, and we read with delight the story of Lorenzo the Magnificent issu ing forth in the nights of the carnival season with a numerous body of followers and making

the air ri ng with music . In the introduction to VOCAL TEA CHERS AND S ECULAR S ONG 75 a collection of Triumph and Ca rn lva l Songs published in Florence in I 559 II Lasca says Thus they traversed the city singing to the a c c om a niment p of music arranged for four , eight , twelve or even fifteen voices supported b Y various ” instruments . l We need not, however, confine ourse ves to Italy in our survey of the spread of cultivated

S ong . Engla nd was for no inconsiderable period h t e . in van of the advance Erasmus , who died “ I 6 : in 53 , wrote The English challenge the pre

rogative of having the handsomest women , of keeping the best table, and of being the most ” accomplished in the skill of music of any people . The ladies of Elizabeth ’ s court could read at n sight , and accompa y themselves on lutes or other instruments . Henry VIII , originally intended

for a priest, studied music as a matter of course . Anne Bullen was an enthusiast about the com o f im positions Josquin des Pres . Edward V I pressed the French ambassador in 1 551 by playing the lute . An educated gentleman of this time was expected to be able to S ing at S ight and even to be acquainted with the art of descant , so that

he could improvise a part on a given melody . s Musical instrument were at hand everywhere, even for those in the barber shops awaiting the 76 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

s welcome note of Next . And as Chappell note , “ a Tinkers sang catches , milkm ids sang ballads , carters whistled ; each trade , and even the beg ” gars , had their special songs . I 1 2 P the n 5 9 Elena , daughter of ietro Bembo , é famous cardinal and litt rateur, wrote a letter ( still extant) to her father asking permission to take lessons on the monochord ( a precursor of the piano ) and his answer goes to Show that the study of instrumental music was no great novelty among girls of social position , though not yet in high favor . Just when the professional women singers made their debut on the highway of vocal progress is f extremely di ficult to determine . One thing, however, is certain , namely , that they must have 1 600 flourished long before , for at that time there were several of great fame and there existed a l ready exercises for female voices .

’ “ ‘ % E Kr h el s Pi o rt nd its M . e b i fo usi R d H . a c ea an e ,

Chapter V .

78 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING tive genius so much as it was the seizure of exist ing materials and the deliberate applica tion of m the to a clearly defined artistic purpose. Throughout the slow advance toward the Italian opera we c a n without difficulty trace a steady movement toward the elevation of a single - voiced melody to the throne of vocal art and the crown ing of the high voice as the royalty of S inging . We may at this point call into court a witness whose scholarship entitles his conclusions , drawn from systematic research , to the utmost respect . G G uido asperini , librarian of the conservatory of “ w Enc c lo edic Mu Parma , riting in the y p de la sique” on the music of Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries , directs our attention to the continued tendency of fifteenth century com posers in their frottole and strambotti to allot to the highest voice the most expressive part of the composition . From this he draws the con e in lusion that many cases , though not in all , the composition was intended to be sung by the upper voice , while the other voice parts were to be per ou instru formed instruments , or at any rate an a r ment cap ble of polyphonic utte ance , as , for example , the lute . In the opinion of Signor Gasperini this char ac teri stic gives the music ofthe fifteenth century APPROA CH OF THE MONODIC S TYLE 79

a particular significance . Analysis of numerous works shows that composers allotted to the s oprano the sustained melody, written in a simple

fluent cantilena , while the more florid parts were given to the other voices . The melody ascends or descends without hazardous leaps or perilous roulades . The task of the singer is made easy by the absence of passages of difficult intonation and by the clarity of the cantilena .

It is easy to see , says the author, that this part was composed for dilettante singers who did not possess the brilliant qualities o f professional ” artists . On the other hand the musicians did not spare the other voices , especially the middle ones , for which they wrote , fearlessly and with fl ri it o d . luxurious y The style , cultivated in such G music as Signor asperini has pointed out, and as the author of the present volume has noted “ ” in Some Forerunners of Italian Opera , laid a a the found tions upon which Peri , C ccini and their confreres began the structure of Italian

opera , when they sought to retire complicated polyphony in favor of a simple and direct solo

utterance and to condense all the voice parts ,

except that delivering the melody, in their newly

contrived thorough bass . We shall Ob tain a clearer view of the move 80 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING ment of the fifteenth and sixteenth century part song toward solo utterance, and of the growing prominence of the soprano voice , i f we scrutinize a little more closely the characte r of the secular compositions . While the soprano part was writ in ten the simple style already described , the alto and tenor parts were handled without reserve . Composers apparently concerned themselves little with the natural range of these voices , but sent them scurrying up and down through leaps and passages which find no resemblance in the utterance of the principal voice . Often they pushed them above the soprano , evidently without fear that its calmly flowing melody would be obscured in the mass of harmony . This absence of reserve and the difference of character between the principal part and the others strengt hens the belief that these songs were intended for solo v01c e accompanied by instruments . Signor Gasperini invites our attention to the feeble tone of the instruments of the time . The lute , the harp and the clavier spoke in very soft accents and composers could at their pleasure write the voice part low without fear of its being to o covered . The basses , , of the pieces have little of the melodic character of true polyphony, but a strongly marked movement which suggests APPROA CH OF THE MONODIC S TYLE 81 their fitness for performance on the plucked i n strum ents of the day . It is probable that the great number of songs composed by the Italian ma sters of the fifteenth century were written for a solo voice and designed to be accompanied by an instrument of the lute o r guitar family . This supposition makes com prehensible the great revolution which was a c complished in the closing years of the sixteenth century, when the Florentine adventurers sup planted polyphony with monodic song . The revolution created nothing new . Its style was nothing else than the ancient popular style of I th e taly , ignored by scholars of the polyphonic s chool , yet sustaining its healthy existence in the frottole and canzonette of the Italian singers . It needed only the authority of the coteri e of artists which met a t the Palazzo Bardi to bring the old style back to consideration and to invest it with dignity . That the young artists judged this Italian creation to be a reincarnation of the a n cient musica l language of the Greeks gave it the necessary pl a ce in the general estimation and en abled it to supplant the polyphonic music . The leaning of the Italians toward the use of the solo voice was not determined clearly in the early years of the sixteenth century, but that it EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING existed is made plain to us by a passage in Baldas ’ “ sare Ca stigli one s famous work 11Libro del Cor ” ti ian o n g . He is speaki g of the tendencies of the

t U he / wa s cour of rbino , to which attached in 1 06 II 5 . e sa ys : “ Messire Frederick answers that the canto a

libro ( vocal descant) , well executed , seems to him beautiful music ; but song accompanied by the o e viol seems m re beautiful , becaus in this species of music almost all the sweetness o f the song

consists entirely in the voice of one alone , and one hears and appreciates with the greatest attention

the manner of the singer and the air , inasmuch as the ear is occupied in following only one voice

and every little error is observed , which does not S fo r happen when one ings in company, then one ” aids the other . The motive ascribed to the distinguished Duke n of Urbino was not ge erous , to be sure , but his words indicate that even an amateur of respectable attainments yearned for the direct publication of

an independent melody . If we cro ss the border to glance for a moment at the creations of the French masters about this

time, we shall find certain lines even more clearly

drawn , especially if we inspect the methods of R i the composers of the enaissance per od . Here APPROA CH OF THE MONODIC S TYLE 83

we meet with music polyphonic in structure , but built upon characteristic French melodies , and with a system of part writing which pointed not so directly as the Italian toward the accompanied o a sol , but which none the less indicated the p p roa c hing supremacy of the voice engaged in de livering the melody . Marin Mersenne in his “ ” Harmonie Universelle ( 1 62 7) laid down some of the principles of part writing obs erved in his day The perfection of harmony consists in four part writing . The bass proceeds by the slowest movement among the four . It is not ordinarily written so much in diminutions as the other parts a nd moves often in thirds , fourths , fifths and octaves , in order to give room to the other parts , especially the uppermost , which should sing in r closely joined prog essions as much as possible . The teno r should particularly govern the mode and make the cadences in their proper places . The tenor ought to use the most elegant passages in order to embellish the song and entertain the listeners . A 1 62 lthough Mersenne published his work in 7, his retrospective view naturally included the a rt as it was practised years before that . We can discern in works of French masters immediately 84 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING preceding his time a practice in some respects whic h h e similar to that describes , and at any ‘ rate we see the employment of the soprano voice

S OP RA N O .

’ Ces es toil les d e mi bril Ia n tes M a l

CONTRA LTO.

TENOR .

’ Ces es toil les d e mi bril la n tes M al

B A SS.

lumoyent en mile fa s cons Ma is el les

mile fa s cons Ma is el les

86 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

e se s a se s o f much spac , becau it consist of rie couplets , of which the first is delivered by the S o s oprano voice sol . The econd introduces the c o tra lto - a , the third is in three p rt harmony , intro duc in o g the tenor, and the fourth in f ur parts , c adding the bass . After ea h couplet the quartet sings a refrain . A couplet sung by the four voices discloses the entire content of the composition . As we a pproach the promotion of dramatic secular music to leadership in the forward march we - of the tonal art, discover an apparently sudden advance of human expression to a position of a power . It is , therefore , advisable th t we should give some brief consideration to this “ gift of ” tongues , which was destined in the future to make vocal music the most potent , eloquent and In tr far reaching of all forms of composition . s u in the modern mental music was its infancy when . opera was born , and although it rose to the levels of Beethoven and Brahms , while the opera sank

- to the decadence of the pre Wagnerian period , the voice remained and still remains the supreme musical instrument , never faultless in technic , but most eloquent of all in expression . That we may take a just view and have a clear understanding of the limited expressiveness of early song and APPROA CH OF THE MONODIC S TYLE 87

opera , we must briefly glance at the conditions under which it was developed . The music of the early chant was without two of the most important elements of musical expres sion , namely, harmony and rhythm . A vague , formless melody was its sole possession, and its development continued to be purely melodic for 8 more than 00 years . And this melodic develop ment did not include rhythm , as we understand e e it , until mensural notation had mad its influenc dominant . Why were these expressive elements so slow in their rise to importance ? Because the church 1 chant aimed to be as impersonal as possible . Its purpose was religious ; its moods devotional and contemplative ; its musical character intentionally vague and colorless .

When the first solo chanters mounted the ambon , clad in their silken robes and with their long S hair falling upon their houlders , they entered upon the florid elaboration of melody without any thought of the possibilities of expression, but with minds intent upon the achievement of personal w hO glorification . That florid singing it iIt words was praised by S t. Augustine and others a s a method of expressing such religious ecstasies of 88 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

uplifted souls as text could not convey , must be accepted as the V iew of hearers to whom the nai ve utterances of an infant art were as the wisdom proceeding out of the mouths of babes

- a ll and sucklings . But even to day with our

modern sophistication , all our intimate acquaint ance with the tremendous forces of the dramatic c dissonance and the modern or hestra , we still confess the suitability of the ecclesiastic flo ridity to the publication of the rapt state of a mind

lost in religious contemplation . The early chant made no effort at the tender

expression possible in a pure cantilena . This sort of cantilena dwelt a mong the songs of the

people . It was a means at that time of small to f expression , be sure , but it di fered radically from the chant in that it did give voice to purely

human feeling . Tragedy, of course , was not yet

to be thought of . The musical materials for the

embodiment of the tragic passions were unborn . Without immense va riety of rhythm and the highest skill in the use of the dissonance the tragic music drama is impossible . Early secular song,

in which human feeling , as distinguished from

religious abstraction or devotion , was embodied , accomplished nothing larger in the field of ex

pression than the publication of tender pathos .

90 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

minor scales , has in this respect fewer resources . Though there is a certain nobility in the troub a o f dour melodies worthy imitation , the rhythmic scheme is less satisfactory ; it gives us no free speech in music , but brings us too near the A ‘ formalities of dam , Herold , Boildieu , the Dame ’ ‘ ’ ‘ ’ — 1- ih Blanche , Zampa, the Chalet fact , the type of opera popular in the sixties . I would almost venture on the formula— no better and no worse than all formulae which claim to summarize an aesthetic judgment— that a troubadour or trou vere melody i s of equal value with an air out of an old fashioned comedy Opera sung without an accompaniment . The “ naivete and grace of youth survived until the secular song succumbed to the influence of over cultivation . Even then some of the highly finished madrigals retain something of the earlier ’ a s spontaneity , in the case of Orlando Lasso s “ ” familiar Matona mia cara . The sentimental o f gallantries the age of chivalry, which animated the troubadour songs , were succeeded by the equally sentimental utterances o f the cinquecento . But of the grand passions there could be no pub lic i n a t o . The expressrve powers of vocal music remained within these narrow confines , as we have already APFROACH OF THE MONODIC S TYLE n O oted , long after the advent of pera . We must, t to herefore , be convinced that singing continued be pure legato with all its accessories , while any thing approaching strongly accented declamation was not to be found till a later period . The unkown modern art of vocal coloring was . Tur bulent emotions were disclosed in a bravura o f ’ s agitated character, such as survived in Handel “ ” day in the second part of But who may abide . We are now prepared for a general survey of the state of singing at the close of the 16th 1 and beginning of the 7th century. CHAPTER VII

BIRT H O F DRA M A TI C RE C I TA TIVE

A T the moment when the young Florentines began their experiments in the field of simplified

solo song, which led them to the creation of the I modern opera , the musical wealth of taly pos sessed a value and an extent too easily under

estimated . The music of the church was chiefly ornate polyphony ; the chant wa s decorated with

prolonged vocal flourishes , in which the form and

spirit of the ancient jubili were preserved . This ' species of chant was not without its effect on

the y oung explorers of the dramatic world , and their operas contain many pages of recitative con structed upon precisely the same musical lines as those found in these solemn intonations of the

sanctuary . Side by side with this ecclesiastic music flour i sh ed the secular song, which was written in the madrigal and allied forms , sung sometimes by o ne four or five voices , sometimes by only , with the other parts played on instruments . This 92

94 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING at the close of the sixte enth century if we refresh our memories of the developments of the lyric drama from its advent in the “ Orfeo ” of Angelo Poliziano down to the elaborate madrigal dramas which held the stage at the moment when the

Florentine reformers began their experiments . The departure of the musical play from the straight and narrow pa th indica ted by Poliziano was made in pursuit of spectacular splendors which appealed with irresistible force to the luxurious Italian mind . The festival plays pro duc ed in the sixteenth century contained pictorial features of astonishing character , while the music showed a clearly defined movement away from the approach to Hellenic declamation found in “ ” o the Orfeo toward the polyph nic style, either a with several vocal parts , or with single voice delivering the melody while instruments played the other parts . 1 88 B er onz a As early as 4 g Botta of Tortoni , prepared for the marriage of Galeazzo Sforza and

Isabella of Arragon a series of scenes , animated m sketches , ranging fro the story of Jason to that of Orpheus and ending with a ballet in which S a nd P a n Bacchus , ilenus , were the principal

figures . The Milanese historiographer Tristan “ Chalco calls it the most splendid a nd astonishing B IRTH OF DRAMA TI C RECITA TI VE 95

spectacle that Italy had witnessed . Mercury ,

Diana and Orpheus sang solos , which were in the inevitable madrigal form with the subsidiary parts given to instruments . Numerous adulatory spectacles of this sort were n produced , notably the two i troduced among the festivities at the marriage of Cosimo I and

Eleanora of Toledo . The music was composed a by Francesco Corteccia , Constanzo Fest , Mattio R ampollini , Pietro Masconi and Baccio Moschini . In one of these plays was the madrigal for voice ’ and instruments reproduced in Kiesewetter s “ Schicksale und Beschaffenheit des Weltlichen ” s Gesanges . Whether thi madrigal was subjected to the elaborate ornamentation of the singer we a r do not know, but we have the record of late decoration . In 1 589 at the marriage in Florence of the Grand Duke Ferdinand with the Princess Chris tina of Loraine there was a festival entertainment o f o under the direction the C unt of Vernio , at wh o se palace the Florentine founders of opera were wont to meet . The play was his own “ ” Amico Fido , which was interspersed with six spectacular intermezzi with music by various com posers . Kiesewetter reproduces three of them , e b f s on sung y Jacopo Peri , composer o the famou 96 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

Euridice , another composed by Emilio del G a lfreduc c i Cavalieri and sung by Onofrio , and the third by Antonio A rc hilei and sung by his

r O iginal.

Da l le pi u a l te

Victoria hi l i A r c e .

te sfe - re di c e

98 EA RLY HISTORY OF SINGING

duc e d I — a m , consider it necessary and in this I upheld by my friends— to have my music

printed . Caccini further informs us that his life among men of culture In Florence had brought him much

wise counsel and valuable experience , which urged him “ to place no value upon that music which makes it impossible to understand the e n words and thus to d stroy the u ity and meter,

sometimes lengthening the syllables , sometimes Shortening them in order to suit the counterpoint — a real mangling of the poetry— but to hold fast to that principle so greatly extolled by Plato and ‘ other phiIO SOph e r s : Let music be first of all ’ language and rhythm , and secondly tone . Then came to him the idea of a style of music which makes it possible in a certain manner to

speak musically by employing, as already said , r s a ce tain noble subordination of the ong, with now and then some dissonances , while however ” holding the chord by means of the sustained bass

and so on . ’ Caccini s artistic aims are indisputable . He strove to strike O ff the shackles of counterpoint a ll o in its forms , whether the elab rately written polyphony of the old madrigals or the still sur vivin c ontm unc tus a m ente g type of p , preserved B IRTH OF DRAMA TI C RECITA TI VE 99

in the fio r itur i of A rc hilei and her kind . Freed from such entanglements , song was to subor dina te th itself to a simple , expressive setting of e a the text . That we find in the declam tion of “

' first Operas no tumultuous utterance of htiiiia n a t \v passion is not astonishing . This new r as the product of minds steeped In the Hellenic studi eS R lo renti ne s of the enaissance . The young F had G in mind a resuscitation of the reek declamation , and the people of their dramas intoned their utter a nc e s with a half divine smoothness and dignity which irresistibly brings to our minds the char acter of the Greek sculpture . to the Caccini , however, was not averse use of florid melody when it suited his dramatic pur “ ” pose . Three Short excerpts from his Euridice S w may be quoted , the first to ho the style of his newly introduced recitative , the second a florid passage , and the third his treatment of the voices of two nymphs in a manner afterward found in s many hundred of pages of Italian opera ( p . t Here then let us pause, for the temp ation to linger amid the splendors of this period is great . It is a period crowded with personages of fame o and power ; of artists celebrated , caprici us , con in summate skill , wayward in manners ; of

-ub li princely patrons and cultured p c s . History 1 00 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

has long entitled the Handelian era the golden ” a e d g of E canto , but if perhaps the sun of vocal ’ a virtuosity attained its high noon in H ndel s day,

' it rose in its most bewildering glory in the first ' ' 'réa re y . Lo of the seventeenth century By the end of that cycle certainly the vocal virtuoso had reached a po s iti o n quite equal to that enjoyed by Caffarelli a nd Farinelli , and we may dwell with delight upon o the pregnant hist ry of the time . We must first

Non pian go non s os pi 1 0

O mi a ca r Eu ri d i c e c he sos i r a r. et a p c .

CHAPTER V III

W H A T T H E EARLY MA S TERS TA U G H T

O U R knowledge of the technic of singing at the close of the sixteenth and during the seven te enth centuries is derived from the works of theorists and teachers whose writings are neither ffi In Th di cult of access nor obscure style . e most important are these : “ G n B ovic elli R iova ni Battista , egole di Musica “ Motetti P a ssa i a ti ub and Madrigali e gg , both p ’ li she d in 1 594 . The dates of the author s birth a re and death uncertain , but it is clear that he was a distinguished teacher of singing in the last years of the Sixteenth century . “ Giulio Caccini ( I 560 ?- I 6 1 5? ) Nuove Mu ” siche ( 1 601 ) and in other works chiefly those of

Doni and del Valle, who recorded some of his teachings . Z Ludovico acconi , born in the middle of the nu sixteenth century . The date of his death is 6 1 . H 1 known is great work , completed about 9 ,

102 WHA T THE EA RLY MAS TERS TA UGHT 1 03 was entitled P ra ttic a di Musica utile et meces ” saria S i a l compositore si anco a l cantare . Chap

8 - 0 8 - 6 ters 3 4 treat of solmization ; 4 5 , rules

6 - 1 for singers with many exercises ; 7 7 , duties of

: - 80 maestra di capella and singers 74 , mutual qualifications of composers and singers . “ Johann Cruger ( 1 598 P rec epta e Mu ” s ic a e P ra c tic a e Figura li s Also in a “ German version ( 1660) Rechter Weg zur Singe ” kunst . Johann Andreas Herbst ( 1 588 Mu ” sica Practica sive Instruc to pro S ympho nia c i s

Francesco S everi Salmi Pas saggiati” Benigne de Ba cilly ( about 1 62 5 Re ’ ” marques Curieuses sur l A rt de Bien Chanter

The Frenchman mentioned last made some serious efforts towa rd systematic treatment of

French vowel sounds , but aside from that fol lowed the Italians as closely as possible . Herbst Crii er G and g , the two erman masters , were pro fesso rs of the Italian method of their time . B ovic elli and Caccini appear to have left us the most satisfactory records of the teaching of the period which may be thus outlined 1 04 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

1 . The pupil must first of all things know and i understand the text and endeavor to nterpret it . 2 . Long study of solfeggi was necessary for

this . The student must work the voice on six

tones in moderate force , and without any haste

in the direction of voice extension .

3 . First studies in voice were called accenti ( to be explained later) and these were followed

by short diminutions and the various ornaments , “ ” o especially the sl w tremolo ( shake) . “ ” E la m a z io . sc 4 and swell tone , which equal i z ed the registers and also imparted life to the

style . These will be explained later .

5. Accompaniments were not used in lessons in order that the pupil might acquire certainty

of intonation through indepe ndence . and 6 . Two three voiced solfeggi were much

used . They were held to be good for attack,

rhythm and voice extension . o 7 . Agility of v ice was sought , but only a moderate colorature was regarded as desirable .

Beauty of tone was never sacrificed . On the con

tra r . y, it was the first requisite In their consideration of the treatment of text the old masters gave serious and intelligent atten tion to the characters of the vowel sounds . In the preface to his “ Daphne” Marco da Gagliano

F S 1 06 EA RLY HIS TORY O INGING

f diminu o f the diminution . It di fered from the

tion not in character, but in quantity . The di minution was merely that common form of varia tion which transforms a simple melody into a running passage by breaking it up into shorter “ ” ’ Crii er s notes . Here is an accentus as found in g work

Ut re mi fa so 1a . , , , ,

The accentus was used also to give the pupil

a smooth legato . After the accentus the masters

taught the tremolo , gruppo and trillo . Finally ” came passages and complete colorature . The

accentus was taught first on six tones of the scale ,

% as shown in the example just given . No attempt was made at extension of the scale till the exe r ci ses within this hexachord could be correctly

sung . Extension was then made carefully with

two tones upward and one downward . Every

thing was sung with moderate force and slowly . Nothing about power c an be found in the teach

ings of the old masters . The volume of tone was WHA T THE EA RLY MA S TERS TA UGHT 1 6 7

a permitted to develop naturally . The te cher and the student concerned thems elves only with cor rec tnes s , which meant perfect intonation , pure vowel sounds and flowing smooth delivery . The range used in these extension exercises was from E to G or D to F for a high voice and correspond l ing y lower for low voices . When the new tones were introduced they were always sho rter than those already developed . Nothing was ever done which could impose the I/ o least strain n the singer . Everything was to be B ovi c elli done slowly . We find , Zacconi and Donati insisting on this a nd Zacconi in particular i In warns aga nst practising with a large tone . crease in tempo was allowed when the accenti could be sung perfectly at a slow pace . Pupils h were taught to sing piano wit a vibrant tone , n o t a hollow one . The masters were not entirely to agreed as the use of vowels in solfeggi . Zac S coni advocated teaching all the ounds , open and closed , from the beginning ; Caccini believed in using only the open ones . But all agreed that voice cultivation should begin in the middle , and that extension should be made only when this part could be correctly used . This practice was lost in the eighteenth century , but is now generally in use again 1 08 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

A 0 fter such scale fragments as those shown in the C rii ge r exe r c 1s e the old masters began to give their pupils work in intervals . Caccini advocated the use of the third as a beginning— the second having already been acquired in the scale frag ments of the accenti . Some teachers used as ndin c e . g thirds , others descending Caccini de l r n o c a ed o . that rule c uld be made However, he showed a preference for the employment of as c en in d g thirds . He says that the upper tone “ must be derived f rom the lower by a S low swell ” Th ex re i on . e s s ing p is somewhat obscure , but not unintelligible . He felt that a good intonation could be obtained better by rising than falling thirds .

e sc la m a z io The , upon which Caccini and several others laid so much stress , was a device intended to heighten the expressiveness - m Wll b ea seen Its technical basis , as i , was a perfect comma nd of the breath . The device was a com bination o f diminuendo and crescendo , somewhat mechanically formed , bu ”

su fi stfi it. . the text gg d. In the beginning of his experiments with the e sc la m a z io Caccini favored a strong atta ck followed by a diminution of tone

and at the close of the phrase a slight crescendo . He declared that a little increase of breath when

1 1 0 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING ished in the beginning of the seventeenth century, tells us that the e sc la m a z io should be sung broadly and reposefully . The singer was allowed great latitude in its delivery in regard to time and rita rda ndi its modifications . He made his own e and accelerandi . Durante giv s us the same information . It will be clear to singers that the esc la m a z io was a comprehensive device which embraced not only certain technical features , but the basis of wa s expression by tonal nua nce . Technically it an exercise of the first importance in breath con trol ; and , as it included management of the b reath in phrases of some extent and range , it was also a means of equalizing registers . In this latter office it resembled some o f the exercises recommended in our own time by the younger i nfic a nc Lamperti . Its S g e in the department of vocal expression need hardly be described , since every singer of this day knows the value of a perfect command of graded dynamics . Here are

% e sc la ma z io 1 two examples of the ( p . These are taken from Caccini ’ s “ Nuove Mu siche ” and the technical marks are those given by Goldschmidt . The first tone in the second example has the direction diminish the voice . “ ” The expression c rescere e scemare la voc e wa s M %

WHA T THE EARLY MAS TERS TA UGHT I I I

' sc la m la n uida . E sc la m. i u v E . g p

mi o d eh non la n - gui

Esc la m i ri tosa sp .

do ve son fug gi

a m i vi va Escl p u .

Deh d o- ve son spa - Ti ti G li oc h chi d e qua - li er

1a ti Io son c e ne r - o ma EA RLY HIS TORYT OF SINGING

o equivalent t messa di voce or swell tone . This swell could be carried fro-m pianissimo to fortis simo and back, but it is improbable that a singer would attack the Deh” in the quoted madrigal e sc la m a z io at full voice . In the languida the customary range of dynamics extended from pianissimo to forte, back to pianissimo and thence esc la m a z io up again to mezzo forte . In the viva the range was from forte to pianissimo and Up again to mezzo forte . cini taught the esc la m a z io immediately after the accenti , a fact which shows that he regarded it as one of the fundamental elements o f voice development , as well as of style . This brings us to a consideration of the views m to of the early asters in regard registers . One ’ “ ” finds in Cerone s Il M elopeo ( 1 6 1 3 ) informa tion about the knowledge of registers in his time , but mo r e explicit propositions are those laid down by the teachers , especially Caccini . This master recognized two registers , chest and head , which ” “ ” fin he called voce piena and voce te . From his writings it becomes clear that by chest register he meant all the tones now called chest and me dium I . t is therefore more precise to speak of ’ Caccini s two registers as natural and head . These nd e to o a . l h allowed w men , falsetti boys Ma e

EA RLY HIS TORY OF

Most of the early teachers agree with Caccini as to registers and their use ; but Pretorius , Herbst a nd Criiger forbid the use of head tones for all voices . Perhaps in this characteristically Teu tonic a ttitude we may find a point of departure looking toward the subsequent d ivergence in the h vocal styles of the Latins a nd t e Germa ns . CHAPTER IX

TH E ORNA M E N TS A ND PA S SA G ES

WE come now to a vi ew o f orna ments and passages as taught by the old masters . Caccini introduced the ornaments into his courses im l i mediately a fter the e sc a ma z o . It has already been pointed out that some of the ornaments , a nd such as the trill , were very old , the basic elements of the seventeenth century S ystem o f colorature , known to church singers o f the ninth “ t 1 in ou century, were set for h in 555 the F te a ra Fonte o H g o f Canassi del g . e indicated fio rituri and diminutions for flute and said that o they were also suitable for voices . A c nvention aliz ed placing of embroideries on principal and semi - principal cadences was extant in the last years of the sixteenth century . These decora tions now began to be used not only on cadences but other parts of the melody . The singer was warned not to embroider semibreves a ccompanied ’ by text . Nevertheless to content one s self with ’ ornamenting only cadences betrayed one s igno r a nce and weakness . S pecial types of vocalises for different voices I I 5 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING were in use and much time was occupied in a c quiring not rapid and brilliant , but smooth and elegant delivery of the various ornaments em lTh . e ployed in the art of the period ‘ terminology of the ornaments underwent many changes . Si i Terms used at one time to gn fy certain forms , such as trillo or tremolo , were used a little later n to sig ify others , and confusion is likely to arise in the mind of any student who does not observe

the dates . But through the last years of the six teenth and nearly all of the seventeenth century the names of the ornaments were not applied as n we apply them . Caccini begi s his instruction in

ornaments with the trillo , which , he says , should

be first undertaken with the broad sound of A . ’ so - The called trill of Caccini s day , however , was

not that of our time . Here are two examples , one from Caccini and the other from Herbst

Tri llo cord in to Ca ini c cc . , a g

lo ' Tril He r t. , b y b s

Ve D i , Ve

1 1 8 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

Tremolo a ccordin to H rbst a nd Cru er , g e g .

Tremolo a sc endens.

o s n te of equal and unequal values , but this seems im o f a n e b e a matter of no technical p t c . Herbst lieved the tremolo ( our trill ) the best method of developing agility ; but other masters appear to have regarded all the ornaments as essential

to this purpose . These teachers began the use of these ornaments early a nd used them very

often . Caccini , as we have noted , advocated the “ ” l employment of ah for tril practice , but Donati s and Zacconi used also E and 0. All the teacher

seems to have agreed on the exclusion of I and U . his Caccini , like our modern teachers , gave pupils an exercise p reparatory to the gruppo “ ” ra b b a ttuta He called it di gola, which ” f Ra r . b b a te e is di ficult to translate , of which “ ” ra b b a tutta is the noun , means to half close and ” gola means the throat . The figure was this Caccini ’ s bitterest complaint in his “ Nuove ” Th Musiche is about the misuse of passages . e

Ra b a ttu ta d i gola . THE ORNAMENTS AND PASS AGES 1 19

passage, or diminution, as we saw in Chapter II ,

was one of the oldest devices of vocal music , and had come to be lavishly employed without regard

for the text . It was the disregard of the text ff which o ended Ca ccini . The practice had begun in the Papal chapel at least as fa r back as the n n inth century, whe the appoggiatura, syncopa

tion, mordent , portamento and other graces of

song were used indiscriminately . In the final years of the sixteenth century the church singers freely introduced passages in their polyphonic n music , and after the i troduction of the dramatic recitative seemed more anxious than ever to make the sanctuary a parade ground for the baroque style which the innovations of Caccini and Peri r threatened . In the cou se of time the attempts to rival instruments in the execution of passages led to the creation of difficulties beyond the

powers of singers . But in the seventeenth cen tury we find much of the thought of the teacher directed to the preparation of the pupil for the

delivery of florid passages . The groundwork was laid in the practice of the

accenti , already described . The ornaments fol o lowed , generally in the order previ usly men io t ned . The method of that time was akin to our Wn n o . The singer bega with simple vocalises 1 20 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING and advanc ed by careful gradations to the most difficult ones . Vocalises were written b y a ll the l “ eading masters . Cerone g ives many in his 11 M l ” e o eo . A p damo Banchieri , the madrigal drama c 100 for omposer, wrote vocalises the four prin c i a l p voices . His method ma ybe deduced from a single fragm ent

P a ssa e b B nchieri g , y a .

B ovic elli gives the clearest instructions about the use of passages . He says they should be employed only where the text permits them and should always be so constructed that the Words c a n be understood . The quantities of syllables must not be changed and a passage begun on any syllable must continue through it . He says that the use of ornament must regard the movement o f the other voices and the laws of counterpoint a nd harmony . He cautions the singer against H repeating passages in the same rhythm . e should learn how to vary them by changing the

EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

This syncopation was known as the Lombard b e figure , and apparently the Italian theorists lieved that it originated in the neighborhood of

Milan . It was common in seventeenth century m music and even survived till the ti e of Handel , who ( for example) uses it in an air for Delilah “ ” ’ B ovic elli s in his Samson . instructions con tinne with the warning that there must be no

haste in the delivery of passages . The attack and

the rhythm must be carefully observed . Colora

ture must be moderate in pace , not too quick . The tones must be clearly separated so that each

one is distinguishable . Apparent ease in delivery , perfect time and rhythm were absolutely essential

in colorature . Zacconi lays equal emphasis on

this . The old school was decidedly opposed to R crackling fireworks . epose and elegance were

demanded . In regard to the breath the old teachers were “ v rl In not in the least ambiguous . S e e his Salmi ” P a ssa ggi ati says that in delivering passages of semiquavers the singing must be swift and viva c i ous , but the notes must be continually dis tingui sha b le and the separation between them THE ORNAMENTS AND P AS S AGES 1 23

must be made dal petto e non dal gola . Gold a s La vo ix schmidt, as well Lemaire and , believes that this means that they are to be sung with the chest and not the head voice . But it seems more probable that, when he says the notes are to be spiccate” “ from the chest and not from the ” to throat , he means the end is be reached by management of the breath and not by muscular action of the throat . a s S i The rule for the composer, for the nger, was that the sense of the text must decide where a pass ges should be used . But the composers and h to singers bot broke this rule much o often . Accenti and passages were to be executed in one a bre th . If a passage was composed of notes of l w s unequa value , it a permitted to take breath h after a long tone . But t e masters all urged pupils to learn how to sing a phrase in one breath ’ ” l ha b b ito un fia to to far di cantarle in , quote ’ B ovic elli Donati s words . demands that singers shall always think about the breath and complains sharply about those who “ pigliano ad ogni poco ” il fia to — v di note take breath e ery few notes . Zacconi declares that two things are to be sought by those who wish to practise the profession of a nd singing, namely, chest throat , the former to supply the power to sing a passage through to 1 24 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

its giusto termino ( correct conclusion) and the

other to furnish the ease in delivery . B o vic elli objects to the use of the half breath

among a succession of quickly moving notes . He declares that it sounds badly and prefers to change the passage so that it can be sung without resort i to this device . Finally the tak ng of the breath B ovic elli must be inaudible . sarcastically remarks that it is very b a d to make more sound with the breath than with the voice . Five years were required by most masters for the training of the pupils . Special vocalises were written by nearly all of these instructors and naturally those produced toward the end of the seventeenth century were more brilliant than the early ones . But the masters continued to require the pupils to vocalize without the aid of instru ments in order that certainty in intonation might b e acquired . For this purpose many vocalises

for two or even three voices were written . We ma y note two produced toward the close of the century

. G Solfeggiamenti a Due Voci , etc , da iovanni 1 6 a . Buon ventura Viviani , Firenze, 93 si Duo Tessuti con diver solfeggiamenti , scherzi , G e G ia mb e rti R etc . , dal Signor iusepp omano ,

R 168 . ome , 9

1 2 6 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGI NG The masters had much to say about deportment Za rlino and hygiene . complains of linguistic errors and the absence of dignified bearing on

the stage . He advises the student to read his air before S inging it in order that he may under stand the words and manage the voice accord

B A SS .

CONTRA LTO. ( Highest Male a nd lowest Female)

xtended later to TENOR . e

ALTO. MEz z o S OP RA NO.

P NO exte d d later to SO RA . n e

writt n ( Contralto a nd Tenor a n octave lower than here e )

in gly . The style must be governed by the mean

ing of the s o ng and the vowels must not be altered . Other masters agree with him in advising the student to avoid using much vo ice in beginning Th a song in order not to weary the lungs . e THE ORNAMENTS AND PAS S AGES 1 2 7 pupils are cautioned not to try to sing too high lo u w. or too They sho ld eat only light foods , filb e rts n and avoid almonds , and wal uts , which “ ” dry the chest . Singers should not eat before singing, and between closely succeeding appear

a n c e s . only vegetables Falsetti , soprani and con tra lti should take only very light wine , because wine impairs the purity of the voice and imparts sharpness to it . Tenors and basses , i f young, o and above all in the spring, sh uld dilute their wine because undiluted the wine heats the stomach and makes the mouth dry . In winter on the con tra ry one should drink wine just as it comes nk from the vine . The old Should dri wine “ ” straight all the time A singer Should not

‘ write much . The position of the body bent over

a desk or table is very fatiguing for the chest . Cerone sa ys that this is th e reason composers a rarely h ve good voices . If the singer must write , let him use a desk at which he can stand . Man y more details of the teachings and pra c u the tice o f the old masters co ld be given , but n esse tials of the famous Italian method , which

trained the princes of the vocal world , have been Se r e t fo th . In considering the achievem nts of the singers thus trained we must bear in mind that volume of tone was not sought and h eavy orches 1 2 8 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

r i t a t on was unknown . The re were airs for in singers with powerful voices , but usually one

strument , preferably, the trumpet, was employed

a . to est blish a standard of comparison Purcell , Bach and some others wrote s uch airs ; but in the latter years of the seventeenth century the tendency was to reduce the instrumenta l aecom pa niment of solos to the smallest proportions in order that nothing might interfere with the public

enjoyment of the voice . e in we see h n l K eping this mind , t at orma o devel pment of the scale , conservation of force , perfect management of the breath and c onsum mate ease a nd smoothness in the delivery of pas sages and ornaments were certain to be attained

by the method of these old teachers . Theirs was t the true golden age of bel canto , for all hat Por

pora, Fedi , Pistocchi and their contemporaries knewthey owed to the great masters of the early

seventeenth century .

136 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING patrons and in a measure dictators of the realm S of music , male opranos already challenging the attention of the world a nd c la iming that imperial crown which wa s ultimately set upon their a rro

gant brows .

The scene is animated , somewhat confused , f somewhat di ficult of appreciation , because the perspective is so long that this thickly peopled background spreads itself before us in a flat mass f Al of figures which we separate with di ficulty . a ready, however, we h ve noted the advent of such o artists as Peri and Caccini , comp sers and singers , who were actively concerned in the birth of the

monodic style of the young Florentine school , a

style which , as we have seen, was not artificially m ade, but legitimately descended through an a rtistic line . In our view of the secular part song we have seen elements of the new solo style gradually Shaping

themselves into the monody . We have also found ’ the first a dvance of the woman s voice to its

normal position , and the relegation to singers of the business of filling the outlines left in some

parts by the composers . But the most significant feature of the progress of this time was % the lifting into prominence of e the individuality of the artist, a thing impossibl MALE S OPRANI AND OTHER VIRTUOSI 1 31

in the polyphonic era . To the soloist was now gradually given the duty of imparting vitality and human expression to the somewhat cold and stately parla ndo of the composer . Not only do we read of such famous singers as Peri and

Caccini , who wrote operas and other music , but ’ A rc hilei of Vittoria , the Euridice of Peri s work, G Francesca Caccini , daughter of iulio , herself a S celebrated oprano and a composer , Adriana L Baroni , and her illustrious daughter eonora , and o m Loreto Vitt ri , the ale soprano who bestrode the world of song like a Colossus . Of him there t will be more to say later . At presen we need note only that after several years in the home of Nicola Doni in Florence , during which time his vocal cultivation wa s pursued to its com letion p , he emerged into blazing publicity, so that one of the Donis tells us that he actually intro duc ed a new style of singing in Florence , where s il aTl the t e p a t e was born . His fame travelled to Rome and the Cardinal Ludovis i induced o Cosimo de Medici to let him g to that city . It was there that he became the intimate friend of E r thra eus o Nicias y , his biographer, from wh m E r thr quotations will presently be made . y a eus ’ was so deeply moved by Vitto ri s impersonation “ ” in the Magdalena of Ma z z oc hi that he ca used 1 32 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING a statue to be e rected to the singer a nd the Char acter . Cardinal Ludovi si exercised a monopoly in the a o f gifts of Vittori . It was delightful custom Lu o Cardinals at that time to own s ingers . d vi si cherished his treasure and permitted only an ex elusive society of aristocrats to hear him . His eb eian c c was no art for p ears , declared the l i tic c es a s . As in the fifteenth century the pas s iona te sensualism of the Italian mind had re vealed itself in the drama and theatrical music, so in the sixteenth it sustained its vitality, but ff I expended its ecstasies upon di erent objects . n u s the fifteenth Princes , D kes, petty nobles , lord of the church and bourgeois adventurers into the region of aristocracy rivalled each other in the spirit of their writings and the luxury of their private entertainments . The comedy, elegant s ongs , concerts of instruments , glittering ballets, i f ntricate pantomimes , all af orded a field for the e s a s mployment of the theatrical art , including t a s ed onishing machinery , as well for import singers and instrumentalists . In the seventeenth century the idol o f the Operatic stage first unveiled himself to these wor s a hippers of the rtist, and no prince of the church r s egarded his train as complete without a oprano,

134 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

Verovi a fo r , of the convent of the Holy Spirit , several years amazed the world by her vocal feats , while another nun, whose name is lost , but who belonged to Santa Lucia in Selce , was almost

’ equally famous . The cognoscenti of the time deemed these perfo rmances by nuns to betoken a noteworthy artistic progress . n The seve teenth century was rich in singers , but for the moment we need note the names of only those who belonged to its earlier years , B ia ndi M a l i i o Nicolini , , Mario Lorenzino , and g g . Of Vittoria A rc hile i and Adriana B a roni some m a thing has already been said , but we y find a certain piquant interest in the sober assurance of Pietro della Valle that Adri a na had in one respect e the b tter of rivalry with Vittoria , in that she was very beautiful , whereas the other was not so at all . In the social life of Italy these singers were accorded a position worthy of nobles . The most exclusive palaces were opened to them and they mingled with the mighty of the land . Sometimes the lordly patrons made themselves ridiculous , but In lordly patrons ha ve done so all ages . Music came to be regarded as the foremost of the arts a i to be cultivated in the home . Music l academ es ,

as they were called , were held in many houses , MALE S OPRANI AND OTHER VIRTUOS I 1 35 and there are interesting accounts of those held V in the residence of Tintoretto in enice , where his daughter Marietta was the charming hostess . Nothing in the history of this period and the Handelian era so astonishes us as the glory of the male soprano . It seems inconceivable that f Ca r e stini “ S ene s ino G ua Ca farelli , , Farinelli , , dagni ( the original Gluck OTfeo ) and other im mortal names were the appellations of men who sang with boys ’ voices and even sometimes wore ’ Yet petticoats and assumed women s parts . such was the fact and these artificial and unreal singers were the idols of the public . The history of the operatic male S Opra no is interesting, i f not altogether palatable . His pred ec es so r was the falsettist who imitated the b oy soprano by using falsetto tones . Spain produced a line of clever users of the falsetto voice , whose Singing early attracted the attention of the author R ities of the oman Church . The Sistine Choir was then reenforced with singers of this type e and in recent years , in the cours of the reforma o tion of the musical service , the auth rities of the Roman Church have restored the use of the fal setto voice . It was in the fifteenth century that the com posers of polyphonic church music found them EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING selves in difficulties by reason of the limited com o f pass male voices , for at that period women were not employed in choirs . The introduction of falsetto singing enabled the composers to ex O tend their vocal scale to three ctaves . Previously two it had run about , ending with the high B of h the tenor clef . In the sixteenth century t e n un Spa iards , who apparently had a method e known to others , ranged through the entire scal o f the female soprano . It was the sweetness and pregnant qua lity of this nondescript voice which made it dear to the church and the falsettist reigned in Rome till the artificial male soprano F a l i ( the evirato ) came to supplant him . sett sts a re still heard in some English and American c r r athed al choirs , just as they were always hea d a quarter of a century ago in the negro minstrel n companies in this cou try . It is not difficult to account for the great favor which the male soprano enjoyed . The children set apart for vocal careers began their studies very young and mastered the technics of their art at an early age . The artificial voice preserved lOn its purity and elasticity for a g period . It was not uncommon for one of these singers to have a career lasting through forty years . The facility with which their voices executed florid music en

1 38 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

ness , and male sopranos were used quite capri c iousl y . ’ “ The title role of Monteverdi s Orfeo ( 1 607 ) C a o was sung by a male S opra no . But h T n and ’ “ ” P la to Ma nelli s are basses . When Andromeda was produced at the Opening of the first public O pera house , the Teatro San Cassiano , Venice, 1 6 N e tune 37, the composer sang p and his wife

A ndTo meda M a P eT . A eTc T ll the other parts, y, S ea Ja n a A S I S a Vw s Tea . , , and , were sung by men When Rossi ’ s “ Orfeo was introduced to Paris 1 6 in 4 7 by the Cardinal Mazarin, the shepherd A Tis tea S was sung by the already famous Roman male soprano Marc Antonio Pa squa lini The male soprano held his place even in the early “ ” i 1 0 operas of Mozart . In M tridate ( 77 ) and “ ” 1 2 Lucio Silla ( 77 ) there were no low voices , and some o f the male roles were given to male

sopranos . Before speaking of certain stars of the extinct variety we may ask ourselve s aga in why this sort

o f singer suddenly became so popular . Those of us who have in recent years heard male Sopranos in choirs have perhaps been astonished to find that we were not in the least disturbed by the

apparent abnormality . We have listened with pleasure and a vague appreciation of the fitness MALE S OPRA NI AND OTHER VIRTUOS I 1 39 o fthe v o ice to the impersonal character of church music . But without doubt we should be shocked i f we heard Julius Caesar, Napoleon or even Th Romeo S inging with a soprano voice . e music lovers of the seventeenth century had no such

feeling . The familiarity of musical ears with the voices of boys created a desire to retain as long as possible the juvenile quality of the sound . Even the best and most skilful fa lsetti sts could not furnish a perfect replica o f this tone . There fore the method of preservation which seems revolting to us was introduced . The children set apart fo r vocal ca reers began their studies very young and at an early age had m a stered the tech nic of their art . The artificial voice a s we have noted preserved its purity and elasticity for a long period . The extended careers of these singers gave them a perennial and inevitable popularity . The facility with which these voice-s executed florid music in duc ed composers to give them every o pportunity for display of their agility , and this continual ex hib itio n of brilliancy was the influence which to ward the end o fthe seventeenth century led to the composition o f op e ras containing only florid roles . To trace the history of the evirato in detail would a be unprofit ble , but something may be said about 140 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

few a of the great ones . The first artificial male S oprano to be appointed to the Papal Choir was G o R e the Padre irolam ossini , who enter d the body 1 1 in 601 and died in 644 . T his record defines the period in which the evirato began his extra i h ordinary career Italy, whence he was to extend it over Europe . Nothing more seems to be known about this all R first of the ossinis , for once buried in the retirement of the Papal Chapel he was lost to history . But. those who appeared on the operatic stage left tangible records behind them . A descriptive catalogue of these singe rs would ex hi i b t a striking monotony . It will be more satis factory to confine our attention to two or three of the greatest . The first to win fame was Loreto l i 1 8 t S o eta n 8 . a t Vit ori , born at p 5 He was ta c hed o to the h use of Ottavio Doni , father of the musical historia n . He studied under both

Na nini s and also Suriano . Afterward he entered the service of Cosimo de Medici a nd sang some o f the principal roles in Florentine representa n tio s . In these he excited the greatest enthusiasm . 162 2 In he became a singer in the Papal Chapel , but in spite of this made nume rous appearances 1 6 0 in public . He died in 7 , and there is a monu R m u . ent to him in the Ch rch of Minerva , ome

1 4 2 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

The fa mous schools which were formed after the birth of dra matic recitative did not teach the r a c a r eciters merely to ch rm the , but paid much wa s attention to the appeal to the intelligence . It deeply felt tha t the office of the art of recitative was to express justly the sentiment of the poetry . The singer received something of the training o f a dramatic poet . At the famous school of M a z z o c hi Virgilio , one of the celebrated musi e u two w ia s and composers of the time, hours ere devoted every day to the study of letters and the students were taught not only to sing, but to com pose . We can readily understand then that the a e broad , noble, classic declam tion of the arly G ’ “ period , not unlike the recitative of luck s Orfeo ” ed Euridice , was delivered by such a master as Vittori in a manner quite justifying the raptures of the hearers , to whom this beautiful art came with the splendor o f a revelation .

Vittori was not only a singer but a composer .

l . He wrote severa works , of which only his “ ” i s Galatea has come down to us . It a master

o f a rt. piece the recitative The poem , also by

Vittori , is fresh , sweet , natural . It is not unlikely that Handel knew the work well , though no ’ mention i s made of it in S edley Taylor s book on ’ ut Handel s indebtedness to other composers . B MALE S OPRANI AND OTHER VIRTUOS I 1 43 this absorbing figure in the early history of sing

ing must be set aside , or passing mention may

extend itself easily to a chapter . A younger contemporary of Vittori was the

celebrated Baldassare Ferri , born at Perugia , 6 1 1 0 6 . December , He became a chorister at 1 2 1 2 Orvieto in 6 . In 1 6 5 a Polish prince carried ’ o ff 1 66 him to his father s court, whence in 5 G re he was transferred to ermany , and finally 1 680 n turned to die in Italy in . E thusiasm fol him lowed everywhere . Sonnets by the hundred

' were written about him . People covered his car r ia h ge wit fl owers if he sang but a single song .

He was a handsome man, with a beautiful soprano voice , marvellous in its liquid translucence and B nt m i . o e its flexibility p , the historian of music , wrote of him “ One who has not heard this sublime singer can form no idea of the limpidity of his voice , of his agility , of his marvellous facility in the f execution of the most di ficult passages , of the n justness of his intonation , the brillia cy of his i trill , of his nexhaustible respiration . One often heard him perform rapid and difficult passages with every shade of crescendo and diminuendo .

Then , when it seemed as if he ought to be tired , he would launch into hi s interminable trill a nd 1 44 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

mount and descend on it all the degrees of the chromatic scale through a range of two octaves l with unerring justice . And a l this was but play

for him , so that the muscles of his face did not f indicate the least e fort . Moreover , gifted with

sentiment and imagination , he imparted to all this ” singing a touching expression . Truly the colo rature singing of the evirati was

something worth hearing . Here we may with propriety overstep our chronological limits in order to gain enlightenment from a moment’ s

view of a later period . All the histories are prolific in stories of the a rt f vocal of Ca farelli and Farinelli , the two greatest male sopranos who sang in the Ha ndelia n

period . But it seems better in continuing this retrospect of the vocal past to revive memories o f singers of whom less is usually written . Care ’ stini s splendid a rtsaved the day for Handel when Farinelli was singing at the opposition theatre 1 in 733 . The composer had not been able to get him in the previous season because he was engaged n S enesino in Mila . Handel took instead and this r ini singer created a furor in London . But Ca est

was probably a greater artist . One learns what S ingers received in those times from a letter writ r b ten to M . Walpole y Owen Swiny. He quotes

EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING scores furnish presumptive evidence as to the

‘ range of the voices . No extremely high notes a appear in these old scores . In a brilli nt cadenza a r nell sung by F i i and reproduc ed in Mr . Kreh ’ “ ” b i el s Music and Manners the highest note is an the upper A . The lowest is E . But in air ’ “ ” from Hasse s Artaserse sung by Fa rinelli we fOr find low B . A cadenza written by Hasse the famous female contralto Vittoria Tesi runs

m c an d . W e only fro D to E , an o tave one tone owe the preservation of these records to the taste a G a n of the English poet Thom s ray, who made hi s invaluable collection of airs of s time . Thi h ow n . n t H . collection is in e possessio of Mr . E

Krehbiel . Ca restini To return to , we find all authorities agreeing that he sang rapid passages with remark b rea tlv im a le skill , and that in later life he g i ov man p ed his cantilena . A of excellent appear ance , he made a careful study of stage action, and wa s a master of the pantomimic art . His n Ma e l vocal study was u ceasing . n m says “ Although his voice was naturally beautiful he did not neglect to perfect it by study and to make r it suitable to eve y kind of song, and he raised it to a point so sublime that he established in enius a nd his youth his fame . He had a fecund g MALE S OPRANI AND OTHER VIRTUOS I 1 47 a discernment so delicate that despite the excel lence of everything he did his great modesty prevented him from being satisfied . One day one of his friends finding him at study and applaud ‘ u : ing his singing, he t rned to him and said My e s friend , if I do not succe d in atisfying myself , how can I satisfy others ? ’ d Mancini , it shoul , be noted , heard most of the singers of whom he writes and was qualified to pronounce opini ons of them . He was a vocal in 1 16 1800 teacher, was born 7 , died in , and published his book Prac tical Reflections on ” 1 6 Florid Song in 79 . This book is the chief n authority on the singers and singi g of the time . h a s a . It been tr nslated. into English Francesco ’ To s i s book on flo rid song was published much ’ % earlier than Mancini s and contains , alas no sketches of singers . It also omits things abo ut vocal art which many of us would like ve ry much o to kn w . It would not be especially profitable to recount G in detail the lives of such artists as rossi , Orsini ,

Velluti and others . Their careers were much a one like , and their art was of general type . Wherever we read in the wo rks of those who a heard these f mous vocal artists o f early times , whether it be in the records of professional musi ~ 1 48 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING c ia ns like %uantz , historians of high musical u education like Burney, or c ltivated amateurs like o Ed ec umb et L rd Mount g , we g the same idea

” of their singing . These male sopranos and con tra ltos e all sang with exquisit technical finish , s with thoroughly equalized scale , with suavity and elegance . e The admirable Dr . Burney wrot an essay on u criticism , and conveniently introd ced it into the third volume of his compendious history . This e ssay throws much light on the musical perform u da a ces of its y by telling us what was expected . In regard to Opera and Operatic singing the author says : “ In hearing dramatic music little attention i s pointed by the audience to anything but the airs S a nd and powers of the principal ingers , yet if a nd a the character , passion import nce of each personage in the piece is not distinctly marked r not c and suppo ted , if the airs are ontrasted with one another and the part o f every singer in the ff in same scene specially di erent measure , com a nd the r is not a pass , time style , compose com plete master of his profession . “ G r ood singing requires a clea , sweet, even and

flexible voice , equally free from nasal and gut tural defects . It is but by the tone of voice and

1 50 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

finitesima l gradations of loudness and softness which play such an impo rtant part in the nuancing of song . In the Handelia n period certain arias were introduced into operas ch iefly for the sake of giving singers opportunity to displa y their skill in this technical feat . These were called arias di portamento and they were slow move ments in which the voice slid languorously from one tone to another and l nge ed w t a swell m i r i h on each i portant note . Such airs were suited only to sentimental scenes or to moments in which tearful melancholy wa s to be expressed . Taste in embe llishment is also mentioned by ’ Burney . Singers of Handel s time , like their la predecessors , were permitted wide titude in the matter of adding ornaments to their numbers . But we must bear in mind that the eighteenth century singers were as a rule soundly trained in music and knew how to make their embellish ments . Here again the experience of their auditors exercised a wholesome restraint upon ; them for pretty nea rly every operagoer knew what was permissible and what was not .

In fine , a word may be said about the touch ” ing expression required by Burney . W e read over and over of the wonderful effect of the singing of these ancients upon their hearers . MA LE S OPRANI AND OTHER VIRTUOSI 1 51

People were deeply, even violently, moved by

. W them hen, however, we come to examine closely the comments of contemporaries upon the traits of their art and to refer to the scores of the operas in which they sang we are brought to the conclusion that their loftiest flights of ex o pressi n, precisely like those of Vittori and Ferri ,

were in the domain o f tender pathos . “ Burney must be read literally . Touching ex ” “ ” pression, pathos , these were the features of i i the eloquence of the Farinellis and Ca rest n s . There is nothing in the writing of those who heard them nor in the scores of the operas them s elves to indicate tha t any approach toward the publication of tumultuous elemental passion was o even attempted . Surely we may c nclude that with the first entry of this fundamenta l element of tragedy into the Italian opera the male

sopranos and contraltos were doomed . Their existence was prolonged by a distorted state of public taste which regarded the opera as a field for the display of vocal technic and voices entirely

' nd entle sweet a g . When dramatic verity claimed recognition the incongruous mixture of high voices had to give way to a normal distribution in which masculine and feminine qualities played their appropriate parts . CHAPTER XI

T H E SEVE N TEE N T H C E N T U RY I TA LIA N OP ERA

WI T H OU T question the seventeenth century was the most importa nt in the early history of e o op ra . For that reason its relati n to the art of singing possessed a significa nce not to be over O k l o ed . The century began with a genuine lyric drama ; it ended with a superficial spectacular opera . It began with vocal ideals founded on pure classic beauty ; it closed with singing which might well be called baroque at its worst . Its first years saw the musical drama cherished as a lofty art by a limited but cultivated society of intellectuals ; its decline beheld that same form degraded to the level of a mere show for the entertainment of an amusement loving multitude . It opened with the composer exercising freely the divine prerogatives of creative genius ; it finished with the singer deified by the populace and the composer relegated to the service of fashioning the crown of laurels for his lofty brow . The fine musical perceptions of Monteverdi

1 54 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING him producing the pompous pages of his spec “ ’ a ul r L In o r i n i P 1 1 t c a c ona z o e d o ppea . From 6 6 he had truthfully written his signature “ Claudio

” ’ Veniz ia no 1 6 Monteverdi , , and from 39 , with “ ’ his L Adone composed for the new Teatro San n Cassia o , he had indissolubly united himself with the young army of seekers after public applause . In the years between the revelation of Monte verdi ’ s “ Orfeo” and the presentation of his “ ’ ” L Adone the youthful Italian opera underwent the a remarkable transformation . Nor was move ment in any manner impeded by the appearance o f the clearly defined vocal forms of Fra ncesco l Cava li . The solo D elizi e contente in his Giasone

1 6 - e ( 49 ) is a well shap d aria da capo , and from it undoubtedly descended the long line of airs Ye of the Handelian era . t the fact confronts us that the majority of the opera composers of the early Seventeenth century were writers of s elaborate and often ornate recitatives . In thi they merely followed the fashions of the eccle i i s a st c music of their day . One finds a striking similarity in construction between the psalms of Severi ( 1 6 1 6 ) and the recitatives of Stefano ’ “ ” “ Landi s S a n Alessio La Catena ’ “ d Adone by Domenico Ma z z oc hi Diana THE S EVENTEENTH CENTURY ITALIAN OPERA 1 55

Schernita by Emilio Co rna c hi ( 1 62 9 ) Erminia ” sul Giordano by Michaelangelo Rossi ( 1637) and others . Those who wish to examine this music will find whole scenes quoted in that excel lent work “ Studien zur Geschichte der Italien ” im 1 G ischen Oper 7 . Jahrhundert by Hugo old

schmidt . It is not essential to the present work that quotations should be made from these scores . The point to be observed is that within a few years the obliteration of the pure lines of the young s tile paTla nte by the florid decorations of vocal ornament had made astonishi ng advances and the virtuoso had assumed a prominence which even the supreme singers o f the first operas sacrificed

to the noble simplicity of the ensemble . The cultivation of the cantata was a powerful factor in the development of the public taste in “ song in the seventeenth century . The cantata da camera” supplied to the homes of the cultured in seventeenth century Italy what the art song o gives to those of t day . It owed its existence

to the popularity of the newly invented recitative , and indeed in the beginning was merely a short dramatic narrative told in recitative by a single

voice . In time the aria was introduced and by

degrees the form became more elaborate . The 1 56 EARL Y HIS TORY OF SINGING

conce t a as o t e class c pe od , suc Men r ri f h i ri h ‘ - as ’ “ ” ’ d els s ohn s I A nfelice and Beethoven s h , per ” fido , were the lineal descendants of the cantata . The greatest master of the cantata form in the seventeenth century was Giovanni Carissimi 1 60 ( 4 Alessandro Scarlatti , who was ’ probably a pupil of Carissimi in the latter s old age , was also a prolific writer of cantatas . His “ ” “ ” Il G o Il Corila no earliest , such as ermanic and , e were oft n , as his biographer E . J . Dent notes , “ R little more than lectures on oman history , set ” to recitative with an occasional aria . Doubtless the popularity of the cantata in the first years of the century was due to the fact that lyric music had not yet come into the presence of the general a public . It was a pleasure of cultiv ted society .

The people knew little of musical art , but the works of the distinguished composers were cher i shed in the pala ces and were preserved for us

in the libraries of nobles or churches . That they were not widely disseminated is proved by the fact that more than one manuscript copy of a i work s seldom found . We must remember that the technic of vocal art was far in advance of that of instruments and the only virtuoso known

to the amateurs of the time was the singer . Con sequently he was expected to exhibit all his powers

1 58 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

sought to occupy in Italy . It was while Mon teverdi was still active in the world of music a s that the influence of Venice began , we have k in intimated , to ma e itself felt the development a of oper , and the opening of the Teatro San 1 6 Cassiano in 37, which has already been men tioned , marked the beginning of a century of efflo res en c t style . The opening of the theatre the gave opera to the general public, and character of that public is admirably suggested in the im passioned words in which Symonds in his R enaissance in Italy describes Venice . “ Free , isolated , wealthy, powerful ; famous throughout Europe for the pomp of her state equipage and for the immorality of her private r manners ; uled by a prudent aristocracy , who spent vast wealth on public shows and on the maintenance of a more than imperial civic ma

jesty ; Venice , with her pavements o f liquid h chrysoprase , wit her palaces of porphyry and a a nd marble, her frescoed fac des , her quays a w L squares glo with the costumes of the evant , h o her lagoons afloat wit the galleys of all nati ns , W i her churches floored ith mosa cs , her silvery domes and ceilings glittering with sculptures

bathed in molten gold ; Venice , luxurious in the o f se light and color her atmosphere , where a THE S EVENTEENTH CENTURY ITALIAN OPERA 1 59 mists ro se into the mounded summer clouds ; arched over by the broad expanse of sky , bounded only by the horizon of waves and plain and dis a nd tant mountain ranges , reflected in all of its many hues of sunrise and sunset upon the glassy s urface of smooth waters ; Venice , asleep like a mira cle of opal or pearl upon the bosom of an undulating lake— here and here only on the face of the whole globe was the unique city wherein the pride of life might combine with the lustre of the physical universe to create and stimulate in the artist a sense of all that was most sump ” n tuo s in the pagea nt of the world of sense . S n This was the Venice of the ixteenth ce tury, the Venice of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese . I f the middle of the seventeenth century saw this proud state stripped of something of its ancient power , it found her still masterful enough to hold u o absol te d minion over the Adriatic, to defy the R a anathema of ome , and to conquer the brilli nt arms of the a ggressive Turk . Venice was still rich , self centered, luxurious , sensual and inde pendent . To her appetite for spectacle the bud ding opera appealed with all the seductions of an art addressed to at least two of her greedy senses . And her mood was prepared for the new strains f h o . S e n the regenerated lyric play , too , had bee 1 60 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

wearied by the performance of tragedies set to

funeral music ; and the opera, with its rapidly

developing riches , its gorgeous stage trappings , and its growing display of ” the dazzling feats of new the voice , opened to her a world of artistic form and color The Opera with which the Teatro San Cassiano ” 1 6 A was opened in 37 was ndromeda , book by er ra rl Benedetto F , music by Francesco Manelli . The same writers supplied the novelty for the “ next season and in 1 639 was produced Le Nozze ” di Tito e Peleo , book by Oratio Persiani , music by Francesco Cavalli . For many seasons there after Cavalli was the favorite composer for this theatre . One now unknown work of Monteverdi , “ ’ Il R d U li sse e itorno in Patria , was giv n in ” 1 6 1 A rla nna 4 , and his was heard at the Teatro 1 6 San Moisé when that house was opened in 39 . ’ But G a lva ni s admirable history of the Venetian theatre of the seventeenth century does not con tain any mention of a performan ce of his “ ” Orfeo . Such a work would surely have been too chaste for the seventeenth century Vene s tian . In what manner the ope ra seized their fancy may be gathered from the speed with which lyric theatres were built . Besides the operatic theatres

1 62 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

than empty decoration . One air for San Alessio

in the second act is especially admirable . The duets and trios are numerous and nearly all Show

insight and interpretative ability . According to the fashion of the time which called for “ comic ” relief there are two comic duos . From this ele ment of the serious opera the opera buffa de velo d e e . p , as the historians hav clearly shown

Landi wrote skilfully for the voice , but he must have had a bass of extraordinary equipment for

the role of the demon , which extends from C

below the F clef to the F above it . The choruses i are written in madrigal style in six , e ght and

even more parts . But choruses dwindled in opera scores as the

century advanced , and in the final years the rule

was to have only one, and that to finish the work . High vo ices gradually assumed the supremacy which they retained in Handel ’ s day and the opera became a vocal concerto . The style of the latter j years of the seventeenth century is exemplifiéd in such a work as “ 11 Cariere de se Medesima by Alessandro Melani ( 1 68 1 The music is very s n o light and flo rid . The bass sing umer us and long roulades . The song of April for soprano in Act 2 is a bewildering display of rapid ascend sta c ing and descending passages , vocalises , trills , THE S EVENTEENTH CENTURY ITALIAN OPERA 1 63

R cati and holds . The role of oberto must have been written for a soprano with a voice extremely light and flexible . It is the chief part , but the others are by no means unimportant and all are

florid . At the close of the seventeenth century the opera differed little in construction from the can

u . tata with its long d ets , arias and final chorus The voices were principally SOpra no and alto l ( male and fema e) and a few tenors . The bass fell more and more into disuse except in operas

- r ter of buffa or demi c a a e type . Music had ceded her position to the virtuoso . It may be interest “ ing to n ote in passing that in the score of Cesa re ” b Vra ndini N 1 00 in Alessandria y Aldo ( aples, 7 ) ’ Co relli s the influence of violin school appears , and there is a r emarkably fine obbligato to a soprano solo . After a survey of the works of his immediate predecessors one is not astonished at some of b e the productions of Alessandro Scarlatti , who gan his artistic career when Opera was in the “ N z z state just described . In his Le e e col ” Nemico is an aria called the Canto di Ro s s i nuol the g o . In it the composer assembled all accomplishments of the art of singing . The soloist was accompanied by one lute and one violin EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING in order that the voice might be left in high relief of h according to the style the time . The orc estra was heard only in the ritornello . All the known ornaments and vocalises were introduced in this astonishing air , among them a chain of trills mounting without pause from F to F of the treble clef . The correspondent of the M aTc a Te de a c e resident in Venice in the last years of the seven te nth e century was much interested in opera . His letters convince us that toward 1 700 the Itali a n musical stage concerned itself less and less with ’ e lyric drama , and the singer s only comp titor was the scene painter . At the beginning of the eigh teenth all in century this apparel , decorative and strum ental O in ' , was stripped from the pera order to leave the vocal virtuoso fac ing his public with nothing Save his art and the suppleness of his o f voice . In commenting on the paucity choruses the writer says that the Venetians do not need them since they enj oy so much elaborate poly phonic church music with instrumental a c c om a nim ent a p (theorbos , viols , little org ns and clave in c s ) . “ Singers , he says , are called virtuosi . The Italians dearly love high voices and have not so much taste for basses The Venetians , like the

CHAPTER XII

DIS TRIB U TION O F VOI CES I N O P ERA

S OM E insight into the ma nner of distributing voices in musical compositions has already been obtained by the reader . But a closer scrutiny of this matter is now practicable . The selection o f voices for the interpretation of roles in dramatic works appears to have been go verned a t times b y caprice a nd at other times by a feeling for propriety . But at whatever period we ex a mine the use o f voices we shall find that public taste ha d a certain amount of influence and that i n the seventeenth century it operated entirely to the deterioration of dramatic art . The musical drama bega n with a normal em r ployment of voices . Men sang male characte s and with masculine voices . If women did not

a e . always imperson t women , at least boys did

Later we find abnormality triumphant . The pub lic , having lost all appreciation of dramatic verity and regarding opera as a mere field for the ex hib ition c a red ' nothin of vocal accomplishments , g

166 DIS TRIB UTION OF VOICES IN OPERA 1 67 at all about the timbre of a voice so long as it was beautiful and skilfully used . We should undoubtedly be amazed to find Julius Caesar singing S oprano or Achilles con tralto O , but the pera goers of the late seventeenth century and those of the “ golden age of bel canto ” would have been very much astonished if either of them had been a baritone or a bass . At most they could have been tenors , but neither in that case would have been the principal personage in

a . the drama . He would h ve surely been a Soprano It is impossible to tra ce step by step the change from the normal to the abnormal because we have not sufficiently full records of the casts of the earliest works . It is safe to say that voices were ’ “ ” rationally employed in Poliz ia no s Orfeo The male soprano had not risen to fame in Italy at that time . Baccio Ugolino , who sang ” n the title role , was a ca tore a liuto and may have been either a tenor or a baritone . Who sang the other parts we do not know . But there is no reason for supposing that they were entrusted to voices unsuited to the characters . The few musical examples which have come down to us from the various intermezzi and spec ta c ula r musical plays of the sixteenth century show that the composers treated the voices largely 1 68 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

h according to the circumstances of eac occasion , but with a harmonic plan similar to that of r ’ modern part w iting . Sopranos sang women s

roles when there were any . If not , the principal

lyric voice was the tenor . In the madrigal dramas of O ra z z io Vecchi and his pupil Banchieri we find that female voices represent the utterance o f

female characters and male voices that of men . When the Flo rentines invented recitative and began to write their lyric dramas in the new

style , they followed Vecchi in the use of the

normal quality of voices . They caused men to ’ sing men s roles and women those of women . The progress of vocal part writing had been steadily toward the domination of high voices in the a dventur harmonic structure , and with these ous young composers there wa S ' no thought of depriving soprano and tenor of their commanding

positions . But aside from the purely harmonic

reason there was the dramatic . The Florentine innovators were not trying to focus the attention of the cognoscenti on music planned to exhibit

the resources of the human voice , but to place before the cultivated hearers a lyric drama in S wa s which the emotion, the ituation or the scene, a the domin ting factor , and the medium of com munic a tion a fluid transparent musical speech of

EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

S pina were written on the oprano clef , Pluto and

Charon on the bass . Pluto in all his manifesta tions has been a bass ever since . When the male SOpra no entered the field his position was not uncontested . We read of several famous tenors in the early years of the seven teenth century . But the male soprano slowly encroa ched Upon their territory and t he end wholly displaced them . The ascent of the male soprano to the supreme position we must attribute not only to the general decadence of Italian taste In the period of her literary and artistic decline , but to the fact that the trend of this taste was in the direction of admiration for ornament . The literary phrase maker and the baroque architect were the creators of artistic products funda mentally akin to the luxurious vocal style which slowly superseded the noble recitative of the Florentines and to which the fluid and voluptuous male soprano voices lent themselves with such ? signal success .

The result, as we have seen , was the rapid development of a public demand for exhibitions of all the powers of singing voices and a Speedy extinction o f appreciation of the dramatic possi b iliti h o f es of t e opera . The first works the Italian composers for the lyric stage possessed a DIS TRIB UTI ON OF VOICES IN OPERA 1 71 dignity a nd sincerity which have never been sur n Yet passed i the theatre . in less than forty yea rs almost every vestige of dramatic verity was oblitera ted and the opera transformed into a field

for the display of vocal technic . The rise of the male s oprano voice to supremacy was a part of di str ib u the whole change , and in the astonishing tion of voices in the operas we find a demonstra tion of the complete indifference of the public to ' anything resembling dramatic illusion . S a n o When the Teatro Cassian , the first public e V 1 6 opera house , was op ned in enice in 37, the “ A ” first opera to be produced was ndromeda , the book by Benedetto Ferra ri and the music by Fran cesco Manelli . The composer sang the role of

Neptune , and his wife , Maddalena Manelli , was the Andromeda . All the other parts , including

Mercury , Perseus , Juno , Venus and Astrea , were allotted to men . This convinces us that already the male soprano and contralto were in the full 1 6 blaze of their glory . In 47 Ca rdinal Mazarin carried a whole company of Italian singers from Rome to Paris and introduced the Italian opera to the French with a performance of Luigi Rossi ’ s “ ” o o Orfe . Atto Melani , a ten r with a voice of

m n a . oderate ra ge , s ng the title role A soprano known as La Checca was the Euridice . The 1 72 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

A ri steus shepherd , , was sung by the famous male P li R A a s ua ni . soprano , Marc ntonio q osma Mar ' V a tini was the enus , and male soprano, whose

n to . ame has not come down us , was the Nurse How swiftly the new order of things came into domination may be guessed from the casts of two operas by Stefano Landi . His work on the standard mythological theme and entitled “ La ’ ” d O r f o V 1 6 1 Morte e was produced in enice in 9 . Orfeo was a tenor ; Euridice a female S oprano ; i S O ra no o h Thet s , p ; Calli pe , mot er of Orfeo , Philenus e A soprano ; , t nor ; Charon , bass . ll the men were represented by men , all the women by ’ “

. A women In the same musician s San lessio , R In 1 6 produced at ome 34 , we find the roles : S distributed thus San Alessio, male oprano ; Mar Curtio tin and , two pages , sopranos ; Madre , female soprano ; Sposa, female soprano ; De monio , bass . It would not profit to follow the catalogue of n operas to the end of the ce tury . The employ r ment of the male sop ano continued, as all stu dents of musical history know , till the beginning of the nineteenth century . The famous inter ’ prete rs of Scarlatti s heroic roles and the im ’ personators of Handel s warriors and demi gods were men who sang with the voices of women .

1 74 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

in this depa rtment of his art we owe the in

exhaustible vitality of his masterpieces . We must “ not forget that he himself described Don ” “ G n b uffa while iova ni as an opera , f Die Zauber ” Her G e . In r e was a true erman singspi l his wo k , two find as in the other , we the voices normally

employed . The protagonists are tenor and S O ra no p , while the colorature soprano and the bass are accessories to the action just as surely as they are in “ Les Huguenots” of many years la t er . The immense popularity of the opera buffa may be seen in the list of productions in a Single theatre in the latter part of the eighteenth cen S m 1 8 1 8 tury . At La cala fro 7 4 to 7 9 inclusive there were 46 productions of which 2 7 were opera

buffa works and two were farces . Although the employment of the singing voice in the opera buffa yielded little to the a rtific ialities of the pomp e ous op ra seria, it could not entirely escape its u infl ence . The supremacy of the high voice was for a time almost as clear in the comic as in

the tragic opera . A typical score of the middle exam e of the seventeenth century, for fl , is that “ ” Da i il b Ri s i li of Male Bene , text y Cardinal p g Ab b a tini osi , music by Maria and Marco Maraz z oli , produced at the marriage of the Prince of DIS TRIB UTION OF VOICES IN OPERA 1 75

‘ 1 Palestrina and Olimpia Giustiniani in 654 . Here we find that the characters a re Leonora and M S arina , opranos ; Fernando and Diego , tenors , o a o r and Tabacc , baritone high bass , probably f of the bu fo type . In the time of Alessan dro Scarlatti it was cus toma ry to employ in almost every serious opera “ what the modern dramatists call the comic re ” lief . This led to one singular selection of voices . The comedians were usually an old woman and wa an old man . The former s almost invariably s impersonated by a tenor, and thi despite the fact that in the same opera the tragic female parts might b e sung by artificial male sopranos . The ’ comic old woman s companion , the comic old f I o . n man , was a bu fo bass the development of this character arose the time honored custom of the Ita lian b -uffo s of frequently breaking into the falsetto . It was originally the pipe and whistle of the old man . It is n ot essential to give further details about the use of voices in the Scarlatti period , since all students of musical history know that the reign of the male soprano was in its glory still later in the days of Handel . In the Handelian era it was almost the first law of opera that the prin c ipa l male singer ( primo uomo ) should b e a so 1 76 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

ra no The o d m l p . secondo uomo or sec n a e singer was either a S oprano or a contralto and the third W a tenor . hen a fourth male character was ’ Thre ’ omen s introduced he was usually a bass . e w roles were the required number and the prima s donna was always a high soprano . Sometime “ ” 1 2 s as in Teseo ( London, 7 3 ) all the male part were in the hands of artificial sopranos and con r l t a to s and they had all the important arias . Dur ing the entire performance of such an opera not

one masculine note was heard . It is impossible to determine the moment at which the transition was made to the modern o cust m of distributing voices in opera . Plainly enough the present method was not new; it wa s , older than that of Scarlatti and Handel for Peri

and Ca ccini used it . The modern masters merely returned to the method which respected dramatic

. Veluti verity At La Scala , for example , we find , the the last of the great male sopranos , singing principal role in Rossini ’ s “ Aureliano in Pal ” 1 1 mira when that work was produced in 8 4 . In 1 8 1 S s 7 the records how Donzelli , the famou ’ P a e r s tenor , singing the chief male roles in “ ” ’ ” A Ma ometta G chille , De Winter s and en ’ “ ” ra li R o 1 1 e s oderigo di Valenz . In 8 8 the tenor he was t distinguished Giovanni David. a nd i n 18 19

1 78 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

disappeared from La Scala . The distribution of voices in opera was no longer determined by the necessity of providing the artificially prepared virtuoso with music suited t o a br illiant display of his powers . A reaction had set in and the trend was toward dramatic characterization . Without doubt the romantic movement gave the o new pera an impulse in the direction , but we c annot discuss this topic here . The custom became established of giving the role of the hero to a tenor, that of the heroine to a soprano , while the darker voices of the contralto and the baritone were habitually employed to utter the sentiments o f the unfortunate or wicked personages in the story. CHAPTER XIII

EA RLY IDEA LS O F SI NG I NG

TH E limits of this work have necessarily been s overstepped in some place , yet the temptation to enter Upon a comparison of old and new ideals S of inging need not be resisted . The student o f vocal history may easily trace the development of the modern style by observing at what period in the march of operatic composition the orchestra began to rival the voice as a n instrument of expression and by noting when the conventional ism of the familiar classic subjects began to give way to the passionate and even violent tales o f

. H the the romanticists e may trace , i f he will , influence of Victor Hugo a nd Byron on the lyric drama, and he may with profit study the histories s R of such singer as Pasta , Malibran , ubini , and others of the world famous group whose art glori fl ed the Theatre des Italiens in the early years of the nineteenth century . If he examines the pages o f the old com he s a posers, will seek in vain for uch num 1 80 EA RLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

a ber as Di quell pira, that time honored ’ “ triumph of tenors in V erdi s Il Trovatore . The exclamatory violence of this music , its shrieking / climax in the high C, and its proclamation of an emotion tumultuous and tragic are all foreign to the style which dominated operatic art, and i G consequently all sing ng, up to the time of luck and Mozart . W on ith all their genius in expressi , their new and admirable use of instruments as means of dramatic expression , their fidelity to the purposes of the poets whose texts they set , and above all their consummate mastery of the art of dramatic declamation , these two masters were in style the logical products of a century and a half of d evelopment , of which the first impulses origi h ated in the ecclesiastical chant . W hen the modern romantic movement began, the manner of Mozart and that of Gluck under

a . G went subtle, but significant alteration luck had voiced dramatic feeling in sweeping and mag “ nific ent D é du melodic utterances , such as ivinit s ” ha d Styx . Mozart lifted the ancient recitative to the grandiose level of his orchestrated declama tion in such imposing scenes as that of Donna “

A . nna beginning , Don Ottavio , son morta He had also demonstrated that the ancient colorature

182 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING variegated flowers of song which had been their e ra chief delight in the o f improvised descant . This polyphonic music was written by all the great masters of the period and in this style we find most of the first attempts at lyric drama which led to modern opera . The introduction of the monodic song began a great new epoch . With this introduction disappea red the primitive vocal art of the middle ages, an art nevertheless difficult and demanding of the ' singers a serious knowledge of music a nd a solid vocal technic . When the singers entered the new field of activity provided by the opera , they carried with them their pure elegant cantilena , which was the basis of church music singing, together with their Skill in ornaments and their ability to improvise the long flourishes of their scroll work cadenzas , such as they had used for their alleluias . The most cursory examination of the recitatives of the earliest Operas and the ecclesiastic music of “ ” P a s sa i a ti the same period , such as the Salmi gg of Severi , will serve to satisfy the student that there was absolutely no technical difference b e n tween the two styles o f composition . Co se quently there was no need of any addition to the n established technic a d style of singing . Any church S inger could S ing the opera music of his EARLY IDEALS OF S INGING 1 83

time . The only novelty he would confront would be found in the nature of the text and the emer gence of human expression . We see the florid element of vocal art speedily finding its way into the dramatic music and finally coming to be the general delight of audiences when opera became a public amusement . At the same time the smooth and elegant delivery of i c antilena reta ned its place in the system . In short, the cantabile with all that its name implies in sustained equality, smoothness and beauty of tone , in finish of phrasing and delicacy of accent, r was one facto of the vocal art of this time , while the other was flo ridity with all that its name implies in the way of clarity , equality, undulatory grace and airy suspension . That these two ele ments were distinctly marked in the contrapuntal music of the S ixteenth c enturv is clearly shown in any performance of the works of the masters by such organizations as the Musical Art Society .

When the monody was introduced , these ele ments were transferred to music for the solo voice and became the means of expression known to the first opera composers . The expressive power of this music has been underrated . It is underrated to day because when it is heard it is ’ heard ina dequately . The pages of Monteverdi s 1 84 EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING Orfeo contain some of the grandest declama

“ tion ever conceived by a musician , and even on its the concert stage , dissociated from context r and its essential operatic su roundings , it should f make an extraordinary e fect . But the modern singer does not know how to Sing it . In fact he does not even try to sing it ; he tries to declaim it in the modern way and that way is foreign to its style . This recitative demands a perfect legato , to which the modern declamatory style is radically hostile . It calls for long sweeping

o , r phrases , a deep breathed , rgan like utte ance, a grand and inspiring flow of noble tone . This was the fundamental feature of the first operas . But the insatiable appetite of the hearer for sensuous amusement soon stripped the royal r robes from this priestly a t. And when the opera house wa s created and the public invited to the feast , the opera of the seventeenth century began its long and futile struggle to effect a compromise b etween its original artistic purpose and a desi re to satisfy the publi c ear . It was a sorry time in the history of Italian thought . The political condition of the country, with the heel of the Spanish oppressor on her throat , was pitiful , and her writers have left behind them a record of their utter failure to

1 86 ‘ EARLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

There are four men and eight castrati , brought l ” le . over by M . Cardina The castrato might b sing any kind of part . He could e called upon R m to impersonate a oman e peror or a woman,

Perseus or Achilles , Jupiter or Mercury . The absence of individuality in his sexless song eu ti rely escaped the attention of a public trained to regard music as an aesthetic abstraction and the voice as a technical instrument. Applying this consideration to our examination S of the ideals o f singing cherished in the ixteenth , mo s o seventeenth and t m f the eighteenth century , we more readily perceive that sculpturesque

end became obscured only when a voluptuary public , insatiable in its desire , clamored for more and more amazing feats of teenth centur in e f n i t uish db o to e , ts g t limp d pur t m per ect i s i i ‘ x v f M M N W W W M J

a desideratum . The astonishment of the b ea rer by the emission of a great number of notes in a second be gan with the a vocal gymnastics of the l tter part of the century . In the first part the aim of the singer was to do EA RLY IDEALS OF S INGING 1 87

everything elegantly and with finish , but not n wa s swiftly . His emotio al range limited to the grave , the contemplative and the pathetic . In previous chapters we have reproduced com ments on the art of some of the great exponents of seventeenth century S inging . We may return to this art to glance at the achievements of the great Leonora Baroni , characteristic of her time . Some of her contemporaries Cha rged her with “ ” a s S being her own press agent, we hould ex press it to - day ; but it is difficult to believe that in a period in which the art of advertising was so crude she could thus have chained po-pes and world famou s poets to her triumphal chariot wheels . ’ Leonora s mother , Adriana , was also a famous

singer and the teacher of her daughter . The 1 6 1 1 latter was born in . Interesting facts about her are assembled in Romain Rolland ’ s delightful ’ ” d A utre fo i s Musiciens It was in February, 1 6 44 , that Mazarin despatched an order to the French ambassador at Rome to send Leonora to Paris and to give her a thousand pistoles for the

journey and as much for a yearly allowance . Mazarin had dwelt long in the Barberini Palace in Rome and there had heard operas of the new school and also this apparently incomparable 1 88 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

Ma u a rs singer . g , who wrote a work with a cum “ b e r som e She title , says that was the wonder of the world who made me forget my mortal o state , so that I thought I was really am ng the ”

S s . angels , haring the joys of the bles ed One easily suspects that this divine Leonora had something more than voice and art to enchain IX “ the souls o f the male sex , for Pope Clement “ called her a sweet S iren and made particular mention of her glowing eyes . Forty Italian poets “ made a book of verses in her honor : Applausi G ” Poetici alle lorie della Signora Baroni . But this was not all . John Milton attended an operatic performance at the Barberini palace in “ 1 639 and straightway indited a Latin sonnet Ad ” L n r R n m eo o a m omae Ca ente .

“ Altera To rqua tum cepit Leonora poetam cujus a b insano it m re ur n c ess a o f e s . Ah %mi ser ille tuo u to felic ius a evo erditus et ro t r q an p , p p e ” te L onora for t % , e , e

S i nified These literary adorations , however , g less than the more ac tive proceedings of the Car

dinal with his thousands of pistoles . He had L eonora carried to Paris , where he lodged her i n the house adjoining his own and caused her

Réponse fait a un curieux sur le sentiment d e la musique ’ t lie esc ri te Rom le r mi r Octobr 1 6 de l I a . , a e p e e e , 39

1 90 EA RLY HIS TORY OF S INGING

G and possessed a husband, one iulio Cesare Cas tella ni , of whom singularly little is recorded . Sig

nora Baroni was not an opera singer, but , like A rc hilei her famous elder contemporary, Vittoria ,

S . a virtuosa di musica da camera, a chamber inger Some of the French courtiers did not greatly

admire her art at first , but her majesty the %ueen put the seal of her approbation on it and Silenced

all opposition . The prima donna was accorded access to the queen ’ s apartments at all hours and the royal hand bestowed upon her “ ten thousand

francs to dress herself in the French style , a collar

of pearls , earrings and a warrant for several thousand crowns ’ worth of jewels and a warrant ” n for an allowa ce of a thousand crowns . What a pity it is that we have not similar accounts of the Parisian experiences of Anna Ma na rini no , a sopra of the middle of the seven teenth who to century, went with Cavalli the French capital to “ create” leading roles in his O a a popular per s . But Since we h ve made such a point of the elegance and finish of the S inging of these years and insisted that power was not a n e desideratum , let us ot that when exceptionally big voices were found, they were not left idle . the Filanti , a tenor robusto of second half of

the seventeenth century, was noted for the tre EARLY IDEALS OF SINGING 191

m endous volume of his voice and a c c o rdingi y composers wrote airs for him in which he could

display it . The production of airs of a florid

type with trumpet obbligato was not unknown ,

but those written for Filanti featured power . In ’ “ ” Le renz i s S ila nti an air of this kind in g cylla F , “ r as our newspapers would say , c eated a sensa ” tion . The same style of composition was not unknown in England and Henry Purcell ( 1 6 58 1 6 95) wrote several such airs . One notes in passing the success of Mr . Bowen in the great aria with two trumpets in “ The Libertine De ” stroyed — the hero being no less a personage than

Don Giovanni . We find also that the performer o f vocal feats could not always obscure the his trioni L ro h is c . e c o genius Marthe , a singer at G a m 1 6 8 1 6 the rand Oper of Paris fro 7 to 97, shone by her talent as a tragedian and by the grandeur of her declamation rather than her vocal virtuosity . Her contemporaries praised the r her splendo of her eyes, the nobility of gesture and the dramatic puissance of her delivery . All these early artists labored vigorously to reach their ends . They knew no Short cuts to fame and fortune , these singers of the golden age . There seem to have been no teachers who a dvertised to secure engagements at the Venetian 192 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING

’ O one ea r M hi pera houses after y s study . a z z oc lifts the veil of seclusion from a seventeenth cen tury Roman school in which church singers were trained : “ The pupils were obliged to devote every day one hour to the practice of difficult pieces in order to acquire the necessary experience . Three hours were distributed , one to trills, the second to pas

to o . sages , and the third rnaments During an ’ other hour the pupil worked, under the master s e a in direction , placed befor mirror , order that no he might acquire contortions of the eyes , the face or mouth in singing . “ s Such were the occupation of the morning . In the afternoon theory was studied for half an an the hour, hour was devoted to study of counterpoint and a nother to the study o fletters . For the rest of the day the student exercised on the clavecin or in the composition of a psalm , motet or other kind of piece according to his ” talent . It is in the labors and the ideals of the S ingers and teachers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that we find everything fashioned and defined that became the glory of the famous eighteenth century virtuosi . We cannot discover in the summaries of the teachings of the schools

1 94 EARLY HIS TORY OF SINGING te enth century contain the entire materials of the technic of song . Furthermore it is undeniable that the artistic ideals which supported the lyric art of the early years of the seventeenth century ought to endure as long as the art itself . To sing beautifully demands first and foremost a per fec tly pure tone delivered in a sustained and

i . smooth stream . This is the true r ver of song Upon its surface the shimmer of sunlit wavelets o f ornament or passage work shall float calmly and securely , diversifying its beauty, but not i fundamentally a ltering t . The singer who has mastered what the teachers ’ o f B ovic elli s age were teaching will find no dif fic ult y in delivering the measures of Mozart . Nor will he , if he intelligently applies the fundamental law , find himself in trouble when he essays to publish the musical thought of Wagner or Verdi . IN DEX

Ac c en s 1 0 1 06 . tu , 5, ll l 6 A e u a 1 . i ,

A en 1 6 . m , Ar e s 1 1 ia , b ginning of, 53 , 54 .

i L 1 8 . Baron , eonora , 7 sses 2 Ba , 9 . l t i et e Be c a ts e s s . n o , b ginning , 99 q

how 1 02 et se . , taught , q B ovic elli his ea c s I 1 8 et se , t hing , q .

s r r 2 . Boy , choi , t aining of , 3

B e r 1 1 0 . r ath , cont ol of ,

B e Dr . r es sc s 1 8 urn y , Cha l , de ription of good inging , 4 .

m a c n G r s c a s . C ci i , iulio , a ti ti i of , 9 7 his ea c s 1 0 — 1 1 t hing , 7 4 . a a nfl en e r 1 Cant t , i u c on ope a , 55. 1 2 Cantori a liuto , 7 , 7 . firm us 6 1 a s . C ntu , 59 , C a restini G a n 1 — 1 6 , iov ni , 44 4 . i 1 6 a s s m G a . C r i i , iov nni , 5 a a Fra c s 1 C v lli , n e co , 54 1 96 INDEX

h n n h n l a a t o a 8 . C t , ip , ex ess onle ss 8 88 pr i , 7 , . flo i 6 1 2 1 r d , , 9 , , 4 , 3 4 . na m en a on 2 2 1 — or t ti , 3 , 4 , 4 , 4 3 4 5. imit e t s e e . 1 1 pr iv , 4 q , . h l I I s c oo s . of , , 7 s lla c y bi , 7 , 9 . ha n ers fa m s 6 6 2 6 C t , ou , 4 5, 4 , , 3 . ho s e a rl C ir , y , 33 . m c r eli e se i s e a 1 Co i f, in r ou op r , 75. n r n s D s n C o t a u c tus ee e c a . p , t

h I a a e a . Cort , M rg rit , 33 e n s ee Desc 1 Count rpoi t , ant , 33 .

esc 8 8 et se . 6 D ant , 4 , 49 , 5 q , 5. Pr 6 Des es s . , Jo quin , 7

D m nu ns 2 6 2 . i i tio , 5, D s i o c es 1 66 i tr bution of v i , .

i 0 e Esc l m a z o 1 8 et s . a , q

E e ss on d e el e xpr i , v opm nt

k s f 2 a o . m r , 7 Ex s n e 1 0 e . t n io , voic , 7

F s se . al tti t , 43 F 2 a se o . l tt , 9

Fe i B a ld a ssa re 1 . rr , , 43 l Fr o a . ott , 73 , 74

1 98 INDEX

ess e 1 0 M a di voc , 9 . e er la 0 1 2 1 Mont v di , C udio , 7 , 5 , 53 . hi s s e 1 8 . tyl , 4

h s f 1 0 o o . Mout , p ition , 5

z a use o c es 1 . Mo rt , of v i , 73 l a s er s e 1 . tr n ition to mod n ty , 79

s c a s r ra . Mu i l play befo e ope , 94

k 6 O e e es . gh m , Johann , 7

O e a e nn n s 2 et se . p r , b gi i g of , 9 q

ffa r n 1 6 2 . bu , o igi , n its Ch r e 1 2 et 1 e ur se . 7th c t y , a act r , 5 q l en a n 1 6 2 1 6 c a s a s . vo l di p y in a c d t , , 3

h ses firs l c 1 8 1 60 . ou , t pub i , 5 , O r e 2 a e s s . rn m nt , o dered di continu d , 4

1 6th 1 e 1 1 et se . and 7th c ntury , 5 q

P s s re E art inging, p ad of , 74 ; in ngland , P 8 8 a s s howw e . rt ong , ritt n , 7 , 3

a ss es c s . P ag , obje tion to , 97 6 S ee . p d of , 5

s 1 1 et se . tudy of , 9 q P e a 6 . ri , J copo , 9 P h c s 6 et se . 6 . olyp oni ong, 5 q , 5

a es 1 82 . qu liti of, P 2 ortamento , 4 .

Ra b b a ttuta di a 1 1 8 . gol ,

Re a h 2 et se . cit tive , birt of , 9 q INDEX 1 99

t s Re e s e s e e . citativ , t p toward , 77 q

Re s e s e k we e 2 8 . gi t r , arly no l dg of ,

c 1 1 2 et se . Ca cini on , q R h 1 2 2 et e s . hyt m , q R m a e r 2 a s . o ni n l tte , 7 R a 2 . om nus , 7

S A ess I 6 1 6 . carlatti , l andro , 5 , 3

S en dra m a tic a 1 8 1 . c a , S c h n t 1 et s se . ola Ca torum , hi ory of , 3 q S h n fir e s l s 1 1 s s n s . c ool , i gi g, t tab i hed , , 7 S u s I th r 6th e r es 8 et ec lar compo ition , 5 and c ntu i , 7

s eq .

h c er e 8 c ara t of arly , 9 . S n ers c n l era 1 6 1 6 i g , o tro op , 3 , 4 . ess na Ch h 2 1 prof io l in urc , . s r nk 1 c a a . o i l , 3 4 n n ea l 1 e 1 2 trai i g in r y 7th c ntury , 9 . w e fi s en e 1 2 om n r t m tion d , 7 , 7 . S n a l ea s 1 1 86 ingi g, e r y id l of , 79 , . esc e d rne 8 b 1 . good , d rib y Bu y , 4

e e s I et . mod rn , b ginning , seq s 2 olo in church , 3 . S s h e e . i tin C ap l , 3 4 S e 1 2 1 2 . olf ggi , 4 , 5 S s e e en e r et se . 1 8 olo ong, m rg c f om polyphonic , 77 q , 3 . e a rl r oth en 8 2 y c tury , . S n l 1 o s e a sec a et se . . g , rly u r , 49 q , 7 , 73 S a fl i 2 ong, e rly or d , 5 . 2 00 INDEX

S o a no e s ee e s pr , mal , Mal oprano . r s r m n n 0 o c e e e c e 8 . v i , i to p o i , S le ec e e hn c 1 8 ty , pr ding t c i , . Swell one s ee s a % t , Me s di voce . S 1 2 2 a . yncop tion ,

T s e e s e h 6 et e . ach r and t ac ing, 4 q ,

et seq .

m s 1 0 a 66 et se . 2 . f ou , q , T hn rl ha n ers 1 et se c c ea C . e i , y t , 9 q 1 0 t se e l 1 th c en e . ar y 7 tury , 3 q

a m en a ls 1 0 . fund t of , 4

G re o a 0 . g ri n , 4 m Te n e . nor , origin of a , 59

r se s re a c er 1 . i to up m y in op a , 77

T e o 1 1 . r m lo , 7

e a ra s 1 1 8 . pr p tory tudy , T ll 2 . ri , 4 Tr llo 1 1 6 i , . Tr r s 8 et se . oubadou , 4 q

Ven c e er 1 8 . i , op a in , 5 V s s ee S ers e s irtuo i , ing , Mal oprani V r 1 1 0 L e 1 . ittori , o to , 3 , 4 we s 6 1 0 1 1 8 V a z a . oc li tion and vo l , 54 5 , 4 , “ i ” V c es Ta ur nae 2 . o , 9

V es a rm use 1 0 . oic , bno al of, 7 66 n use 1 . ormal of ,

r a 1 e 1 2 . ange llotted to in 7th c ntury , 5