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Contextual Considerations

 

To understand the old styles, we need to imagine those times before:

  • large concert halls (2000 – 4000 seats) had become the norm

  • the modern grand piano

  • conductors

  • large, loud orchestras

  • the metronome

  • musicians prized literalness! and e"enness o# e$pression!

  • the school o# sensuously pretty "oice%production! dominated the "ocal

soundscape (bel suono instead o# bel canto)

  • the lowered%laryn$ techni&ue became common

  • people 'new anything about #ormants

 

and recognise times when:

  • per#ormance spaces were smaller 

  • instruments were &uieter 

  • scores were ne"er meant to be read literally

  • composers sometimes wrote down the notes they did not want "ocalists to

per#orm instead o# the ones they wanted them to sing

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  • per#ormers personalised the music through all sorts o# modi#ications to the

notated te$t and completed the creati"e process the

  composer had merely begun

  • singing was based directly on spea'ing, and rhetorical principles o# spo'en

deli"ery go"erned sung deli"ery

  • singers per#ormed with the laryn$ in the neutral position used #or spea'ing

  • the "oice was regarded as a registral instrument and tonal contrast was the norm

  • singers #elt that an addiction! to vibrato, as well as #orcing! the "oice, would rob

music o# its emotional signi#icance

  • messa di voce, tempo rubato, and prosodic deli"ery were the pillars o# good style

  • impro"isation was the crowning glory o# all training

  • singers applied the de"ices o# e$pression #le$ibly to suit the emotional content o#

the te$t