Singing music from 1500 to 1900: style, technique, knowledge, assertion, experiment
Proceedings
of the National Early Music Association International Conference, in association with the University of York Music
Department and the York Early Music Festival
- Edited by John Potter and Jonathan Wainwright
- Technical advisor and web co-ordinator: Christopher Leedham
Introduction
The essays presented on this website are re-workings of papers presented at the National Early Music Association conference held in the Music Department of the University of York on 7–10 July 2009. (For the conference details see Conference schedule) The ‘call for papers’ set the themes for the conference:
‘The widespread acceptance of historically-informed performance practices have transformed our understanding of instrumental music over the last half-century; but Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, Mozart and Rossini are still usually sung in conventional operatic style, clashing with the more informed style heard from the theatre pit. We invite contributors to consider evidence for vocal techniques and styles of the period and how such knowledge can enhance and invigorate current performances. Possible topics include: voice production; intonation; volume and auditoria; style and ornamentation; deportment; vibrato. The conference promises to be controversial, with opportunities for debate and networking. Questions to be tackled include: Is it possible for early specialisms, classical and contemporary styles to be compatible in the same voice? Balance between words and music. What can we learn from “non-classical” vocal techniques, such as jazz, barbershop, folk, world music and pop? Amplification?’
The
conference, which included workshops, demonstrations, and concerts as well as
papers, was stimulating and enjoyable and led to some important new
perspectives on singing. In order to publish the material relatively quickly
and efficiently the decision was made to present the proceedings as a web
publication rather than in the traditional book format. The editors have not
attempted to regularize or copy-edit the presentations in the traditional manner
and nor have they attempted to remove any differences of opinion, for distinct
approaches are considered valuable. The editors are grateful to the contributors
for their efficiency and goodwill in providing their texts for this web
publication.
John Potter
Jo Wainwright
Contents
- Christopher Allan
Helping the young soprano bring emotional truth to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century recitative through the use of speech mode - Elisabeth Belgrano
Lasciatemi morire & Rochers vous êtes sourds: interpreting Arianna’s tears, sighs and pain, by investigating Italian and French ornaments through vocal practice-based research - Richard Bethell
Vocal vibrato in Early Music - Sally Bradshaw
Taste and common sense in the singing of Baroque opera - Edward Breen
David Munrow: thoughts on vibrato and a glimpse into his record collection - Rosemary Carlton-Willis
Gesture and rhetoric in the seventeenth-century English lute song and the twenty-first-century Indian semi-classical song - Helena Daffern and Jude Brereton
An introduction to the science of the singing voice
- Martha Elliott
Vibrato and Rossini: managing vibrato and articulation to differentiate ornaments - Catherine
Gordon-Seifert
Rhetoric and expression in the mid-seventeenth-century French Air: a rationale for compositional style and performance - Greta Haenen
Vibrato as expressive ornament: translation of summary chapter from Das Vibrato in der Musik des Barock (1988)
(trans. by Frederick k. Gable) - Leila Heil
What singers of Early Music can learn from listening to vocal jazz - Katrina Mitchell
Reading between the brides: Lucrezia Vizzana’s Componimenti musicali in textual and musical context - Laura Moeckli
Essential frivolities: examples from a 19th-century vocal ornamentation manuscript - Graham O’Reilly
A unique singers’ manuscript from the 19th century: Domenico Mustafa’s version of the Miserere of Tommaso Bai and Gregorio Allegri - Anthony Rooley
A case for the pickled larynx - Robert Toft
Bel Canto: the unbroken tradition