Singing.

Singing is a fundamental mode of musical expression. It is

especially suited to the expression of specific ideas, since it is
almost always linked to a text; even without words, the voice is
capable of personal and identifiale utterances. It is arguably the
most subtle and flexible of musical instruments, and therein lies
much of the fascination of the art of singing.

Because it imparts to words a heightened expression that they

do not have when merely spoken, or even declaimed in a
dramatic manner without sforms of religious ritual, and in the
early theatre. Even outside religion, singing has long been held
to have moral and cultural value. Aristotle quoted the bard
Musaeus, ‘Song is man's sweetest joy’, and went on to warn
against using musical instruments, such as the aulos, which
interfere with or prevent the act of singing. Athenaeus
(Deipnosophistae, 2nd century) reported that ‘it is no disgrace to
confess that one knows nothing, but it is deemed a disgrace
among them to decline to sing’. In the history of Western
civilization, and of other civilizations, an ability to sing well has
repeatedly been viewed as a mark of culture and humanity.

1. Vocal production.
2. Early history.
3. 17th and 18th centuries.
4. 19th century.
5. 20th century.
6. Performing practice.
7. Popular singing.
BIBLIOGRAPHY

OWEN JANDER/ELLEN T. HARRIS (1, 3–6), DAVID FALLOWS

(2), JOHN POTTER (7)

Singing

1. Vocal production.

The historical study of the voice is difficult and frustrating. As

opposed to the study of instruments, there are no models to
examine, and little information can be gleaned from visual
depictions of singers. The development of recorded sound helps
enormously from the end of the 19th century, but also reveals
how little can be gauged from written descriptions. Nevertheless,
it is possible to draw some conclusions about the ideals of vocal
production from a study of theoretical treatises, vocal tutors and
descriptions of singers throughout history.
Two qualities always required in a singer were good (some
authors say perfect) intonation and clear enunciation. Tinctoris
(De inventione et usu musicae, c1481) listed the qualifications of
a good singer as accurate rhythm, a good sense of pitch,
enunciation and a good voice (‘ars mensura, modus,
pronunciatio, et vox bona’). Giulio Caccini's list (Le nuove
musiche, 1601/2; see fig.1) does not markedly differ; he calls for
‘the tuning of the voice in all the notes’, ‘a command of breath’,
enunciation (‘unless the words [are] understood’ the singer
cannot ‘move the understanding’) and expression (‘to delight and
move the affections of the mind’). In the 20th century, Sergius
Kagen (On Studying Singing, 1950) still calls for ‘a keen musical
ear’, ‘natural singing voice’ (Tinctoris's ‘vox bona’) and proper
pronunciation and expression of the text. None of these qualities,
however, explains how the voice is produced, and around 1800 a
major change took place affecting both singers and composers.

Vocal production entails the use of the vocal registers, otherwise

known as head voice (Voce di testa, often equated with Falsetto)
and chest voice (Voce di petto). James Nares (A Treatise on
Singing, c1780) clearly states the situation of the singer who has
moved beyond the beginning stages:

I should have observed that, after the Scholar has

gained a good Intonation and some Management of
his voice, the Master should make him acquainted
with the Compass of his Voice, shewing him where
his Voce di petto ends and where to cultivate the
falsetto, or Voce di testa, and instruct him how they
should be joined, so as to be imperceptible, without
which the pleasing variety will be lost.

As Nares implies, singers in the 18th century were taught to

blend the registers so as to eliminate the break but also to
maintain the ‘variety’ of the distinct sounds. Earlier tutors
sometimes encouraged singers to choose to perform in one or
the other. Caccini, for example, identifies two registers as the
‘natural’ and the ‘falsetto’ and counsels singers to avoid the latter
by performing arias in keys suitable to their natural voice.
Bénigne de Bacilly (Remarques curieuses sur l'art de bien
chanter, 1668) defines the same two registers and allows that
both have their adherents:

Some people are proud of their high voices, and

others of their low tone, taking the view that a high
voice is little more than a screech. Those who have
natural voices scorn the falsetto as being artificial
and shrill, while on the other hand falsetto singers
are usually of the opinion that the beauty of a song
is more evident when performed by the shimmering
 brilliance of their vocal type than when done by a
natural tenor, which, although it ordinarily has better
intonation, does not have the brilliance of the
falsetto.

With the extended range of vocal music at the end of the 17th
century and throughout the 18th, singers had to learn (as Nares
states) to use both registers and to unite them. Pietro Francesco
Tosi (Opinioni de’ cantori antichi e moderni, 1723), perhaps the
first author to address this issue, clearly states the relation of this
necessary technique to range:

A diligent Master, knowing that a [male] Soprano

[castrato], without the Falsetto, is constrained to
sing within the narrow Compass of a few Notes,
ought not only to endeavour to help him to it, but
also to leave no Means untried, so to unite the
feigned and the natural Voice, that they may not be
distinguished; for if they do not perfectly unite, the
Voice will be of divers Registers, and must
consequently lose its Beauty.

The end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th
witnessed a marked change in production, when singers began
to carry the full weight of the chest voice into the highest
registers. One of the most significant effects of this change was
to make the high voice much more powerful than was possible
when using head voice or falsetto on the same notes. The Irish
tenor Michael Kelly was among the first singers to produce this
sound, as a contemporary description of his voice attests: ‘His
compass was extraordinary. In vigorous passages he never
cheated the ear with feeble wailings of falsetto, but sprung upon
the ascending fifth [from d' to a'] with a sustained energy that
electrified the audience’. This change in vocal production
reversed the previously taught relationship of dynamic to range.

In 1739, for example, Johann Mattheson (Der voll-kommene

Capellmeister) referred to a Latin ‘rule which has already served
for two hundred years, that each singing voice, the higher it goes
should be produced increasingly temperately and lightly:
however in the low notes, according to the same rule, the voice
should be strengthened, filled out, and invigorated’. He is
probably quoting from Conrad von Zabern, whose Latin treatise
on singing (De modo bene cantandi choralem cantum, 1474) had
been published in Germany. Zabern is certainly clear on the
principle of volume as it relates to range:

Another fault which is more obvious than the others

is singing notes with an unstintingly full and
powerful voice … When this shouting is done by
 individuals with resonant and trumpet-like voices it
disturbs and confuses the singing of the entire
choir, just as if the voices of cattle were heard
among the singers … In order to recognize this
error completely it must be realized that whoever
wishes to sing well and clearly must employ his
voice in three ways: resonantly and trumpet-like for
low notes, moderately in the middle range and
more delicately for the high notes – the more so the
higher the chant ascends … Therefore, let him who
wishes to sing flawlessly never again presume to
sing with a full and strong voice in the upper
register, for this disfigures the chant, pointlessly
weighs down and fatigues the singer, makes him
hoarse and consequently useless for singing … But
on the other hand, when one sings with a delicate
tone in the upper register the voice then
corresponds to the high-pitched sound of the small
pipes of the organ, as well as the upper range of
the monochord.

Little more than 50 years after Mattheson had cited this principle
as having existed for over 200 years, it was overthrown. In 1791,
William Jackson (Observations on the Present State of Music in
London) complained that ‘instead of developing their voices so
as to be soft at the top and full at the bottom, singers were
achieving the opposite effect’ (FiskeETM, 1973, p.270), and in
1810 Domenico Corri (The Singer's Preceptor) may have been
the first author to instruct that the voice should increase in
volume as it ascended and decrease when descending (p.52).
With this change, the ground was laid for the development of the
dramatic soprano, the Heldentenor and other weighty voices, and
of a new repertory that privileged power over brilliance or
flexibility. One cannot, however, simply define vocal production in
one way before 1800 and in another after; issues of voice range,
genre and nationality all contributed to a more complex picture.

Singing

2. Early history.

Before the 17th century, two main considerations make the topic
hard to study. First, the names given to voices in the surviving
music normally denoted their function rather than their range or
timbre. Thus, for example, ‘tenor’ was the voice-line that stood at
the core of the polyphony, sometimes borrowed from chant but
almost always the line in relation to which everything else
happened. Similarly, ‘contratenor’ was before the 16th century
simply a voice that functioned broadly in the same range as the
tenor, hence its name.
Secondly, written or named pitches did not generally have any
fixed pitch in the modern sense of a frequency. This can be seen
most easily in the Gregorian chant repertory, where a piece in
the 7th mode would characteristically have a written range from g
to a' and a piece in the 2nd mode would have a written range
nearly an octave lower, from A to b, but both would almost
certainly have actually sounded in the same register. That is,
written pitches were chosen not according to the frequency but to
give the simplest possible notation of the modality: key
signatures other than one flat do not exist before the mid-14th
century; and even in the mid-16th century any further key
signature was a rare gesture for a special purpose.

So any study of singing in those years must begin from the

ranges and relative ranges of the written music. Broadly
speaking, Gregorian chant has a range of about a 9th, and must
be assumed to be at a pitch comfortable for a large body of
singers – normally men, presumably with the choirboys
(documented from the 11th century) singing an octave higher;
women seem never to have sung alongside men in church,
though in nunneries they plainly sang at a pitch that was suitable
for them. Exactly what pitch was considered comfortable or
suitable in these cases must have depended on techniques and
ideals of vocal production, concerning which the available
information is mostly anecdotal and hard to interpret with
confidence. Chaucer's famous description of the Prioress, whose
singing was ‘Entuned in hir nose ful semely’, was intended as
light humour and can hardly be used for historical reconstruction.

With the rise of extended monophonic works, starting with the

sequence of the late 9th century, there is a marked increase in
vocal range. From the time of Notker, sequences often exceed a
12th in range. In the 14th century the monophonic lais of
Guillaume de Machaut routinely cover two full octaves: they can
last up to 20 minutes, and their very rare modern performances
demand extremes of vocal flexibility and stamina. That is
perhaps the right context for understanding the description by
Hieronymus de Moravia (late 13th century) who mentions vox
pectoris, vox gutturis and vox capitis – chest voice, throat voice
and head voice.

The earliest two-voice polyphony most often had a vox

principalis, often a Gregorian chant, and a vox organalis, which
was more florid and had a wider range, but in essentially the
same register. That remains the case even in the late 12th
century, with the two-voice organa normally credited to Leoninus:
here the vox organalis can be exceedingly florid, evidently
intended for virtuoso display. Any evaluation of its vocal
technique must consider that virtuoso element and a similar
manifestation of vocal floridity coupled with intricate rhythms
found in much Italian polyphonic song of the 14th century. It is
hard to resist thinking that brilliance and lightness of touch
characterized the best singing in these repertories. That is in fact
spelt out in the Trecento song Oselletto salvaço of Jacopo da
Bologna:

Per gridar forte non si canta bene

Ma con soave et dolce melodia
Si fa bel canto et ciò vuol maestria.
(You do not sing well by shouting loudly, but with
sweet and elegant melody fine song is made, and
that needs skill.)

More or less the same was said at greater length by Conrad von
Zabern in 1474 (see Dyer, 1978).

There is no reason to believe that any polyphony before the 15th

century was sung with more than one voice to a part. The
liturgical organa of the Notre Dame repertory all set exclusively
the solo sections of the chants, simply using three or four soloists
rather than just one; the remainder of the chant was sung
monophonically by the schola, whose members continued to be
the core of any church choir.

In the course of the 14th century the voices in polyphony begin to

polarize into two different ranges: increasingly the ‘discantus’
(and occasionally also a ‘triplum’) stood in a range roughly a 5th
higher than the tenor and contratenor. This remains broadly true
until about 1450, when composers began to cultivate additionally
a ‘bassus’ voice in a range roughly a 5th below the tenor.

Around 1440 there is the first clear indication of the pitch area
implied by these relative ranges. Two works in the Trent codices,
Battre's Gaude virgo and Bourgois’ Gloria, specifically denote
sections to be performed by ‘pueri’ alongside other sections
marked ‘mutate voces’ (changed voices: presumably adult men).
The relative ranges of the Battre piece are, for the ‘mutate
voces’, tenor d–d', contratenor d–e', discantus c'–c''; for the
‘pueri’, tenor a–b', contratenor c'–c'', discantus d'–d''. Here the
discantus lines of the ‘mutate voces’ sections go as high as those
of the ‘pueri’ sections; thus it seems clear that the discantus must
have been sung in a high men's range that could also be sung by
boys. If it is legitimate to project that information back to the 14th
century, it would suggest that the tenor and contratenor lines
were in a range of roughly a 10th from tenor c and the discantus
a similar range from about g. Certainly there is documentation
from the early 16th century that in Italy the master of the
choirboys sang along with the boys in unison. That in its turn
would mean that the ‘bassus’ lines introduced in the middle of the
15th century were approximately at the pitch of the modern bass.
This conclusion is obviously surprising and remains in dispute,
because it implies that polyphony before about 1450 avoided the
baritone and bass registers that now seem the most common
‘natural’ voices of grown men. But such arguments are hard to
bring any further without firmer information about vocal
production and ideals of sound.

A further hint about these matters comes from the chapel

statutes of the court of Burgundy codified in 1469 (Fallows,
1981). These state that in performing four-voice polyphony there
must be at least six men on the top line, three on the tenor, two
on the contratenor (which was then still normally in the same
range as the tenor) and three on the bassus. The surprise here is
the six on the top line. By good luck the payment lists of the
Burgundian court choir in that year contain enough information
for it to be certain that there was nobody under 20 years old, so
they were not choirboys. It therefore seems almost certain that
these were grown men singing in a falsetto register but with an
extremely light tone.

Already by the late 15th century there are clear statements of

specialization in particular ranges: Tinctoris (De inventione et usu
musicae, c1481) describes the different voices and names
particularly distinguished exponents, including Ockeghem as a
bass. In 1481 Siena Cathedral despaired at losing their tenor
singer, despite having two contratenors evidently used to singing
in the same range, because ‘senza tenore non si può cantare’.
These were the years in which singers such as Jean Cordier and
Giles Crepin travelled from court to court, receiving ever-
increasing payment for their services.

The church polyphony of the years around 1500 is remarkable

for its wide voice ranges. Josquin's masses, for example, seem
to expect each voice to have a range of almost two octaves.
Again, lightness and flexibility seem to be implied. By contrast,
80 years later, in the Palestrina generation, voice ranges appear
to have diminished: only rarely does Palestrina expect a single
voice to exceed a 10th; and Nicola Vicentino's L'antica musica
(1555) firmly recommends those ranges. While the reasons for
this change have not yet been explored, it is plausible to think
that one element was a change in vocal ideals: a need for a more
focussed sound that concentrated on the best notes in the voice.

Some hint of the change can be seen in the distinction between

the quiet voce da camera and louder voce da chiesa, first found
in a letter of 1491 (Fallows, 1985, p.64) and most clearly spelt
out in a letter of 1568, in which the singer Carlo Durante is
reported as saying that he cannot sing with voce da camera
because he has recently been singing regularly in church but that
when his voice is rested he hopes to be able to sing in the
chamber (‘et come la voce sara riposata si crede gli servirà per
camera’). It looks very much as though the techniques and ideals
of singing in church changed substantially in the 16th century
whereas chamber music retained the older style.

Singing

3. 17th and 18th centuries.

The history of singing in the 17th and 18th centuries is

characterized by several trends: the rise of the professional
opera star, inaugurating a continuous succession of nationally
and internationally famous singers; the wide popularity of the
castrato and the soprano; the formation and dissemination of the
Italian style of singing, along with a concurrent tendency towards
national differences; and the cultivation of vocal ornamentation to
a peak of artifice. All these trends were supported by specialist
teachers of singing, working either independently or in institutions
such as the Neapolitan conservatories and the Venetian
ospedali. Just as previously the authors of singing treatises
tended to be tenors, they now tended to be Italian castratos, and
the most important of these treatises, by Tosi and later
Giambattista Mancini (Pensieri, e riflessioni pratiche sopra il
canto figurato, 1774), must therefore be used with caution when
applied to other voices and other countries.

For example, the joining of the head and chest registers over the
break, so important to both Tosi and Mancini, was apparently not
as valued in France or Germany. J.J. Quantz (Versuch einer
Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen, 1752) writes, ‘Joining
the chest voice to the falsetto is as unknown to [German singers]
as it is to the French’. Apparently French and German singers
continued the older tradition of singing in one register as much as
possible, using transposition (as suggested by Caccini) to
facilitate this where necessary. Where the compositional range
demanded vocal expansion beyond one register, the natural
break was probably accepted, as it was in many voices well into
the 19th century.

Raguenet (Paralèle des italiens et des françois, en ce qui

regarde la musique et les opéra, 1702; Eng. trans., 1709) states
that one essential difference between French and Italian opera
was the variety of ranges in the French; he especially praises the
deep French bass as opposed to the ‘feign'd Basses among the
Italians, which have neither Depth nor Strength’. He speaks of
the resultant ‘agreeable Contrast’ in French music arising from
the ‘Opposition’ of the bass with the treble parts, something that
is lacking in Italian music – ‘the Voices of their Singers, who are,
for the most part, Castrati, being perfectly like those of their
Women’. The partiality of the French to the low bass, or Basse
noble, continued past the 18th century as an identifying feature
(see Bass (ii)).

Tosi mentions a distinction between the treble voices of castratos

and women when he states, ‘Among the Women, one hears
sometimes a Soprano entirely di Petto, but among the Male Sex
it would be a great Rarity, should they preserve it after having
past the Age of Puberty’. Handel wrote for a number of renowned
sopranos, and a comparison of the surviving descriptions of their
voices with the music they sang confirms that Handel was careful
to place the highest notes in weak, unaccented positions, a
practice that tends to confirm the use of the head voice and a
lesser dynamic in the upper register. There is, however, at least
one exception to this practice in the music Handel wrote for Anna
Maria Strada (such as in the role of Alcina), where the high notes
are frequently accented in both word and rhythm (Harris, 1988–
9). Strada may have been one of these women who was able to
sing completely di petto. Nevertheless, the definitive change in
vocal production towards a strong and resonant upper register
did not occur until after 1800.

Singing

4. 19th century.

The first half of the 19th century was a period of significant

change in the history of Western singing, especially in opera.
Newer categories of voice such as the tenore robusto, tenore di
forza, Heldentenor, ‘Verdi baritone’, ‘Falcon soprano’, ‘dramatic
soprano’ and lirico spinto reflect a taste for weightier timbres,
more brilliant upper registers, more sonorous low notes and
increased volume in general. Although the new taste for greater
volume and more dramatic expression extended to all voices, its
impact is most clearly apparent in the careers of several 19th-
century tenors, including Adolphe Nourrit, Enrico Tamberlik, Jean
de Reszke and most notably Gilbert Duprez, who became
famous (and in some circles infamous) for his use of the Voix
sombrée and for his clarion high c''.

The development of the high, powerful tenor voice spelt the end
of the reign of the castrato, a tradition that had already waned at
the beginning of the century with the substitution of the female
Musico for the castrato in heroic male roles such as Rossini's
Tancredi. The soprano voice was also extended upward in range
and power, leading to the separate development of the dramatic
mezzo-soprano, a range closely associated with the parallel
development of the baritone. Both are particularly well served in
Verdi's operas, to the extent that the dramatic baritone is
generally referred to as the ‘Verdi baritone’ (see Mezzo-soprano
and Baritone (i)).
Wagner sought dramatic tenor voices of unusual strength and
endurance. Although he never used the term ‘Heldentenor’, now
closely associated with the Wagnerian tenor type, he adamantly
distinguished what he wanted from the French dramatic tenor of
his day. The Heldentenor differs from the French and Italian
tenor (Tenore robusto) in having a smaller range and a sound
closer to that of a baritone. Not surprisingly, many of the most
famous dramatic tenors, including in the 19th century Jean de
Reszke and in the 20th Placido Domingo, began their careers as
baritones.

One of the distinct changes resulting from the cultivation of the

heavier voice was the increase in vibrato. At first considered an
ornament in the expression of passion, vibrato was not generally
considered acceptable as a constant part of vocal production
before the end of the 19th century. A particularly clear early
injunction against it was given by Christoph Bernhard (Von der
Singe-Kunst, oder Maniera, c1649):

Fermo, or the maintenance of a steady voice, is

required on all notes, except where a trillo or ardire
is applied. It is regarded as a refinement mainly
because the tremulo [sic] is a defect … Elderly
singers feature the tremulo, but not as an artifice.
Rather it creeps in by itself, as they no longer are
able to hold their voices steady. If anyone would
demand further evidence of the undesirability of the
tremulo, let him listen to such an old man
employing it while singing alone. Then he will be
able to judge why the tremulo is not used by the
most polished singers, except in ardire.

In the 18th century, too, Tosi warned singers to learn to hold

notes without vocal ‘trembling’, for those who do not ‘will become
subject to a Flutt'ring in the Manner of all those that sing in a very
bad Taste’. In the 19th century ‘vibrato’ is written as a special
instruction at certain points in scores of Donizetti, Halévy,
Meyerbeer and others. Although it continued to be criticized,
many Italian singers seem to have begun using an audible
vibrato on every sustained note by the middle of the century.

The significant changes in vocal production in the first half of the

19th century, including the use of the chest voice and increased
volume in the upper register, together with the increasingly
continual use of vibrato, were not universally welcome. Rossini is
said to have exclaimed, ‘Alas for us, we have lost our bel canto’,
and it is right around this time that the phrase, ‘beautiful singing’,
took on a specific meaning. Associated with legato production,
light tone in the upper register, and agile and flexible delivery, it
was contrasted with the weightier, speech-inflected
(Sprechgesang) style. While for its adherents the term became
both a nostalgic symbol for a declining tradition and a battle cry
for its revival, for its detractors it was simply pejorative: Wagner,
for example, derided the bel canto model that was concerned
only with ‘whether that G or A will come out roundly’ (Prose
Works, Eng. trans., 1894, iii, 202).

Another development of this period was the increasingly

‘scientific’ approach to singing and vocal production. The most
important and influential publication was the Traité complet de
l'art du chant (1840) by Manuel Garcia, baritone and singing
teacher. Garcia's invention of the laryngoscope in 1855 furthered
the increasing interest in the physiological properties of the voice.
His teaching method was based upon a thorough understanding
of the workings of the ‘instrument’ (larynx, throat, palate, tongue
etc.), and his work became a model for numerous books on
singing after 1850.

The trends in concert and operatic singing in the 19th century,

towards a new sense of grandeur, in terms of the size of the halls
and the size and volume of the orchestra as well as in the
production of the voice (all of which developments were closely
related), were offset by the largely contemporary rise of the solo
song with piano accompaniment that called for an almost
unprecedented intimacy. Although increased intimacy was also
evident in operatic characterization, it was especially manifest in
a new class of singer who specialized in recitals and oratorio,
such as the baritone Julius Stockhausen for whom Brahms wrote
his Magelone songs and the baritone part in the German
Requiem.

The change in vocal production in the 19th century and the

consideration of the voice as an instrument affected all
repertories. Singers of songs could and sometimes did have
smaller voices than their operatic counterparts, but this was not
essential and, indeed, much of the song repertory called for
strength and endurance in the upper register, such as Schubert's
‘Suleika’ songs. The primary effect was to draw a clear distinction
between operatically trained and ‘popular’ singers, a distinction
that had not existed in the 18th century, when the English tenor
John Beard could move easily among Italian opera, English
oratorio, popular ballad opera and English song.

Singing

5. 20th century.

The most important development for singing in the 20th century

was the invention and expansion of electronically altered and
amplified sound as well as the vast proliferation of recorded
sound. Techniques of electronic amplification, including the
microphone, have, especially in popular singing, altered vocal
production, further dividing the ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ singer.
Without the need to project the voice naturally over robust (and
often amplified) accompaniments in vast halls, popular singers,
such as Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra, did not need to power
their voices physically (through diaphragmatic support, use of
chest voice and breath control), but could make previously
inaudible intimate vocal nuances, such as whispers or murmurs,
audible in live performance. Subsequently expanded vocal
experimentation in various rock music genres led to the inclusion
of screams, growls and the like and the manifestation of the male
falsettist (Michael Jackson and many predecessors) who
specializes in intense and distorted sound in the upper registers
(see §7 below).

Experimentation with sound was not limited to popular singing.

The technique of Sprechstimme, a highly stylized mode of vocal
expression halfway between singing and speaking, was
associated particularly with the so-called Second Viennese
School in such works as Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire (1912).
Composers of both choral and solo music also explored a range
of special vocal effects, including choral recitation, Bocca chiusa,
glissando and controlled shouting. Since 1950, electronic
amplification and alteration have also been increasingly used by
classical composers. In Crumb's Ancient Voices of Children
(1970), for example, a soprano sings (or shouts) into an open
piano and the sympathetic vibrations of the undamped strings
are then amplified through a contact microphone. Singers such
as Bethany Beardslee, Jane Manning and Cathy Berberian have
specialized in singing avant-garde music and in developing the
new techniques that this entails.

Perhaps the most radical innovation in 20th-century singing is,

paradoxically, allied to the movement towards historically
accurate performances of early music. Although at first more
focussed on performing practice (e.g. in matters of
ornamentation) and on the use of period instruments and correct
ways of playing them, the rediscovery of the pre-1800 singing
style has transformed and reinvigorated contemporary
understanding and appreciation of early music. The countertenor
voice, which had remained in constant use in England since the
Renaissance but had been forgotten elsewhere, was
rediscovered by an international audience in the 1950s, chiefly
through the career of Alfred Deller. Since then singers of all
ranges, such as the soprano Emma Kirkby, the mezzo-soprano
Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the countertenor Andreas Scholl and
the bass David Thomas, have become specialists in the
performance of a wide repertory of early music. Interesting points
of contact exist between the early music movement and the
avant garde, including a similar singing style that emphasizes a
pointed tone with little or no vibrato (see Bass (ii), Countertenor,
Mezzo-soprano and Soprano).

Recording technology, although it does not necessarily alter the

production of sound, has had a great effect on both popular and
classical singing. It provides recorded documentation of specific
singers, yielding more information than any verbal account has
ever been able to convey, and further permits composers to
supervise recorded documentation of their intentions, allowing a
more precise transmission than is possible in a written score.
Ironically, at least in the performance of classical music, the
technology that made it possible to capture and disseminate the
remarkable variety of singers' styles has tended to encourage
stylistic norms and led to an increased internationalization and
homogenization of sound production and performing practice. In
popular music, individuality, sometimes reaching to the extremes,
has been more welcome.

The various 20th-century singing styles – classical, popular,

avant-garde, early music – manifest certain resemblances that
help to define this period. First, experimentation with new sounds
has been a dominant trend in all forms of new music, whether
classical or popular; secondly, a retreat from the 19th-century
sensation of pulling the chest voice into the upper register (with a
subsequent reduction in vibrato) has been a factor not only in
popular folk singing but also in both early and contemporary
music performance; thirdly, a renewed preference for extremely
high voices can be seen in the dominance of the soprano in
avant-garde music, the falsettist in popular music and the
countertenor in early music (and the virtual disappearance of the
contralto); and, fourthly, the dramatic rise in so-called crossover
projects has led to various kinds of transference, such as, on the
one hand, the association of the tenor Pavarotti with the rock
artists U2, Sting and others in his ‘Pavarotti and Friends’ projects,
and, on the other, the rock singer Michael Bolton's forays into
opera.

Singing

6. Performing practice.

One of the most important aspects of singing is the way singers

have interpreted the notes on the page. Portamento, for
example, was considered an essential element of good singing
until about the beginning of the 20th century: that is, singers
connected notes ‘almost imperceptibly’ by gliding through the
intervening pitches. The abuse of this technique at the end of the
19th century and the beginning of the 20th led to its
abandonment, but the practice encouraged by Garcia in 1894 of
hitting each note ‘purely’ has no basis in earlier history (see Coup
de glotte). Singers not only connected notes, but approached
initial notes from as far as a 3rd or 4th below the notated pitch
(Cercar della nota). A consistent notation for the portamento and
cercar della nota was never developed, in part because the
practice was so normative that notation would have been
redundant. Thus our record of this practice is largely limited to
written treatises on singing and descriptions of voices, but early
recordings also document its regular use (Crutchfield, 1983).

Also unnotated are such important ornaments as the Messa di

voce, or a crescendo and diminuendo on a single sustained note.
Caccini (1601/2) considered this practice ‘the foundation of
passion’, the 18th-century castrato Farinelli was particularly
renowned for his exquisite messa di voce, and Garcia (Traité,
2/1847) recommended the singing of scales with a messa di
voce on every note (in order to unite the registers and develop
volume). A gradual increase or decrease of volume over phrases
was also recommended by tutors; Bernhard (c1649) writes, ‘Care
must be taken not to shift too abruptly from the piano to the forte,
but rather to let the voice wax and wane gradually’. So-called
terrace dynamics, popular in the mid-century performances of
Baroque music, are not supported by contemporary sources. Not
only the treatises, but also scores from at least the early 17th
century, indicate the use of crescendo and decrescendo rather
than abrupt dynamic change.

Rhythm and metre have also been treated flexibly. Girolamo

Frescobaldi (in the preface to his Toccate, 1615) speaks of
performing instrumental pieces like madrigals, ‘taking it now
slowly, now quickly, and even held in the air, to match the
expressive effect’. Bacilly (Remarques curieuses, 1668)
encourages singers to slow down in order to add
embellishments, and Tosi (1723) describes ‘stealing the Time’ in
order to avoid ‘a mechanical Method of going on with the Bass’.
In the 19th century singers made liberal use of rubato, as the
earliest recordings document. Rhythmic freedom was always of
paramount importance in recitative and declamatory singing.

Ornamentation, in terms of the addition or alteration of the notes,

is somewhat easier to document as composers and singers from
the end of the 16th century to the present have left examples of
their practice (see Ornaments and Improvisation). Caccini
(1601/2) not only described the most important ornaments but
published arias from his Il rapimento di Cefalo as they had been
sung and ornamented by the bass Melchior Palontrotti, the tenor
Francesco Rasi and the tenor-composer Jacopo Peri. Handel
ornamented some arias in his own hand, and ornamentation
used by the 18th-century singers Francesca Bordoni and Farinelli
also survives. Many examples (including some by Haydn and
Mozart) survive from the Classical era (see Crutchfield, ‘The
Classical Era’, 1989). Rossini left many manuscripts illustrating
the ornamentation of his arias, as did Verdi; such 19th-century
singers as Cinti-Damoreau, Viardot and Kemble left notebooks
with their ornamentation (see Crutchfield, ‘The 19th Century’,
1989). The invention of sound recording has further facilitated the
comparison of earlier ornamental styles. In the 20th century,
however, fewer composers were likely to assume or even desire
rhythmic or melodic improvisation in performance. This is evident
in the use of pre-recorded tape but also, for example, in
Stravinsky's assertion that music should be not be interpreted but
should rather be objectively executed, an attitude that found its
way for a time into 20th-century attitudes towards earlier music.
However, the application of such principles to earlier music, as
has happened in some performances of Handel's and Rossini's
operas, is not only inappropriate but often damaging.

Singing

7. Popular singing.

The earliest known references to what might be called popular

singing in the West are the work songs referred to in the works of
Homer, which are assumed to have been sung in a ‘natural’
speech-related way that can still be heard in certain European
folksongs. Medieval literature contains references to oral music
which depended on singing that was untrained and inspirational,
and which was identified with the singers who created and
performed it rather than composers. From the 17th century
onwards the growing commercialization of popular entertainment
saw an increasing variety of popular singing styles ranging from
speech-related folk singing to more stylized varieties derived
from classical singing, which diverged significantly from popular
varieties in the early 19th century with the evolution of the more
efficient low-larynx technique and its associated breath control.

In the USA a multi-faceted popular oral tradition, with European

folksong and African-American blues as major influences, was
the earliest popular singing to interact with technology, first in the
form of recordings in the early years of the 20th century and then
by the use of amplification from the 1920s onwards. Early black
American jazz singers such as Louis Armstrong and Bessie
Smith were a crucial influence on white singers such as Bing
Crosby, who used the microphone to take an intimate, speech-
related style to large audiences, broadening the popular base of
jazz-influenced singing from a black minority interest to
something that caught the imagination of millions of people.
Speech uses a higher larynx-position than classical singing,
which modifies speech patterns as part of the projection process.
Microphones enable singers to dispense with the mechanisms of
projection and retain the nuances of speech, thereby seeming to
create a feeling of a one-to-one relationship with their listeners:
hence the misleading term ‘crooning’, which was applied to
certain microphonic singers in the 1930s and 40s.

The speech-song of Armstrong and the early Crosby became

more singer-like and sophisticated with their successors,
culminating (after a digression into the virtuosity of bebop) in the
work of Frank Sinatra, who even described his own singing as
‘bel canto’. Sinatra sang with speech-related word shaping, but
used efficient breath control and was concerned with tone-colour
(and, especially in his later recordings, with vibrato) in a similar
way to classical singers. Postwar rock and roll, vocally a
synthesis of country music and rhythm and blues, was very much
a reaction to this ultra-sophistication, Elvis Presley in particular
representing the visceral ebullience of a youthful return to
speech-related singing in which the voice was the servant of
textual rhetoric. Rock and roll's rather limited musical potential
was given new life by the Beatles and others during the 1960s.
The Beatles’ early catholic taste embraced black American music
and musicals as well as conventional rock and roll. Their second
album, With the Beatles (1963), included Paul McCartney singing
‘Till there was you’, a ballad from the musical The Music Man,
which extended the range of speech-related singing to music that
was originally conceived for the sub-classical singing of previous
generations. The punk phenomenon of the mid-1970s was in part
a reaction to the all-embracing stylistic and commercial tentacles
of rock. Before they, too, were subsumed into the mainstream,
punk singers briefly outraged the establishment with their
aggressive recitatives performed in a kind of heightened speech.
The real revolution in the late 1970s came once again from the
African-American community, when New York black youths
began to have some commercial success with rap. Rap is
heightened rhymed speech; many variants have developed
under the general term ‘hip-hop’. Ironically, the declamatory style
has theoretical echoes of the ‘classical’ dramatic rhetoric of
ancient Greece.

Classical singing has a rigid classification of voice-types. Pop

singers tend to be loosely categorized according to genre (folk,
soul, rock, rap and so on). The evolution of rock has generally
seen a narrowing of vocal ranges, with men singing in the upper
part of the voice and women in the lower (Kate Bush is an
exceptional high soprano, Tom Waits a rare bass), the overlap of
tessitura between the sexes perhaps signifying a certain
ambiguity towards gender in the late 20th century. There is little
formal pedagogy associated with pop singing, which is able to
use any rhetorical means to deliver its message, unencumbered
by a systematized technique (a contrast vividly demonstrated by
the duetting of Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé on the
1988 album Barcelona). Popular singing is potentially the most
democratic means of music-making (anyone who can speak can
sing) and has always shown a rich diversity of styles (from bebop
to doo-wop, techno to hip-hop). It is increasingly enhanced by
technology: the sound system on which commercial pop music
depends has evolved from simple amplification to a creative tool
which can modify tone-colour and create simultaneous
harmonies, but the major stylistic changes of the 20th century
were connected with the need for popular singing not to stray too
far from its primary purpose: to express a text in a speech-like
way that is relevant to all.

See also entries on individual voice-types and Acoustics, §VI.

Singing

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