neatly summarizes a number of important ways in which while Potter remarks that ‘actual history is more about
Purcell’s music interacts with the issues raised throughout dynamic performance than dusty manuscripts’. True in
the chapter, and it should serve as a catalyst for scholars to
engage in a wider range of interpretative approaches to his
music and that of his contemporaries.
In the final chapter, ‘Performance History and Reception’,
Rebecca Herissone offers the most comprehensive survey
of the reception history of Purcell’s music to date. One of
the most interesting themes to emerge is the important
role that the publication of Purcell’s music in his own life-
time played in his posthumous reputation. Another is the
ambiguous response his music generated, for instance,
with regard to its technical properties in Charles Burney’s
writing, or with regard to Purcell’s relationship with opera
for early 20th-century writers. Herissone points out that
Purcell reception study ‘remains in its infancy’; this contri-
bution should whet the appetite of scholars for a table that
is rich with interpretive possibilities.
In the introduction, Herissone acknowledges that the
book ‘could have been considered in any number of dif-
ferent ways, and some might disagree with the emphases
brought out by the structure as it has been devised’ (p.6).
Certainly some things are missed out—chamber music,
domestic music, Purcell’s audiences, teaching—but this
is a hefty tome already, so there is little room to quibble
over the interesting subject matter that has been selected.
Editor and publisher alike are to be congratulated on the
high quality of presentation. I  hope that the book will
reach the wider readership envisioned by the editor, which
it undoubtedly deserves; indeed, it has much to offer to
any scholar of 17th-century music, not only those inter-
ested in English musical culture during Purcell’s lifetime.
Review edited by John McKean
doi:10.1093/em/cat100
Advance Access publication December 5, 2013
Nicholas Clapton
The elusive art of beautiful singing
Robert Toft, Bel canto: a performer’s guide (New York:
Oxford University Press, 2013), $99 / £60 (hardback),
$29.95 / £19.99 (paperback)
On the cover of this volume appear testimonials from two
eminent figures in the world of early music, Emma Kirkby
and John Potter. Kirkby describes the book as a ‘treasure’,
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both cases.
According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, one defini-
tion of ‘treasure’ is ‘a store or stock of anything valuable’.
This book is definitely that, with hundreds of notated
examples and descriptions of the actual or advised practice
of ‘classical’ singing in the approximate period 1780 to 1830
(although, as the author rightly reminds us, the term ‘bel
canto’ was not coined until the 1860s). There are excellent
and extremely detailed sections on phrasing (remarkable
instances of the use of breath, not least), embellishments
(lots of them), ‘Altering rhythm and tempo’ (a great deal),
and a fascinating chapter entitled ‘Dramatic action’, largely
concerned with singers’ use of codified gesture, something
common in the period under discussion, and certainly
not only on stage. Sources include the expected, such as
Domenico Corri’s A select collection of the most admired
songs, duetts, &c of 1781, and the more obscure, such as
manuscripts in the British Library documenting (as faith-
fully, one imagines, as any written source ever can) orna-
ments by such stars of that age as Angelica Catalani and Mrs
Billington: a treasure trove indeed. The examples include
many from the period 1780–1830, but also from works as
early as Handel’s Rinaldo (1711). I doubt that the composer
would have enjoyed Sir Henry Bishop’s lavish ornamenta-
tion from 1845. It is equally remarkable how much Corri
ornaments Gluck’s famous aria ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ in
a book published only 19 years after the première of Orfeo
ed Euridice, the epitome, so we have always been told, of
reformist operatic simplicity. Taste is important in history,
and we underestimate its influence on us today at our peril.
In chapter  4, entitled ‘Tonal contrast, register, and
vibrato’, I was glad to see a remark that is as true today as it
ever was: ‘The discussion of vocal registers has always pre-
sented a perplexing problem for teachers of singing’. The
documented claim that the great Giuditta Pasta (1797–
1865) was able to ‘take g″ in either petto or testa’ struck me
as extraordinary. Many reading it might thereby wonder
less at the often-reported unevenness of the voice of this
singing genius.
The question of vibrato still produces rancorous dis-
cussions in the historically informed singing world. Toft
addresses it head on, beginning his section thus: ‘in the
bel canto era, the basic sound of the voice appears to have
contained little or no vibrato’. Neither blind acceptance
nor abrupt dismissal of this would be sensible. It is hardly
controversial to state that the basic sound of any voice, at
any time, would be without vibration (neither a change
of pitch nor of intensity), and I  know of no society in
Early Music  november 2013  673
 which ordinary conversational speech uses vibrato. This
word, a past participle, requires careful definition, and did
not, I  think, always receive it from writers at that time,
any more than it does today. Toft quotes authorities of the
stature of Louis Spohr and Manuel García (the younger)
speaking positively of ‘the “natural” sort of trembling’, the
latter remarking: ‘the voice is able to vibrate thanks only
to the brilliance of the timbre and the force of emission
of the air, and not as a result of trembling’. Concerning
another of the four types of ‘vibration’ that Toft describes,
his example (from a manuscript of c.1840) of part of
‘Rejoice greatly’ from Messiah is intriguing. We find there
a vertical accent, the symbol for vibrazione (a very short
messa di voce), at a point where at least one modern edi-
tion indicates a trill. It is also notable that the practice of
the time apparently linked different forms of vibration in
the voice with the expression of text and meaning. There
is a long tradition of regarding singing as an extension of
(rhetorical) speech, requiring greater amounts of breath to
be taken than in normal speech, because of basic demands
of range and duration. Many would assert that this is the
origin of sung vocal vibrancy, producing the ‘brilliance of
timbre’ that García desired.
García, one also notices, states that a voice can vibrate
without trembling, if the ‘force of the emission of the air’
is correct for the pitch and duration of the note concerned.
(García originally wrote in French, in which language the
word force does not necessarily have any connotations of
‘force’.) That ‘force’ would necessarily have a great deal to
do with the breath itself, which Toft discusses at length
in his chapter on phrasing. Correct use of the breath was
largely taught by the slow development of messa di voce
technique, something often neglected by teachers today.
However, nowhere in the book is there any quotation from
an historical source about how the breath should be taken
in the first place, perhaps because that is another perplex-
ity for singing teachers and their students.
This book could be a very useful aid to achieving the
desirable ‘dynamic performance’ of which John Potter
speaks, though, of course, no one has ever learned to sing
by book alone. It is cheering to know that Toft has been
leading seminars and classes in the application of his work
for many years. (I would be happy to know that he is a
singer himself: I was surprised by his comment that ‘all the
techniques discussed in this guide work equally well with
a lowered larynx or with the larynx in the normal speech
position’.) Clearly, printed examples and instruction
should become vehicles for the singer’s taste and imagina-
tion. It is greatly to be hoped that teachers and students in
conservatories, as well as those professionals singing bel
674  Early Music  november 2013
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canto repertory, will realize this book’s value, not least for
the flexibility of attitude, approach and interpretation (as
well as technique) that was clearly so much pursued and
admired in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Modern
taste, both early and mainstream, is broadly speaking
rather in favour of adherence to the sacred text of trea-
tise and of score, and there is remarkably little interest in
period gesture. It will require a notable shift in attitudes
for the practices exemplified in Toft’s book to become
widely acceptable within either tradition.
doi:10.1093/em/cat096
Advance Access publication December 14, 2013
John A. Rice
Supernatural music
Clive McClelland, Ombra: supernatural music in the
18th century (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012),
£44.95
In the introduction to his book, Clive McClelland cate-
gorizes the ‘supernatural events and characters in operas
before Mozart’ as follows:
1. Celestial—benevolent deities, heaven, paradise, and the
Elysian Fields
2. Ceremonial—processions, rituals, sacrifices, prophecies,
oracles, and statues
3. Ominous—incantations, sorcery, ghosts, tombs, dungeons,
caves, night, and death
4. Infernal—malevolent deities, hell, demons, and furies
5. Devastating—sudden scenic transformations, monsters,
storms, and earthquakes
(pp.vii–viii)
This is a useful list, especially when, in a subsequent
paragraph, we learn that the subject of McClelland’s book
will be operatic scenes and musical passages in the third
category. So far, so good. But then, almost immediately,
McClelland undercuts his categorization, claiming that
what he calls ombra music can be found in practically any
supernatural context. This paragraph is worth quoting at
some length, because it tells the reader what is in store
throughout the book, in terms of the subject matter, the
clarity of the writing and the strength of the argument:
Where there is a need to create a sense of awe and fear, then
ombra music is employed. Strictly speaking, the term ombra