The Voice in Singing. Emma Seiler
and roulades with successive trills, with enchanting harmony; and the old Italian singing-masters, who sang and taught with an art which we should scarcely hold possible, were it not for the unanimous testimony of their contemporaries. There were Porpora and his pupil Perugia, who sang two full octaves, with successive trills up and down in one breath, and executed with perfect exactness all the tones of the chromatic scale without an accompaniment; and Farinelli, who to his latest age preserved his wonderfully beautiful voice. Of him it is related, among other things, that on one occasion he competed with a trumpeter, who accompanied him in an aria. After both had several times dwelt on notes in which each sought to excel the other in power and duration, they prolonged a note with a double trill in thirds, which they continued until both seemed to be exhausted. At last the trumpeter gave up, entirely out of breath, while Farinelli, without taking breath, prolonged the note with renewed volume of sound, trilling and ending, finally, with the most difficult of roulades. Pistochi and Bernucchi rivalled Farinelli. The latter, although he had received from nature a refractory voice of little excellence, nevertheless succeeded in cultivating it so highly that he became one of the most distinguished artists of his day, called by Händel and Graun, “The King of Singers.”
It is impossible to mention by name all the many singers, male and female, who won applause and renown in the beginning and in the middle of the last century. Almost every European state was furnished with most excellent operas, and troops of artists, men and women, with voices of the highest cultivation, flocked thither. Even in the streets and inns and other places in Italy, where elsewhere we are accustomed to seek only music of the lowest kind, one could then hear the most artistic vocal music, such as was found in the churches, concert-saloons and theatres of Germany and France.
It appears that far greater demands were made upon singers then than now-a-days. At least, history celebrates, together with the great vocal flexibility of the earlier singers, the measured beauty of their singing, the noble tone, the thoroughly cultivated delivery, by which they showed themselves true artists, and produced upon their hearers effects almost miraculous.
On the other hand, how sad is the condition of vocal music in our time! How few artistically cultivated voices are there! And the few that there are, how soon are they used up and lost! Artists like Lind, and more recently Trebelli, are exceptions to be made.
Mediocre talent is now often sought, and rewarded far beyond its desert. One is often tempted to think that the public at large has wellnigh lost all capacity of judgment, when he witnesses the representation of one of our operas. Let a singer, male or female, only drawl the notes sentimentally one into another, execute a tremulo upon prolonged notes, introduce very often the softest piano and just where it is entirely out of place, growl out the lowest notes in the roughest timbre, and scream out the high notes lustily, and he or she may reckon with certainty upon the greatest applause. In fact, we have become so easily pleased that even an impure execution is suffered to pass without comment. Let the personal appearance of the singer only be handsome and prepossessing, he need trouble himself little about his art in order to win the favor of the public. This decline of the art of singing is usually ascribed to the want of good voices, and this poverty of voices to our altered modes of living. To me it appears as the natural consequence of the whole manner and way in which the art of singing has been historically developed since its earlier high state of perfection.
The human voice is, of all instruments, the most natural, the most perfect, the most intimate in its relation to us, as, for the use of it, we have a talent or faculty innate, which, in the case of other instruments, can only be laboriously acquired, to say nothing of the fact that these instruments are first to be invented and put together. Hence vocal music appears to have been almost the only music among the Greeks, and the rude instruments then in use served merely for an accompaniment. The history of our so-called Western music, which dates no farther back than the fourth century after Christ, tells us hardly anything else than of vocal musicians and of their compositions for concerted and chorus singing.
Our art, only slowly developing itself from those earliest times, was cherished, mainly in Italy, for the sole purpose of exalting divine worship. We have, at least, no account of any secular art of music in those days. As yet unacquainted with harmony, the only singing was in unison, as was the custom, at an earlier period, among the Greeks; for not until the tenth century of the Christian era was it attempted, and then by a Flemish monk (Hukbaldus), to harmonize several and different notes; thus was invented and founded our harmony, whose exponent was the organ. 1
From that time forward, history makes mention of many persons who labored worthily, now more and now less, to create a theory of music, seeking to found a system of harmony upon that rude beginning, and by degrees to improve it. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries music burst forth into blossom in the Netherlands, and thenceforth rose steadily in excellence, when also it began to branch out into the excesses of counterpoint. The fame of the Netherlands soon spread over all the civilized countries of Europe. The artists of the Netherlands were invited upon the most favorable terms to Italy, France, Spain, and Germany, and thus the progress of music spread over all these countries almost pari passu. For two hundred years the Netherlands maintained the reputation of the best and highest culture in vocal music, and not until the middle of the sixteenth century did there appear in Italy and Germany artists who attained to a like renown. Up to that time prejudice denied to the Italians all talent for music, as it has ever since exaggerated their claims in this respect. Kiesewetter remarks, in his History of Music, that, although the Netherlands in Italy no longer had the monopoly, they nevertheless always maintained the supremacy in music. Climate and language were, however, so favorable to vocal music in Italy that it soon found there its peculiar home, and though theoretical knowledge of music was advanced by the earlier singers, now richness and power of voice were also attained. As it had previously been with the Netherlanders, so it now became with the Italians. They were drawn to all countries in which there was any love of art; and they soon won that supremacy in music which they maintained until the last century. Until the latter part of the sixteenth century, good musicians were devoted almost exclusively to church music, and held it beneath their dignity to take part in music of any other kind. All but church music they left to the minstrels and strolling singers, who traveled over the country from place to place, and in different lands were styled minstrels, minnesänger and trovatori. They mostly sung love-songs, which they often extemporized in word and tune, finding place and popularity on all festive occasions. But under the impulse which music began to feel, the desire among the educated class to revive the old Greek drama, which just at that period had come to be well known, became more and more urgent. Imbued with the spirit of that age, the whole tendency of which was to exalt the ancient classic poets, a circle of men of science and culture from the higher classes gave themselves to the task of producing a style of music such as the Greeks must have had in the representation of their dramas. In the mansion of Count Bardi, in Florence, then the centre of union for all who had any claims to cultivation, music was first arranged for a single voice by a dilettante, the father of the renowned Galileo.
This attempt met with applause and imitation among the most distinguished singers of the time, who thenceforth turned their attention also to secular music. It thus came about that, towards the end of the sixteenth century, on festal occasions in Italy, and even earlier in France, theatrical representations were given with vocal music. This music was, however, always composed in the form of the chorus, and the leading voice alone was represented by a singer; the other voices were represented by instruments.
Such was the beginning of solo singing, which, growing ever more in public favor, soon came to be introduced into the most solemn church music; dramatic representations, religious and secular, grew very popular, and were the forerunners of the opera and oratorio, the richest inventions of the sixteenth century.
Up to this time, a singer of sound musical culture sufficed for chorus singing, but by the introduction of solo singing a more complete education of the organ of singing became a necessity. Indeed, as early as the middle of the fifteenth century there existed in Rome and Milan schools of music and professorships for the education of singers; but with the introduction and diffusion