=Early Methods of Singing=.—As has been noted by the reader, music,
up to this time, developed principally along vocal lines. We have
no details as to the character of the training of singers among the
Chaldeans, Egyptians and Greeks except such as indicate that their idea
of singing was a sort of musical declamation. Such seems also to have
been the idea of the nations in the north of Europe.
We have seen that the Welsh bards were required to undergo a very
thorough and exacting course of study, but the practical side of
singing and the rules laid down for the training of the young minstrels
is not a part of our knowledge. The songs of the early Church, sung by
masses of worshipers, were of necessity simple in every way, requiring
no art. It was not until the use of Discant became popular, and the
Polyphonic school began to use florid writing that we can infer that
there must have been some methods of training vocalists for artistic
work. Although we have little or no details as to the course of
training which the early singers received, we are justified in assuming
that they must have possessed skill in execution of no mean order. It
must not be forgotten that practically all the composers of the early
Polyphonic school were singers, able to execute their own works. Hence,
studies in singing must have gone hand in hand with composition. The
voice parts of the masses, motets and madrigals of the composers of the
13th to the 16th centuries have absolute independence of progression,
syncopations, embellishments, etc., to such an extent that it taxes
the musicianship of the chorus singer of the present day to sing them;
they are not only exacting in intonation, rhythm and other musical
matters but also in mechanical points, such as flexibility and freedom
of voice and thorough breath control.
=Influence of the Opera on Singing=.—When the Opera was established,
after the declamatory style offered by the first composers had proven
unsuccessful in holding the public, the florid style of the old
discanters was revived and modified, which, as the Opera developed,
gave a great impetus to a systematic and thorough study of singing.
The new style of melody introduced by the opera composers of the 17th
century demanded purity of voice, wide range, flexibility, expressive
shading and a marvelous breath control, as well as great physical
endurance. Singers were expected to execute the most intricate
passages, abounding in diatonic and chromatic scales, arpeggios, turns,
gruppettos, trills, etc., of the most elaborate nature, passages such
as are considered purely instrumental today. =Alessandro Scarlatti=,
the composer, and himself a singer, is credited with having had much
to do with the great development in the art of singing. He trained a
number of singers and pupils, and thus founded the “old Italian” school
of singing. It was natural that the art side of singing should thus
develop in Italy for several reasons, notably, because Italy had a
great number of highly-trained composers, the character of the language
is such as to lend itself to the requirements of artistic singing,
broad full vowels, soft consonants, absence of final consonants, etc.,
and the enthusiastic, essentially lyric temperament of the race.
=The Training of a 17th Century Singer=.—We are given an idea of the
course of training which singers of the 17th century were obliged to
observe in a work _Historia Musica_, published by G. A. A. Buontempi,
in 1695. This contains an account of the regulations of a school for
singers in Rome, directed by Virgilio Mazzocchi, in which Buontempi was
a pupil: The pupils were obliged to devote one hour each day to the
singing of difficult passages with the idea of acquiring experience;
one hour to the practice of the trill, one to passages in agility, one
to literary studies, one to vocalises and to various other technical
exercises under the direction of a teacher and before a mirror to
acquire the certainty that the singer did not make a faulty movement of
the face, the forehead, the eyes or the mouth. This was the morning’s
work. In the afternoon, a half-hour was given to theory study, the same
amount to writing counterpoint on plain-song melodies, then to learning
and applying the rules of composition (writing on an erasable sheet);
then followed a half-hour of study of a literary nature, and the rest
of the day was given to practice on the clavichord, to the composition
of a psalm, motet, canzonetta, or any other kind of piece according to
the pupil’s choice. Such were the common exercises of those days when
the pupils were kept on duty at the school. On other days, they would
go outside the Angelica Gate to sing against the famous echo that was
found there, listening to the response in order to criticise their
work. Other duties were to sing in nearly all the musical solemnities
of the various churches, to study attentively the style of the great
singers of the day, to make a report of their observations to their
master, who, the better to impress the result of their studies upon the
minds of his pupils, added remarks and advice as he deemed necessary.
Under such discipline it is not astonishing that the Italian singers
attained a high degree of excellence, and became not only distinguished
singers but skilful composers as well. That the reader may gather an
idea of the character of passages executed by these singers an example
is given on the previous page.
[Music: AIR for BASS