=Growth of the Florid Style=.—As the art of singing developed, the
singers increased their capricious embellishments. With the idea of
securing brilliancy as well as the hope of winning success for their
works, composers yielded to the exactions of singers and the depraved
taste of the dilettanti. This explains the seemingly endless vocalizing
and those passages of pure agility which crowd the scores of the best
Italian masters of the 17th and 18th centuries. Before giving some
account of the famous singers of the old Italian school it will be
interesting to have a few notes upon a work on vocal music which bears
upon the matter of execution.
=A Work on Singing=.—In 1725, =Pier Francesco Tosi=, a renowned singer
(born about 1650, died 1730), published a work, translated into
English, and published in 1742 under the title “Observations on the
Florid Song, or Sentiments of the Ancient and Modern Singers,” which
contains some interesting and valuable statements for the student of
the history of the art of singing. The most minute principles are set
forth with much grace and spirit, in all cases showing enthusiasm on
the part of the author for his art and a high sense of the dignity of
the profession of singing. When the discussion is in regard to certain
kinds of passages in which the singer was accustomed to improvise
ornaments, Tosi demands the union of five qualities: intelligence,
invention, meter (rhythm), mechanism (technic) and taste; and in
addition, other qualities which he calls “secondary and auxiliary
graces”: the appoggiatura, the trill, the portamento di voce, phrasing.
This work by Tosi and one by Marcello entitled _Le Theatre à la Mode_
throw much light on the execution of the vocal music of the 18th
century.
=Seventeenth Century Singers=.—=Baldassare Ferri= (1610-1680) was
one of the most renowned of the male sopranos of the old school. His
voice had the greatest agility and facility, perfect intonation,
a brilliant shake or trill and his breath supply seemed to be
inexhaustible. In regard to his intonation, it is said that he was
able to ascend and descend in one breath a two-octave scale with
a continuous trill without accompaniment with such perfection of
intonation that when he finished he had not varied a shade from the
pitch of his starting-note. He was in high favor in the courts of
Poland, Germany, Sweden and England. A medal was struck in his honor.
=Antonio Bernacchi= (1690-1756) was a pupil of =Pistocchi= (1659-1720),
the most celebrated teacher in Italy at this time, whose principles
are represented in Tosi’s book. He commenced his career early and
appeared in opera in Italy, later in England and Germany. After some
years of experience with the public taste he altered his style, making
great use of the florid style, a veritable embroidery of roulades, an
innovation that was so successful as to be immediately followed by
other singers in spite of the protests of the older school of singers.
It is related that when Pistocchi heard his former pupil, he said:
“Ah! woe is me! I taught thee to sing and now thou wilt play!” He sang
in Handel’s opera company in London, 1729-30. He then returned to
Italy to take up the career of a teacher and brought out a number of
fine singers. =Francesco Bernardi Senesino= (1680-1750) was a great
favorite in England, where he sang in Handel’s operas. His voice was
exceptionally fine in quality, clear, penetrating and flexible, his
technic remarkable; his style was marked by purity, simplicity and
expressiveness, and his delivery of recitative was famous over all
Europe. The name of Niccolo Porpora was mentioned in connection with
the opera as a celebrated singing master as well as composer. No
singers before or since have sung like his pupils, notably Caffarelli
and Farinelli.
=Gaetano Majorano Caffarelli= (1703-1783)—the reader will note that
many of the old school of musicians lived to a ripe old age—was the son
of a Neapolitan peasant, who tried to repress the boy’s evident musical
inclinations. Cafaro, director of the Chapel Royal, at Naples, chanced
to hear him sing and succeeded in getting charge of him and gave him
his elementary instruction, which was followed by instruction from
Porpora, who was then living in Naples. Porpora was a most exacting
teacher, requiring implicit obedience and unceasing practice. The story
is told that Porpora kept Caffarelli for five or six years to the
unvaried study of a single page of exercises despite the pupil’s most
strenuous objections. At the end of the time, when Caffarelli declared
he would submit no longer, the old teacher said: “Go, my son. I have
nothing more to teach you. You are the greatest singer in Europe.”
When he first appeared in opera he sang female parts, for which his
beautiful face was well-suited. Some years later he took men’s parts.
He gained great popularity in the leading cities of Europe and amassed
an enormous fortune. He excelled in slow and pathetic airs, yet he was
most admirable in the bravura style, and his technic in the trill and
chromatic scales was unapproached by any other singer of his time. He
was fond of introducing chromatic passages in quick movements.
=Farinelli= (1705-1782), whose real name was Carlo Broschi, was a
pupil of Porpora. He made his first public appearance in Rome when
he was seventeen years old. It was on this occasion that he sang the
famous aria with trumpet obligato, written by his master, a piece which
became so associated with him as to be demanded at all his concerts.
In this piece, trumpet and voice vie with each other in holding and
swelling a note of extraordinary length and volume; when the trumpeter
had exhausted his breath Farinelli kept on with increased power and
ended with a great vocal display. This aria called for wonderful
vocal technic owing to the novelty and difficulty of the trills and
variations introduced. In 1727, he engaged in a musical duel with
Bernacchi, previously referred to, in which he was conquered. As a
result of this he placed himself under Bernacchi’s instruction, and
thus perfected his wonderful talent. In 1731, at the suggestion of the
Emperor Charles VI, he modified his style and devoted study to the
mastery of pathos and simplicity. During his public career he won the
greatest possible success in the European capitals and passed the last
years of his life in wealth. Mancini, a fellow-pupil of Farinelli and
later a famous singing master, says of Farinelli’s voice: “It was so
perfect, so powerful, so sonorous and so rich in its extent, both in
the high and the low parts of the register, that its equal has never
been heard in our time.... The art of taking and keeping the breath
so softly and easily that no one could perceive it began and ended
with him. The qualities in which he excelled were the evenness of his
voice, the art of swelling its sound, the portamento, the union of the
registers, a surprising agility, a graceful and pathetic style and a
shake as admirable as it was rare.”
A few other singers of this class may be mentioned: Giacchino Conti,
called =Gizziello= (1714-1761), =Giovanni Carestini= (1705-1758?)
a contralto, =Giuseppe Boschi=, the most celebrated basso of the
18th century, one of Handel’s singers, and =Girolamo Crescentini=
(1766-1846). So much space has been given to these singers because
their work laid the principles for vocal training that have ever since
been the foundation upon which the great masters and singers of later
times have built their art; to these principles has been given the name
of the old Italian School of Singing.
=Ill-effect of Virtuosity=.—The student who goes fully into the subject
of the relation of singers to the opera will find that the great
development of virtuosity among singers exerted an ill-effect and
called forth a very pronounced reform in which Gluck was the leader.
Singers were capable of such great vocal display, and the public showed
so much enthusiasm for the brilliant feats of vocalism, and so great
was the rivalry between singers and their partisans that composers vied
with each other in their efforts to introduce the most difficult and
florid passages possible. The text of an aria had no real value and
became merely a vehicle upon which to place the dazzling vocalization
of the singer. Dramatic truth was ruthlessly sacrificed. A singer,
supposed to be in the very throes of death, would give a virtuosic
display that would tax the lung power of a man in the most perfect
physical condition. Gluck’s reform consisted in requiring that the
arias should express the emotions suited to the situation, thus calling
for expressive singing, not mere vocal display. The history of the
opera and singing since then shows periods of change toward one idea or
the other until the principles of Richard Wagner as to dramatic truth
were generally accepted.