Performance Practice II

Continuing with Singing in Style by Martha Elliott, subtitled A Guide to Vocal Performance Practices:

Isn't this the coolest thing!   I swear I've never heard of this.  Caccini described an ornament where you start a third or fourth below the written pitch and slide up to the real note.  Another guy calls this cercar della nota (searching for the note).  This is an actual thing.  Doesn't that sound like a scoop to you?  Who knew?

For a description of a scoop see here.  For Part I see here.

Performance Practice I

 

 David with his theorbo

I've started reading Singing in Style by Martha Elliott, subtitled A Guide to Vocal Performance Practices, and I am going to be boring you in future weeks with bits from it.

She starts with John Dowland (1563 – 1626 and Giulio Caccini (1551 – 1618), of course.  Dowland accompanied his songs on the lute and composed in tablature.  Baroque tablature was very similar to modern guitar tablature, and made it possible to write out the whole piece in a form that others could play as is.  Caccini and the Italians composed in score with just melody and bass, expecting the player to fill the other parts in to the best of his ability.  I like it that she says that Caccini recommended accompanying yourself on the theorbo which would have stronger low notes than the lute.  At least now you could find a theorbo.

As an old person, I remember when we had no idea how these pieces were actually composed, except we were aware that figured bass started around this time.  We selected a printed realization we liked and went with it.  Ms Elliott recommends that you acquire an original facsimile of your piece.  She provides one sample by Monteverdi.  I think maybe you have to actually go to the library for this, though I see there are facsimiles on line.  She wants the singer to take responsibility for his own performance.  I searched for quite a while for a small sample of a facsimile lute tablature by Dowland but did not find one that I could show.  Amazon sells something in tablature form, but it cannot be downloaded and isn't a facsimile.  One source says that published facsimiles of lute music are rare.  Caccini was easier to find.  Note:  bass is already figured:

FYI:  modern Italian sounds similar to how it would have sounded in Caccini's time, while Dowland's words would have sounded much different from ours. 

In the early Baroque everything is much harder than you thought.

This first chapter includes an extended discussion and quotes from historical sources about vibrato, tremolo, trill, etc.  It is very important to realize that true knowledge of the constantly fluctuating singing voice required modern technology.  It is only when you record the voice on a graph that you can see that it is always fluctuating.  It even fluctuates as it slides from one note to another.  It is not possible to truly understand this using the ear alone.  It is important to make this modern interpretation of ancient sources.

I have discussed this topic here, here and here.

My own discussion of singing in the Italian Baroque had only to do with the prominence of castrati and preference for high voices.  I don't know how practical it is to require everyone to become a musicologist.  Perhaps if you major in theorbo this would be necessary.

Birth of Opera

This information comes from Brittanica.

"Giovanni Bardi, conte di Vernio, (b. Feb. 5, 1534, Florence—d. 1612, Florence), musician, writer, and scientist, influential in the evolution of opera. About 1573 he founded the Florentine Camerata, a group that sought to revive ancient Greek music and drama. Among the members were the theorist Vincenzo Galilei (father of Galileo) and the composer Giulio Caccini. Bardi collaborated with these and other Florentine musicians in court entertainments from 1579 to 1608. [Other members were the poet Ottavio Rinuccini (1562-1621), the musician Emilio de' Cavalieri (c.1550-1602), and the composer Jacopo Peri (1561-1633).]

"Bardi and his circle were influenced by the theorist Girolamo Mei, who had translated all known works of ancient Greek music theory."

What I cannot find in any book is that if you are walking along a street in Florence and happen to notice it, there will be this sign.

It stands on the side of this unassuming building where met the famous Camerata.

Now everything is a camerata, but in that day the word was newly minted to refer to Bardi's group.  The Camerata read everything available at the time and speculated on the actual experience of Greek drama.  They concluded that in a proper play in ancient Greece everything was sung.  They also concluded that there was no place for counterpoint in such a drama, and composed their own pieces with simple chordal accompaniment.

Searching yields this example with text by Bardi and music probably by Cavalieri.



This piece by Caccini is also very nice.


None of them resemble recitative. I'll look further.

Stuff about Castrati

Here are a few facts:

In 1562 the first castrato sang in the Sistine Choir in Rome. This is, as I suspected, long before the invention of opera at the end of the century.

The early operas of Peri and Caccini for Florence were sung by natural male and female voices.

In Monteverdi's L'Orfeo for Mantua the male voices were natural males while the female roles were sung by castrati.

This is all so confusing.

In the Roman opera period c. 1620-40 there were no women performers.  The female roles and maybe even some of the males were sung by castrati.

Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, written for the commercial opera in Venice, had a woman sing Poppea and a castrato as Nero.  Amore was also sung by a castrato.

By Handel's time most of the male roles in Italian opera, especially the heroes, were sung by castrati and the female roles were sung by women.  They seem to have settled on a gender identification of castrati as male.

But just so you aren't suddenly becoming unconfused, not always.

DiDonato recital

I don't think I've ever done this before, but here is the entire program for the Joyce DiDonato recital in San Francisco Monday night.

I. Arie Antiche

“Danza, danza, fanciulla gentile” Francesco Durante
“Se tu m’ami” Giovanni Pergolesi
“Amarilli mia bella” Giulio Caccini
“Mio ben” Luigi Rossi
“Nel cor piu non mi sento” Giovanni Paisiello
“Or ch’io non sequo piu” Raffaello Rontani (?-1622)

II. “Willow Song” from Otello by Gioacchino Rossini

III. I Canti Della Sera by Francesco Santoliquido (1883-1971)

“L’assiolo canta”
“Alba di luna sul bosco”
“Tristezza crepuscolare”
“L’incontro”

[Everything before the intermission was in Italian. I have put in dates for anyone I am not familiar with. I always think it is important to put things in a context. Santoliquido was completely unfamiliar, intimate and sexy. Perhaps she will record them. She promised Italian love songs some time in the future.]

INTERMISSION

[Everything after the intermission was in Spanish or Catalan. I can't tell the difference.]

IV. Canciones Classica by Frenando Obradors (1897-1945)

“La mi sola, Laureola”
“Al Amor”
“Corazon, porque pasais?”
“The jealous lad”
“Dreaming of love, dear mother”
“From the finest hair”
“Tiny the Bride” “Tiny the bride, tiny the groom, tiny the parlor, and the bedroom, which is why I want a tiny bed with a mosquito net.”

[I had a teacher long ago who was especially fond of Obradors, but this may be the first time I have heard these songs. They're all love songs, I believe. They aren't in my iTunes.]

V. “La Maja Dolorosa No.1. No. 2, No. 3” by Enrique Granados
[This group was dedicated to the memory of James Schwabacher who died this past year.]

VI. Xavier Montsalvatge (1912-2002)

“Cuba dentro de un piano”
“Punto de Habanera”
“Nighe, nighe”
“Canto Negro”

Encores

“Tanti affetti” Rossini
[Everyone stood up and shouted after this one. She sang a very ornamented version.]

“Over the rainbow” by Harold Arlen

She likes to talk. It all began here for her and she was excited to be in San Francisco again. She spoke of memories of Jimmy Schwabacher, and made it clear that for her there has truly been an over the rainbow.

Her singing was warm and emotional. She made a personal connection with each piece. She gets it. Viva.

I will have to begin paying more attention to her.