(I should stress that Sibelius makes much better printouts than this --
razor-sharp, in fact, depending, of course, on your printer. If the image here looks
vague, that might be a problem with my aging scanner. If you'd like to see the entire
Rossini aria, with the two sets of ornaments, there's a way. Sibelius offers a plugin for
your web browser, which allows you to look at scores made with the program. First go the Sibelius site and download the plugin.
Follow their instructions to install it; the installation is easy, and causes no problems.
Then start your browser again, and look at the complete Rossini
score. It's still not as sharp as a Sibelius printout, but…it's wonderful to be
able to offer printed music on the web this way.)
 This is just one sample of how the two sets of
ornaments differ. The top version is very elegant, full of confident, secure flourishes.
The second is far more dramatic, or, as Garcia says, "languorous" -- too
languorous, he thinks, for the character that sings it. Similar differences can be found
throughout the aria, especially in the lengthy cadenzas (far more extensive, I must say,
than anything we're used to hearing today).
These ornaments are so individual that they amount
to more than simply two different ways of singing the same piece. They create two versions
of the aria -- or, to put this as the best 19th century connoisseurs might have, the two
sets of ornaments create two different visions of the character. Ornaments, according (for
example) to Stendahl, the great French novelist who wrote an irrepressible biography of
Rossini, weren't for vocal display, though of course they were used that way. Stendahl
says that a composer can only express the general outlines of an emotion. The specific
details have to be filled in by singers, who may, in fact, shade an emotion differently at
each performance. They do that with their vocal ornaments.
Needless to say, that's not how we think of music
today. Composers reign, in our view, and performers are mere interpreters of the
composers' works. But in the early 19th century, things were different. (Especially in
Italy, which hadn't yet gotten used to the precisely etched music of Haydn, Mozart, and
Beethoven.) Singers were individuals, and no two of them would be expected to sing the
same music the same way.
Composers, in fact, tailored their music for
singers in the first place. That was a practical necessity -- if you're writing a new
opera, you'll have a better chance of success if your music suits the singers the manager
of the opera house has already hired. (Nobody would have done it the way we do today --
write the work first, then cast it.)
I know one example of how precisely composers
tailored their music. When Bellini was writing Norma, he got a letter from the
tenor Domenico Donzelli, who'd been engaged to sing the as yet unwritten tenor role of
Pollione. In this letter, Donzelli explained how his voice worked. He sings up to G, he
wrote, in chest voice, and above that in head voice. When he sings coloratura (evidently
not his strength), he preferred downward scales.
Bellini gave him precisely what he asked for. The
few quick scales he's asked to sing go downward, and the melodies of his aria and
cabaletta in the first scene fit exactly the voice he described. Both melodies have
opening phrases arching precisely to the high G that marked the limit of Donzelli's head
voice. When they go higher, they do so as a special effect, giving Donzelli time to shift
gears. The high C in the first aria, approached in a jump from the G, shows off the
difference between Donzelli's two registers (something he must have been proud of, since
Bellini, writing to please him, exploited it).
If an opera had great success and was revived for
a second production, new singers would normally sing it. And they'd change the music, not
just to express their individuality, but for an excellent practical reason. Maybe the
soprano at an opera's premiere had a strong high range, but the soprano at the revival
didn't. Why should she sing music that would make her sound bad? She'd rewrite the score
to suit what she did best. This was so common that there was even a name for the routine
changes (apart from ornamentation) that singers made in their parts: puntatura.
Of course puntatura could be done well or
badly, and if the composer was around, he'd probably prefer to do the rewriting himself.
Rossini complained about the ornaments singers devised, and began writing out his own (to
Stendahl's dismay). Garcia also notes that some music doesn't lend itself to extensive
ornamentation at all -- Mozart, for instance. (Though he does show us a delicious
ornamented version of a secco recitative from Don Giovanni!) Still, singers in
the early 19th century, and the 18th century, too, rewrote their music as a matter of
course, something that sets those eras definitively apart from our own era. Performances
of these operas that aren't ornamented, or are ornamented only in a few places, are
historically incorrect, and much less expressive than they could be.So are performances in
which scholars or coaches or conductors write the ornaments for the singers. Singers were
supposed to find their own ornaments, in their own inimitable, highly personal style. Ornamentation Today
I asked the students if anyone ornamented music today. I wasn't looking
for muscologically correct examples, from Baroque music, let's say. I wondered whether
ornamentation survived anywhere as a living practice, something singers spontaneously did
on their own.
Nobody could think of any examples, but there's
one we've all heard, if we've ever watched a sports event and heard an R&B singer soar
through the national anthem. R&B singers ornament everything they sing, sometimes so
floridly that there's an episode of The Simpsons in which some R&B star at a
football game drives everyone crazy because he just won't stop the outpouring of notes.
Sometimes R&B singers tackle music from the
classical tradition -- which, in fact, "The Star-Spangled Banner" is -- and then
their ornaments follow many 19th century precepts. For instance, if a phrase occurs twice,
they'll sing it differently the second time, something that Manual Garcia tells readers of
his book to do..
I played an example for the class -- Tevin
Campbell, a boy wonder of the early '90s, singing "O Holy Night" from the album A
Very Special Christmas 2. You can hear
a sample, which, if you ask me, perfectly exemplifies my point.
In class, though, my example backfired . Most of
the class reacted more to what they felt was the cheesy arrangement than toTevin
Campbell's singing. Still, I think the example makes my point. And I think vocal
ornamentation is a natural instinct all over the world, one that has somehow been
suppressed in current classical music.
What Does It Mean?
To end the class, I asked how the students felt about the freedom singers
had nearly two centuries ago. The climate now, they told me, doesn't allow us to perform
as freely as those singers did. Composers became much more specific in what they asked
for. Recordings lead us to expect perfection.
The student who made that last point, however,
added that older recordings have more personality, something I think is undeniable to
anyone who hears them. (I'd played one example in class -- Tito Schipa, the wonderful
tenor from the early years of our century, singing "Ecco ridente," with
wonderful informality, and some modest ornaments. Click to hear a bit of it.) Has classical
music gotten stiffer, more formalized, and less individual as it gets further from its
roots?
Here are some of the expressions that some of the
students used to describe current classical performance: "straitjacketed."
"traditional," "tasteful." "you have to do what's correct."
Conductors, they said, often don't give them much freedom. (All the students, I might
note, are performers. None are conductors or, as I've said before, composers.)
There's a defense I might offer, of the way
classical music is performed today: A Mahler symphony, let's say, requires discipline from
the people who play it. Whatever spontaneity musicians might find, it's not going to come
from changing the notes in the score.
Still, I'm struck by how firmly -- and how often
-- some of the students say they feel restricted.
Next
week: how the musical forms in bel canto
opera served commercial needs. |
