Singing in Style: A Guide to Vocal Performance Practices

The first historical overview of vocal performance practice and style ever published, "Singing In Style" provides an introduction to how such issues as ornamentation, vibrato, rubato, portamento, articulation, tempo, language, and accompaniment with period instruments have been handled since the seventeenth century. Each chapter presents a historical period and gives background information on the singers and composers, the vocal repertoire, and the stylistic conventions of that time. Specific repertoire examples are discussed as well, to show how to use the music itself as a context for making stylistic choices. Each chapter also has an extensive reference list arranged by topic, so the interested reader can pursue a particular subject in more depth.

Covering the Baroque period to the present, Elliott casts a wide net, bringing together information from historical treatises, personal accounts from composers, performers, historians, critics, and current scholarly commentary into one convenient handbook for the student and the amateur and professional performer who want to learn more about how vocal works were sung in their day.

CONTENIDO:

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1 The Early Baroque
Baroque Notation
Scores and Editions
Thoroughbass
Accompaniment Instruments
Pitch
Vibrato
Words and Music
Historical Pronunciation
Italy
Voice Types and Registers
Ornamentation
England
Voice Types and Registers
Ornamentation
France
Voice Types and Ranges
Dance Forms
Notes inégales
Ornamentation
Diction

2 The Late Baroque
Scores and Notation
Modern Editions
Tempo
Articulation
Rhythmic Alteration
Legato
Vibrato and Breath
Pitch
Period Instruments
Recitative
Italian Influence
Ornamenting Arias
Handel?s Messiah
Germany
Ornamentation
J. S. Bach and His Singers
France
Secular Cantatas
Ornamentation

3 The Classical Era
Scores and Editions
Classical Instruments
Articulation and Legato
Tempo and Rhythm
Voice Types and Ranges
Mozart on Singers
Vibrato and Portamento
Recitative
Ornamentation

4 Italian Bel Canto
Scores and Editions
Articulation and Phrasing
Tempo, Rhythmic Flexibility, and Rubato
Voice Types
Technique
Vibrato
Portamento
Ornamentation
Cadenzas and Improvised Florid Embellishment

5 German Lieder
Editions
Transpositions
German Diction and Technique
Articulation and Expression Marks
Embellishment
Notated Ornaments
Vibrato and Portamento
The Piano
Tempo and Rhythm

6 French Mélodies
Editions, Transpositions, and Voice Types
French Taste and Aesthetics
Ornamentation
The Performer?s New Role
Words and Music
Diction and Articulation
Portamento and Vibrato
Rhythm and Tempo
7 Second Viennese School
Publications and Editions
Performance and Analysis
The Society for Private Musical Performance
Music and Text
Pierrot Lunaire
Sprechstimme in Other Works
Dynamics and Articulation
Tempo and Rubato
Learning This Music

8 Early Twentieth-Century Nationalism
Russia
Musorgsky and Olenina
Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninov, and Chaliapin
Prokofiev
Shostakovich
Editions and Language
Spain
Falla
Rodrigo
Editions
England
Britten and Pears
Editions
United States
Ives
Copland
Barber
Editions

9 Working with Living Composers
Voice Types
Manuscripts, Revisions, and Published Scores
Notation
Special Vocal Effects
Other Special Instructions or Requirements
Learning Difficult Rhythms and Pitches
Vibrato
Text and Music
Composers as Performers
Using Recordings
Conclusions: Finding the Composers? Intentions

Notes
For Further Reading
Index