In 1994, the American Academy of Teachers of Singing issued a statement entitled “Healthy Vocal Technique and the Performance of Early Music,” which raised concerns about asking young singers to “apply purportedly historical vocal techniques in the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music.” The statement specifically mentions the demand for “straight tone,” explaining that it can “pose advanced technical and
interpretive problems.”
But do these risks apply to more seasoned singers, and to soloists as well as choristers? Is early music technique inherently dangerous? To find out the answers to these questions, I spoke to early music specialist, voice teacher, and historical performance coach Nancy Zylstra, who is on the faculty of Seattle Academy of Opera and the Oberlin Conservatory’s Baroque Performance Institute.
First, just to be clear, what is your definition of early music?
Early Music America, the service organization devoted to supporting historical performance in North America, defines early music as repertoire from the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods. I also feel that implicit in the use of the phrase “early music” is the assumption that the performers will be applying the appropriate historical performance practices when they perform music from those periods.
What sort of technique does this require?
As Max van Egmond, the wonderful Dutch bass-baritone and early music pioneer, always says, “Singing early music doesn’t take different technique, it takes more technique.” According to Marin Mersenne, the author of Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636-7), a voice should have a “solid sostenuto without pitch-wobble; flexibility in passage-work; accurate intonation; sweetness, and a certain harmoniousness, on which depends the charms which ravish the hearers. . . .” In Histoire de la musique (Amsterdam, 1725), Jean-Laurent Le Cerf de La Viéville describes a “perfect voice” as “sonorous, extensive, sweet, neat, lively, flexible.” These are descriptions of voices that can perform trills and other ornaments at many tempos, all the while “making the difficult sound effortless” (Johann Adam Hiller quoting Pier Francesco Tosi). In a sense, singing early music requires a more instrumental approach.
The daily practice schedule of the papal singing school from around the turn of the seventeenth century also gives an indication of what was especially valued and expected from singers of that time—trills: one hour; messa di voce: one hour; ornamentation: one hour; and coloratura and difficult intervals: one hour.
Many singers associate early music technique with straight tone. Is that also expected?
It is disappointing if a discussion of early music singing revolves around only vibrato. Shape, gesture, phrase, articulation, dynamic—these are all words which more accurately describe admirable early music singing style. The most successful use of vibrato is when it appears as an outgrowth of the shape of a note or phrase, or because of emotional, textual, or dynamic intensity. I don’t think it is necessary to vibrate in order to produce a vibrant sound. Whether or not a singer uses vibrato is less important to me than how and when they decide to employ it. That is what makes it expressive, or not.
To my mind, probably the main reason why early music has been so strongly associated with vibrato-less singing is the choral tradition. It really is true that chords are easier to tune and voices are more successfully blended when singers are using less vibrato. Vibrato is as individual as each voice—some voices have faster or slower, more slender or wider vibratos. Removing those variables helps keep individual voices from sticking out of the group.
I do believe that a diet of only non-vibrato, straight-tone singing is not healthy, especially if at a very high tessitura and loud dynamic level. Everything in moderation! Much as one might like chocolate, eating too much of it is not healthy, especially if to the exclusion of other, necessary, food groups. As a soloist, I certainly never sang with completely straight tone all the time, and I can’t really think of any other soloist I’ve ever heard who does, either. It is a matter of degree.
What Fachs are particularly well suited to early music? Is it necessary to have a smaller voice?
This is a topic near and dear to my heart. So often I have heard from a singer that his or her teacher says, “Your voice is too small for opera, so why don’t you sing early music?” Like the discussion on vibrato, emphasis on the size of a voice being “good” or “bad” for early music is too limiting. Performance practice for music of any period is a state of mind, not just of voice. If singers are intelligent and musical, with good techniques and a willingness to let their voices be instruments in service of the music they are singing right now, they can be successful at early music style.
My favorite example of this type of singer is Stephanie Blythe. Here at Seattle Opera a couple of seasons ago, I heard her in The Italian Girl in Algiers and thought she was fabulous. Then I was given an opportunity to hear the Met’s production of Handel’s Rodelinda, in which she also performed. I went, unsure of how her voice was going to deal with the stylistic demands of the piece. Well, I was totally blown away by her wonderful, musical, masterfully stylish performance. Her recitatives were so clear and expressive—and in the arias, she had all the agility and skill you could possibly want, married with dynamic shading, beautiful phrasing, and solid sostenuto. She really knew what to do with the music and had all the technique necessary to make it happen.
All voices come from the factory with different standard equipment. Some singers are already blessed with easy coloratura and a real trill. Others find it easier to spin long, lyrical, legato lines. In order to become compleat [sic] singers of early music, singers must work on the techniques which are more difficult for them and develop them after-market, so to say, adding them to the skills they already have.
You had great success as a performer of early music. What were your own technical challenges?
Even though I didn’t start studying singing seriously until my early twenties, after majoring in the bassoon, I was fortunate to already have a trill and agility, clear pitch with lots of fundamental in the tone, as well as breath control from my instrumental studies. What I needed to learn was how to make a long legato line, and to sound more like a singer and not an instrumentalist with a sweet little voice.
You explained to me that your voice wasn’t large enough to handle the big operatic repertoire. For singers that do perform this repertoire, is there any benefit in adding early music to their capabilities, or should they leave this to the superstars like Stephanie Blythe?
I think most voices can and should sing a variety of styles. To quote my voice teacher, Marianne Weltmann, “The larynx likes a change.” Singing a variety of styles can be as useful to singers as cross-training is for athletes. There are things to be gained from training in a variety of ways, which will ultimately help build more technique and keep the voice from becoming locked into one approach. This is the real problem I see—if emphasis is placed primarily on preparing for one medium over the other, voices become less supple and more muscle-bound.
There’s no reason that singers of modern opera shouldn’t be able to sing early music and, by the same token, that early music singers shouldn’t be able to sing modern opera. The main thing is that the demands of each style must be fully understood and techniques associated with each must be fully “owned by” (integrated into) the voice.
The analogy I would use here is that many of us have learned how to drive cars with standard transmission and with automatic transmission. After a few tries, it is pretty obvious which techniques to use when you’re in each car—some things work for the automatic transmission that will get you nowhere in the stick shift machine! But just because we drive one, does it mean we can’t drive the other?
This makes sense, yet there is a stigma associated with early music among many members of the singing community. Why is this?
Voice faculties are not always very encouraging of their students’ interest in singing early repertoire with the kind of stylistic approach desired by early music groups. This is sad. Not preparing young singers for all the possibilities out there in the real world is a mistake. I look at it this way: the more styles you understand and can sing well, the more varied and prosperous your career. Groups will want to hire you because you can sing music in the style they want. This goes for ensembles that specialize in “new” music as well as “old” music. In many ways, there are similarities in how one sings these two types of music.
One of the reasons the voice faculties sometimes steer students away from early music is that it is perceived as undermining the aim of much of modern vocal training—to create larger and louder voices. This aim is easy to understand since, with the disappearance of royal and ecclesiastical patrons of old, musical presenters have had to rely on larger public audiences to foot the bills—which has led to concert halls and opera houses getting larger and larger.
In contrast, when it was written, early music was most often performed in small halls, salons, chambers, and so on, and with smaller forces playing on instruments that didn’t achieve the same loudness. All of these factors allow for a successful dynamic range that can start at a much softer level. This is just the sort of situation that allows a voice to be very flexible and supple, sweet, neat, and lively.
Contrary to what the naysayers believe, it’s not necessary to sing with half your voice or “off your voice” to attain these sorts of vocal attributes. What early music does require, however, is an openness to the demands of the music. Go beyond what your voice “does” to what it can do to make the music come to life.
How can singers learn more about early music technique?
There are several methods:
1: Read about these techniques in the many and varied publications which are now available. Many famous treatises from the period have been translated into English and are readily available in college and university libraries. Of course, you can always refer to the Grove Dictionary of Music as a starting point. And Google! There’s a lot of useful information available on the Web.
Incidentally, this advice applies to whatever music you’re studying. For example, if you’re working on French mélodie, then Pierre Bernac and the essays of Reynaldo Hahn would be required reading. The same is true of early music. It’s important to learn about historical context.
2: Read through a lot of repertoire, playing “two-part inventions”—just the bass line and the vocal line—to get a feel for the music.
3: Listen to recordings of early repertoire played and sung by instrumentalists and singers well versed in the techniques. Usually if a group says it is playing on “historical” or “original” instruments, this is a good way to choose between one performance and another.
4: Attend concerts of early music groups.
5: Join Early Music America (EMA) and your local early music organizations.
6: Attend workshops that focus on this style. There are a lot to choose from. EMA publishes a list of workshops, for example. These take place all over the country, and you may be surprised to find that there is one near you.
Is there anything else you’d like to mention in regard to early music or early music technique?
I’d like singers and voice teachers to understand that early music is not just about white (or colorless), straight-tone singing. If they can overcome their concern about this issue, they’ll discover a whole universe of rewarding repertoire and enhanced performance opportunities.
