The Styles Of Vocal Ornamentation In Baroque Music
The beauty of vocal music lies within the composer’s ability to engineer personal expression as the blueprint that which the performer breathes life into through their own personal expression can only convey. The Baroque period ushered in an era of musical expression that used theoretical foundations to prove that emotion can be heightened by simply adding a little “spice” to it through what is known as ornamentation. In music, ornamentation, also known as embellishments, is the musical flowering of a melody line that is not a necessity of the piece. They serve as decorations to “ornament” a musical line. This wave of musical interpretation gave new meaning to musical expression for both vocalists and instrumentalists. Composers such as Handel, Scarlatti, and Monteverdi orchestrated musical works that now for many professional singers lies all the groundwork needed to have a chance at tackling and successfully conquering the feat of notorious coloratura passages. Three styles of vocal ornamentation in baroque music served as faithful tricks for coloratura singers and coloratura aria lovers. These three styles are the use of the mordent, the turn, and the trill. Ornamentation can be divided, if you will, into two distinct categories: the use of standard embellishments (i. e. mordents, trills, turns, etc. ) and free ornamentation which involves the expansion of a melodic line written by the composer.
Brief Introduction to Baroque Vocal Ornamentation
Vocal ornaments are performed as “fast notes” on a central note and can vary from quite extensive (which was common in the Baroque period) to very little or none. Improvisatory embellishment constituted common practice for the singer just as realizing figured bass did for the harpsichordist. The purpose of such embellishment was indeed to impart liveliness and brilliance to a melodic line and to enrich the harmony with non-harmonic tones. In the seventeenth century, it was common for a singer performing a da capo aria to the sing the melody “as written” the first time, but would elaborately ornament the same line with additional flourishes the second time. Until 1735, most of the leading singers in Italy were virtuosos with extensive training in and experience in the art of embellishment. These singers were such sovereigns in their expertise that they did not need a composer to notate embellishments and would have been offended had they tried. This art form was so revered that even music critics during that period such as Piero Francesco Tosi and Johann Friedrich Agricola criticized singers and composers who wrote out embellishments in advance, including cadenzas. Italian Baroque composers differed compared to French and German Baroque composers who insisted upon notating embellishments within their compositions. The use of vocal ornamentation became increasingly more elaborate over the Baroque period.
Music Historian Charles Burney remarked that the level of embellishment and virtuosity, “which excited such astonishment in 1734, would be hardly sought sufficiently brilliant in 1788 for a third rate singer at the opera. The dose to produce the same effects as 50 years ago must be more than doubled. ” This heightened use of vocal prowess brought about a competitive tenacity amongst singers which still exists today. Such so that many vocal teachers and music composers published treatises on the use of vocal embellishments, favoring fluidity of expression yet bemoaning the excessive bravura that most eighteenth century singers had taken. It is good that we are able as singers to express our personal interpretations, but we must also be mindful to observe the overriding conventions of the time period. In some sections of Baroque vocal music, embellishment was obligatory whereas in other sections such embellishments were inappropriate. Handel, for example, composed operas filled with da capo arias, which is an ideal form to display a singer’s vocal ability. One historian stated that the first rendition of the A section requires, “nothing but the simplest ornaments, of a good taste and few, that the composition may remain simple, plain, and pure. ” As the B section occurs only once, singers ornamented it more freely than the first A section but not to the extent of the repeat of the second A section. At the end of it, the art of baroque vocal embellishment belongs to the aria; embellishment of the recitative is considered inappropriate except for the occasional appoggiatura.
Standard Embellishment in Baroque Vocal Music
Three widely used standard embellishments in Baroque Vocal Music were the mordent, the turn, and the trill. The mordent is thought of as a rapid alternation between an indicated note, the note above or below, and the indicated note again. The upper mordent is indicated by a short thick squiggly line and the lower mordent is indicated the same with a vertical line through it. Mordents are of two kinds, the simple or short mordent, consisting of three notes, the lower or auxiliary note occurring but once, and the double or long mordent, which the auxiliary note appears twice or quite often. In the Baroque period, a mordent may have been executed with more than one alternation between the indicated note and the note below, making it in a sense an inverted trill. Mordents, in some other musical periods, might typically begin with an extra unessential note, rather than with the principal note. Turns are short figures in sheet music that consist of the note above the one indicated, the note itself, the note below the one indicated, and the note itself again. This is notated by a mirrored S shape lying on its side above the staff. The exact speed when using turns in vocal music varies as so does its rhythm. The lower or upper added notes may or may not be raised chromatically. Most feminine vocalists used turns in the middle of a melodic line or at a half cadence within the song or recitative. The use of the trill has played an integral part in the development of exemplary vocal talent throughout the musical periods. The trill is a musical ornament consisting of a rapid alternation between two adjacent notes, usually a semitone or tone apart, which can be identified with the context of the trill.
During the baroque period, a number of notations indicated the direction or pattern the trill should begin and or end. Trills were virtually added at all principal cadences unless another ornament was indicated or the text called for complexity. Baroque trills usually started on the upper note, whether it was proceeded by that note or not. The upper note, or appoggiatura, were sung with length and expressive stress (vibrato), then slurred into the rest of the trill, giving the effect of a slight diminuendo away from the appoggiatura. Trilling is considered one of the obligatory ornaments within the baroque tradition. It has been quoted of a great music critic of the Baroque period the views of baroque audience and trills, “He who cannot trill well is not a good singer, not matter how much they know. The ability to trill was a high crowning moment for vocal singers, especially the “divas”.
Free Ornamentation in Baroque Vocal Music
When discussing free ornamentation in baroque vocal music, a great deal of what one does here is the addition, singly and in combination, with the standard embellishments already considered. When considering the expansion of the melodic line itself, this can be viewed as the substitution of more notes for fewer. The greatest difficulty in ornamenting a melodic line is liberation of the singer from the confines or scope of the composer’s original line. The most common way Baroque singers expanded melodic lines was their use in filling in intervals with stepwise motion or start an occasional phrase with an ascending scale. The large intervals often give power and character to a composition and should not be filled in. The procedure for free ornamentation is a simple one but becomes more effective with time and taste. Most often, the term free ornamentation was referring to baroque instrumentalists, but their practices spilled over into vocal singing techniques that were magnified during the Romantic period. Ornamentation is intended to grow more intensively as the music, or movements progress.
Conclusion
There is a number of musicological research that suggests documents from the baroque period imply the reclamation of historically accurate performance practice is far from an exact science. In the same breath, it also shed light on the common characteristics the define the Baroque style of vocal singing, especially in opera. These characteristics offer a historical context through which the contemporary singer can demonstrate and share with a modern audience the beauty and passion of baroque vocal music. Issues of taste will be a timeless debate amongst critics and teachers as any modern baroque singer will receive criticism for being too liberal or too conservative in their embellishments. Baroque music was never intended to be a code of regulations that must be followed to the letter. Articulation, expression, and ornamentation was all at the province of the performer. Because of this powerful liberation of vocal expression, the proceeding musical periods wrought a deluge of music that evoked emotions that till this day contain the power as it did when it was originally penned.
