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114 views26 pagesSinging and String Playing in Compariso
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Clive Brown
Singing and String Playing in Comparison: Instructions for the Technical and Artistic
Employment of Portamento and Vibrato in Charles de Bériot’s Méthode de violon
Until well into the nineteenth century few would have challenged the idea that the human.
voice was the most perfect of instruments and that vocal music was the highest form of
musical expression. It is not surprising, therefore, that many writers of instrumental
treatises alluded to the vocal qualities of their instrumentsand emphasised the successful
emulation of beautiful singing as a mark of the most tasteful performance. Even pianists,
despite the piano's essentially percussive nature, could regard fine singing as the pre-
eminent model for fine playing. Hummel observed: » What relates to beauty and taste in
performance, will be best cultivated, and pethaps ultimately most easily obtained, by
hearing music finely performed, and by listening to highly distinguished musicians,
particularly Singers gifted with great powers of expression.«’ Chopin was celebrated for
his ability to make the piano sing and Sigismond Thalberg entitled his piano method
L’art du chant appliqué uu piano.
It was, however, bowed string instruments, especially the violin, that were seen as
most capable of imitating not only the expressive qualities of singing, but also many of
the tonal characteristics and embellishments of the human voice. Spohr had no doubt
that, as he observed at the beginning of his Violinschule, »among all the instruments which
have hitherto been invented, the pre-eminence is justly due to the Violin.« He attributed
this partly to »the beauty and equality ofits tone,«its ability to produce »numerous shades
of forte and piano« and »the purity ofits intonation, which ...] is unattainable on any wind
instrument,« but principally to »its suitableness to express the deepest emotions of the
heart, wherein, of all instruments, it most nearly approaches the human voice.«” Spohr's
own playing was frequently praised for its vocal qualities and it seems clear that in
executing a melody he sought to employ the stylistic resources that would have been heard
in the singing of the great sopranos of his day. His performance of his Fighth Violin
Concerto »in Form einer Gesangsszene« (written to suit the taste of the Italian public in
1816) elicited the following comment from a critic in Naples: »He knows the true beauties
Johann Nepomuk Hummel: Ausfhiche theoetsch-prabtische Ansveisung zum Piano-Fort-Spid, Vienna
1828, trans. as: A Complete Theoretical and Practical Course of Instructions, on the Art of Playing the Piano
Forte, 3 vals, London 1829, vol.3 p39.
Louis Spohr: Vielinschule, Vienna [e833], trans. by John Bishop as: Louis Spohr’s Celebrated Violin School,
London {1843}, p.r 84 CLive BROWN
of art, which consist notin overcoming technical difficulties but in rendering instrumen-
tal music like vocal music. In his Violinschule Spohr repeatedly emphasised parallels
between violin playing and singing.
‘Among Spohe's younger contemporaries, the Belgian violinist Charles de Bériot,
though in many respects representing a quite different artistic tendency, was renowned
for the vocal quality of his playing. Spohr, who heard him in Karlsbad in 1838, expressed
his admiration for Bériot’s performances, though he disliked his compositions.* Bériot
had enjoyed a seven-year liaison with the great singer Maria Malibran, who died shortly
after their marriage in 1836, and it seems probable that his style of performance was
strongly influenced by her superb artistry, admired by musicians as diverse as Rossini,
Mendelssohn and Verdi. The poet Heinrich Heine, captivated by Bériot's playing, was
later to remarkc »I cannot but entertain the thought that the soul of his departed wife
sang in the sweet tones of his, violin.) Bériot's Méthode de violon, written in the 1850s,
focussed more extensively and explicitly on the relationship between violin playing and
singing than any other nineteenth-century violin method known to me. It exhibits many
correspondences of performance style with the Traité complet de Vart du chant, written by
his brother-in-law Manuel Garcfa (Malibran’s brother) during the previous decade. Bé-
riot made his intentions clear in the preface to part x of the Méthode, stating: »It is our
intention not so much to develop the mechanical features, as to preserve the true character
of the Violin: that of reproducing and expressing all the feelings of the soul. We have
therefore taken the music of song as our starting point, both as a guide and a model.
‘Music is the soul of the text and by its expansion it gives expression to sentiment, in the
same manner that text helps to give signification to music. Itis this observation that has
Jed us to choose dramatic music for the majority of our examples in Part Three. Music
is above ll the language of sentiment, its melodies always have in them a certain poetic
meaning, a real or imaginary text, which the violinist must always keep prominently in
his mind, in order that his bow may reproduce its accent, prosody, punctuation, in short,
that he may make his instrument speak-<®
‘Much can be learned about nineteenth-century attitudes towards sound quality and
expressiveness from the ways in which violin tutors deal with the relationship between
style and technique, and this evidence may also help us better to appreciate some of the
leading characteristics of early and mid nineteenth-century singing, The instructions in
Allgemeine musiealsche Zeitung x9 (1817), p.327.
Louis Spohr: Selbsibiographie, 2 vols, Kassel 1860-1861, reprint Kassel 1954-1955, vol, p.224
Heinrich Heine, trans. Charles Godfrey Leyland: The Salon: Lectures on Art, Music, Popular Life and
Politics in Paris, London 1995 (original edition 1834), p. 338:
Charles de Bériot: Méthode de vialon, Paris (1858, vol, p-3 SINGING AND STRING PLAYING IN COMPARISON
string methods may supplement and clarify our understanding of equivalent aspects of
vocal practice. Instructions for singers, or accounts of their performances are essentially
subjective, since the mechanism of the voice cannot be seen or described in the way that
a violinist’s techniques can be seen and described. As Roger Freitas has written: »Com-
munication of vocal style{...] is always forced to rely on verbal imagery, imagery that often
suggests different things to different people.«7 Even Garcia's pioneering observations of
the operation of the larynx provide limited information for those trying to recreate the
sound and style of nineteenth-century singing.* Bowing and fingering, on the other
hand, could be observed and explained in ways that provide a more reliable, though by
no means unambiguous guide to reproducing the effects they would have elicited. Bé-
riot's treatise, in combination with other nineteenth-century violin methods, provides a
wealth of detail about such matters.
Curiously, although there has been a lively and growing interest in historically in-
formed performance during the past few decades (extending increasingly during the last
twenty years to nineteenth-century repertoire), there has beena notable reluctance among
period performers to embrace all the implications of the evidence. It is ironic that, while
performers of earlier music bemoan the paucity of evidence that has come down to us,
performers of nineteenth-century music, for which practices are much more richly docu-
‘mented, have been remarkably selective about the aspects of nineteenth-century style they
choose to adopt. I know of no commercially available modern »historically informed
performance of this repertoire that consequentially utilises the stylistic features of which
we have such abundant evidence. Uncomfortable elements of that style are either passed.
over in silence, or argued away on questionable historical or logical grounds.? Some
string players have acknowledged the ornamental use of vibrato in nineteenth-century
repertoire (though they have rarely applied it convincingly) and, by exploring a different
range of bowstrokes, have begun to experiment with unfamiliar means of tone pro-
duction. Singers, on the other hand, have almost without exception shied away fom
changing their approach to vibrato and tone production, and the absurd effects to which
this gives rise can easily be heard in numerous performances where singers have been
combined with period instruments.”° Neither string players nor singers have seriously
Roger Freitas: Towards a Verdian Ideal of Singing: Emancipation from Modem Orthodoxy, in: Journal
ofthe Ropal Musial Assocation 127 (2002), p. 226-257: 227.
Freitas (Verdian Ideal, p.233f), however, draws stimulating and persuasive conclusions about vocal
timbre from Garcla’s observations.
‘Arecording that comes much closer than most is the Orfeo Duo's performance of Schumann's Violin
Sonatas (Unacorda 2002). But even here, important aspects of sound and style remain undeveloped.
‘This is particularly striking in such recordings as those of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony by the
Academy of Ancient Music, London Classical Players, or Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique.
85 86 CLIVE BROWN
faced the challenge of incorporating historically-based portamento into their perfor-
mances.
‘There is, of course, always scope for differing interpretations of written evidence
about performance style and for the conscious or subconscious suppression of evidence
that challenges cherished notions of good taste. This is nicely demonstrated by the heated
debate of the 1970s and 1980s over whether string players ever really played without some
form of continuous vibrato. Robert Donington, undoubtedly under the influence of the
artistic preconceptions generated by his formative musical experiences, considered more
or less continuous vibrato a natural component of beautiful tone in string playing, ar-
guing that it must always have constituted an intrinsic feature of artistic performance.”
Scholars now generally accept that a basically non-vibrato sound in string playing, en-
livened by occasional ornamental vibrato (a term that may embrace a range of very diffe-
rent effects) was the norm in most pre twentieth-century repertoires and even in early
twentieth-century orchestral playing, though performers have been slower to embrace
these ideas in practice, In the case of portamento, even less interest has been shown by
performers in understanding, or exploring in practice, the expressive functions of this
embellishment as it was used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; the mid
twentieth-century rejection of the practice as »tasteless« is too recent for musicians who
were brought up with the new aesthetic of »cleaner« playing, that is more faithfil to the
literal meaning of the score, to feel comfortable about it.
‘The aim of this article is not to debate the pros and cons of historically informed
performance, but rather to investigate the use of vibrato and portamento as expressive
resources in the mid nineteenth-century. The central focus will be Bériot’s Méthode, but
his instructions will be considered in the context of mid nineteenth-century string play-
ing and singing as a whole. In addition to the written evidence of treatises and editions,
the investigation will draw upon the aural evidence of early recordings, particularly those
of the oldest important singers and violinists who were already celebrated during Bériot's
lifetime, especially Joseph Joachim (b. 1832) and Adelina Patti (b. 1843). Without the
existence of such recordings, it would be very difficult indeed to attempt a credible
demonstration of what the authors of nineteenth-century treatises may really have ex-
pected their musical examples to sound like. Of course there will have been as much
variety between one performer and another then as there is now, and the finer nuances
of style are inevitably lost to us; but it may nevertheless be possible to recapture some of
For example in: String Playing in Baroque Music x, in: Early Music 5 (1977), p. 389-393 39, and most
perversely in a review of Greta Moens-Haenen's monumental: Das Vibrato in der Musik des Barock,
in: Early Music x6 (988), p.573. 3
SINGING AND STRING PLAYING IN COMPARISON
the leading aspects of style and execution that would have seemed familiar to mid nine-
teenth-century musicians.
Recent research has demonstrated that, broadly speaking, portamento™ as a com-
ponent of expressive singing and playing, grew in importance during the early nineteenth
century and remained pervasive, though constantly evolving aspect of performance style
well into the twentieth century."3 Vibrato, on the other hand, very sparingly used in the
first half of the nineteenth century, began to be employed more frequently in the later
decades of the century. For much of the second half of the century it seems still to have
been seen as an occasional ornament, although there was increasing criticism of its
excessive use. By the beginning of the twentieth century, recordings indicate that few
players retained the older aesthetic, and during the next decades the increasingly frequent
use of ornamental vibrato shaded into the continuous vibrato of the later twenticth
century, employed by singers, string players and on some wind instruments as a funda-
mental clement of a »beautiful« tone.”>
‘There can be little doubt that portamento, as an adjunct of legato, had its origins in
singing, where itis a typical consequence of changing pitches smoothly and connectedly,
especially over larger intervals. Even within a completely legato context, however, it is
possible, with adequate vocal training, to minimise an audible connection, especially over
narrow intervals, to the extent that it is almost imperceptible. The ability to connect notes
in this manner was required by Garefa, who provided a nice graphic illustration of the
difference between what he called slurred and smooth sounds; the former term indicates
a deliberate audible slide between notes, while the latter is the theoretical equivalent ofa
violinist playing a passage smoothly in a single bow without a change of left-hand posi-
tion, although on the violin there would not even be the slightest hint of a slide between
pitches.
‘Stared Sounds, oooh Breas
a Examece 1 Manuel Garcia: A New Treatise
[J] onthe Art of Singing, London [2858], p.32
‘The term is used here in the sense of an audible slide between notes of different pitches
Anumber of reasons for the decline of violin and vocal portamento in the mid twentieth century have
been postulated by Mark Katz: Portamento and the Phonograph Eifect, and Daniel Leech- Wilkinson:
Portamento and Musical Meaning, in: The Journal of Musicological Research 25 (2006), p-2rr-aga and
233-261.
Vibrato and tremolo were the most commonly used terms in the nineteenth century for a variety of
trembling effects; as with portamento there were numerous different ways in which these could be
executed; many practices that would have been categorized as vibrato or tremolo in the nineteenth
century would not now be readily recognised as vibrato.
Fora more detailed discussion of the historical development of portamento and vibrato during this
period see Clive Brown: Classical and Romantic Performing Practice xy50-1900, Oxford 1999, p.519-58,.
87 88 clive BROWN
Garcia instructed that, from the technical point of view, both types of vocalisation were
produced by vequal and continuous pressure of aire from the lungs, but that the porta-
mento” required »gradual changes in the tension of the lips of the glottis«, while legato
required »sudden changes in the tension of the lips of the glottis.«'7 The result of the
Iatter technique would be to make the slide so fast that it was scarcely measurable,
Onstring instruments portamento, in the sense of glissando, is an effect that requires
the employment of specific left-hand techniques. In the nineteenth century, this type of
portamento will have been regarded fundamentally as an embellishment, a deliberately
introduced expressive gesture, and, in singing especially, it will frequently have involving
the interpolation of grace notes." It seems likely that in singing, despite Garcfa's teach-
ing, a rather less pronounced, but nevertheless clearly audible connection between pitch-
es will also have occurred as an adjunct of the normal legato, particularly when this
involved intervals of larger extent. To nineteenth-century musicians this was perhaps so
integral to vocal technique that it went virtually unnoticed by performer or listener, in
much the same way that the continuous vibrato of the twentieth/twenty-first century has.
become such an inseparable element of vocal sound that it no longer draws attention to
itself unless it is grossly abused (as in the singing of some older sopranos). In string
playing, too, not all audible sliding will have been intended as an expressive effect. The
standard fingering practices of nineteenth-century violinists will often have given rise to
portamento that had no aesthetic motivation, though the best artists will have tried to
make musical sense coincide with position changing. Where it was not clumsily executed,
portamento resulting primarily from the necessity of position changing (later designated
»bus-portamento« by Carl Flesch") is likely to have made little impression on the listen-
er; it would have been such a familiar feature that it was no longer noticed. There is
abundant evidence, however, that, like the over-wide twenticth-century vibrato, the »bus-
portamento, as well as excessive and inartistic ornamental portamento, was sometimes
employed to an obtrusive degree. Both in singing and string playing, especially in the
It is important to note, that the terminology can be confusing: a distinction was sometimes made,
both in singing and string playing, between the word portamento (or in French port de voix) meaning,
con the one hand, an audible slide and, on the other, simply legato. See Nicola Vaccai: Metodo pratico
i canto italiano per camera, London x832, lesson 13; Pierre M. F. de S. Ballot: Mart du vielon, Paris [183s],
p.75-16.
Manuel Garefa: A New Treatise on the Art of Singing, London {1858}, p11.
Profusely illustrated in the late 18th century in Domenico Corri's A Select Collection, Edinburgh (2783)
Similar interpolated grace notes indicating portamento can occasionally be found in nineteenth-cen-
tury string methods, e.g. Bernhard Rombexg: Violoncellschule, Berlin 1840, p. 85.
He referred to it as sthe cheapest and most comfortable way, to move between positions by taking the
»portamento-busca, in: The Art of Violin Playing, first edition, New York x924, p.30. SINGING AND STRING PLAYING IN COMPARISON
performance of less cultivated artists, this »improper« use of portamento was often
criticised in treatises and reviews.
Bériot deals in detail with the artistic use of portamento and vibrato in Part Three
ofhis Méthode. Following the precedents set by Hummel and Spohrin their instrumental
treatises, the first two sections of Bériot’s Méthode focus on technical matters, while the
third section deals with style of performance, and like Hummel and Spohr this part
culminates in one of his own concertos, for which he provided detailed performance
instructions. Part Three begins on page 190 with a short discussion of style, concluding
with the observation:
»From the point of view of composition, order is harmony in all its simplicity;
ornamentation, or the freedom of the imagination, is the melodic shape. Thus, in
execution, order is symmetry and thythm, while freedom, on the contrary, isa certain
alteration of the note which the Ttalians call tempo rubato.
Itis in the union of these two musical antitheses, employed with discernment, that
the secret of pleasing and charming is to be found.
‘The elements that constitute the perfection of style are:
Order, Light and Shade, Pronunciation of the bow, its Punctuation, its Prosody, Portamento
[Port de voix), Vibrato [Sons vibrés}, Accent, and Gradation.«
The sections on the pronunciation, punctuation and prosody of the bow lead directly
into Bériot's discussion of portamento. Bériot defines »prosody« as follows: »Prosody,
in literature, is the art of pronouncing each word with its accent and quantity. It is this
value, given to long and short syllables, which constitutes the harmony of speech. Accor-
ding to this principle, the prosody of the bow consists in the action of down-and up-bow
in the places desired to impress the appropriate accent upon the playing
