Music Moves in Me – the Singing Body as Interior Movement

Päivi Järviö, DocMus Department of Music Performance and Research, Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, Finland

As a performer of so-called early music I approach my subject, Early Baroque recitar cantando (or speech-song, or speaking in song) from the point of being of a singer, as a singer. [1] My focus here is on a very short fragment of music, the first cries of Messaggiera in Claudio Monteverdi’s opera Orfeo composed in 1607. [2] In line with the thinking of the French phenomenologist Michel Henry, I understand the music, the facts of performing practice and countless other things, as continually entering my living body from the world, sinking into me and becoming an organic part of my whole living, singing being. [3] Everything I know about this music and about performing it is in me as the knowing of a singer, and not as knowledge that anyone could share.

The subject of my autoethnographical study is this interior movement of my body. [4] I concentrate on my singular, live experience and the embodied knowledge present in me at all times, not on experience articulated in words or experience gathered as material in advance and written down as text and thus disconnected from the body. Like the reading of a score, my approach could, depending on where the focus is, be characterized as embodied musicology, embodied performing practice or embodied hermeneutics.

Messaggiera’s Cries in Monteverdi’s Orfeo

Messaggiera’ speech divides Monteverdi’s Orfeo into two parts. The focus in the first part is on the carefree life of the shepherds and shepherdesses, and on the nuptials of Orfeo and Euridice. The death of Euridice, reported by Messaggiera at the end of the second act, dramatically changes the mood, however. The second part of the opera, following Euridice’s death, describes Orfeo’s desperate and, in the end, unsuccessful attempts to retrieve his loved one from the underworld. The entrance of Messaggiera is highly dramatic and disturbing. My focus in this paper is exclusively on her first “Ahi” shouts from afar – on just one syllable repeated four times during the fragment discussed.

Orfeo and the shepherds have been spending the day out in the sunny fields. At the beginning of Act II they stop to rest in the shade and to reflect upon their lives. Orfeo sings a song about his wretched past without Euridice and his present happiness with her. The shepherds are urging him to continue singing when the desperate cries of Messaggiera are suddenly heard from a distance. At first they cannot distinguish the exact words – they just hear the anguished sound of her voice.

Figure 1: Messaggiera’s entrance in the second act of Claudio Monteverdi’s Orfeo (1607).

The Italian text of the fragment and its translation are as follows:
Ahi, caso acerbo,
ahi fat’empio e crudele,
Ahi Stelle ingiuriose,
ahi Ciel’ avaro.

Alas, bitter fate!
O impious and cruel destiny!
Alas, injurious stars,
Alas, avaricious heaven!

I will concentrate on the experience of a singer from the point of view of declaiming or singing the text – or only this one syllable – according to the pitches and time-values indicated by Monteverdi. Even a brief analysis of the fragment reveals intriguing areas of study such as:

1. the challenge of the break [5] approximately on the pitch where the “Ahi” cries are situated;
2. breathing before the cries (referring to the length and character of pauses for a singer breathing during them);
3. the role of the continuo (referring to the quality, speed and richness of the chords played, as well as the impulses given to the singer by the continuo);
4. the singing of consonances and dissonances;
5. the qualities of the sung text (meaning the vowel onsets, passing on to the next word after the "Ahi" shout, the color of the a-vowel, the speed of the diphthong in "Ahi", for example); and
6. the dominant mood and character of movement in the fragment.

First I will discuss the pitch of the “Ahi” cries, which in the experience of a female singer might be a particular one. Two of them are on an e’’, and two on a d’’. [6] These pitches might be uncomfortable or even challenging because of an experienced change in the register, which is not explained phonetically.

We do not know the exact tuning pitch used in Orfeo in Mantua, and we certainly do not know much about the singing techniques at the beginning of the 17th century. We could toy with the idea that Monteverdi (a singer himself, who certainly knew a lot about singing [7]) might have chosen these problematic pitches on purpose – with the above-mentioned challenge to the female voice in mind. The singers in the first performances were all male, however, castratos singing the mezzo-soprano and soprano roles. [8]

It is not possible for us to reconstruct the singing techniques of Monteverdi’s time, much less those of the castrato voice, the study of which can only be based on written reports from contemporary listeners. Even from this mute evidence (written sources and iconographic material) we can conclude that the singing techniques were noticeably different from the classical techniques taught in musical institutions today. [9]

My focus in this study, however, is on the experience of a present-day singer, not on the singing techniques of Monteverdi’s time. The present-day mezzo-soprano working on the speech of Messaggiera thus faces the challenge of bringing together the uncontrolled character of an “Ahi” cry and the control needed to sing these notes on a potentially challenging pitch.

The second major question concerns inhaling before the “Ahi” cry. A singer specialized in Early Baroque recitar cantando would inhale in four different ways before each of the four cries. The manner of inhaling depends on several things, such as what happens just before the breath and the cry, the part of the bar in which the cry occurs, and the relationship between the sung pitch and the continuo.

The first “Ahi”, on an e’’, is prepared in a drastic manner by the continuo, with a chromatic semitone (which in ¼-comma mean-tone temperament is markedly narrow) of the continuo from C to C sharp. [10] The continuo, by forcefully stepping on the unexpected C sharp, throws the singer up to the first “Ahi” and forces her to cry out. The breath is very dynamic.

The second “Ahi”, on d’’, begins without any preparatory chord from the continuo. The impulse to breathe and to cry out comes not from the continuo but from the singer herself. The time allowed for inhaling is limited. The breath is strong, and more active than the one before the first “Ahi”.

The third “Ahi”, on e’’, begins after a quarter-rest, on which the continuo once again plays the C sharp (an A major sixth chord) already heard with the first cry. The continuo, in a manner of speaking, forces the singer to cry out in agony, perhaps a little too early, even more uncontrollably than before.

There is even less time, almost none at all, to breathe before the fourth “Ahi”, on d’’, which occurs, with no preparation at all, in the middle of a chaotic piling up of words, and then moves on to a dissonant “ciel”. The singer, possibly short of breath by now, gasps some air in a hurry in the middle of the following phrase, before the word “avaro” (avaricious), on the eighth rest very carefully notated by Monteverdi.

The continuo, which in baroque music is notated in a kind of shorthand resembling the notation used in popular music, plays an important part in supporting and punctuating the speech of the singer. The ideal would be a singer accompanying herself on a theorbo or another continuo instrument, which was common practice in chamber repertoires during Monteverdi’s time. In an opera, however, the protagonists obviously would not play an instrument unless the role calls for it, and Messaggiera certainly would not enter playing casually on a lute.

The continuo and the singer work as one guiding the other, giving impulses to each other with their playing and singing. The continuo part has a supporting function, and without the singing it is nothing in itself. The way the continuo plays a chord and the exact moment on which it is played is crucial. The questions the continuo has to address include, among others:

• How many notes does the continuo play on the chord?
• How do they choose the register on which the chord is played (high or low)?
• What is the character of the chord (just to name a few): only one note, a straight chord, a fragile chord or a furious arpeggio?
• How thickly is the chord played, or how many notes does the continuo produce?
• How fast is the arpeggio?
• In which direction does the arpeggio move – upwards or downwards?
• At which point exactly does the continuo play its chord?
• Which of several potential alternative chords will the continuo choose to play?
• Will the continuo pause at some point in spite of the fact that the notation seems to imply a continuous sound?

The preparatory chord of the continuo acts as an impulse for the singer, which either pushes her forward or slows her down – or something else. The chord is the singer’s breath, and her singing is strongly affected by the chords played.

A central concept in many analytical discussions on Monteverdi’s music is that of dissonance, which is the next relevant aspect of the singer’s experience. Three of the four “Ahi” cries occur on a consonance. This does not alleviate their pungency, which can be achieved in several ways of which one is the use of dissonances. The second “Ahi”, however, begins and ends on a dissonance: first a fourth, and then moving to another one, a diminished fifth. The d’’ not only feels as if it started at the wrong moment but the pitch also feels wrong – an indication of the loss of control from which Messaggiera is suffering throughout this fragment.

The experience of singing a d’’ on the A minor chord is that of friction. I land on the “wrong” note, I lean on it, I try to make the A minor chord give way to my sung d’’. It will glide downwards, only to create a new dissonance with the g sharp against my d’’. In the end we will both move away simultaneously from this friction – but just for a short moment, to continue hitting the “wrong” notes. The whole phrase is a piling up of dissonances.

Until now I have discussed aspects that refer to the pitches sung or the moment of starting the cry – partly discernible from the score. Now I will move on to aspects that are definitely not notated at all, such as the vowel onset and vowel color on the syllable “Ahi”.

There are numerous ways of starting any vowel. The coarse division between a hard and a soft onset does not reveal the multiplicity of possible onsets. Hard onsets are often avoided in classical vocal technique because of the potential strain they place on the vocal chords. In Messaggiera’s cries, however, it is certainly one interesting possibility. Messaggiera is grieving the death of Euridice, her friend, and she feels the grave responsibility of having to break the news to Orfeo. For her, this holding back, trying to control herself and then, almost forced, losing her grip and having to let go might be a natural way of crying out in agony. A soft onset, on the other hand, indicates that the singer is in perfect control of her instrument, taking good care not to push her vocal chords too far, and consequently producing almost a friendly timbre.

Let me now move on to the color of the a-vowel in the cry “Ahi” – again something that is not notated in the score.

During their classical training, singers are often taught to equalize vowels, as one aspect of learning to control the voice. This makes all vowels uniform in some ways, not too distinct from one another, possibly tending towards the o-vowel. This could be a pedagogical tool that sometimes remains with the fully trained singer. The result is text production, which listeners not involved in the world of classical singing often find unnatural. Strong vowel equalization in recitar cantando repertoires for example, in which singing ideally approaches speech, may cause problems of intelligibility. [11]

The Italian a-vowel is bright, open and forward: [a]. The pronunciation of Italian is demanding enough, but Messaggiera’s cries should also be convincing as the sound of somebody in pain – not the perfectly controlled, balanced, equalized a-vowel. I think about all the pain I have experienced in my life, and try to find the most suitable vowel color for crying out. Experimenting with different a-vowels finally produces one: my upper lip turns slightly upwards, my soft palate is markedly elevated, I can feel a big space at the back of my pharynx, my mouth is only moderately open. The crying out of this vowel makes me feel as if I were pushing something away, rejecting something. It reminds me of the feeling of nausea, being on the verge of vomiting – a form of rejection, too.

The overall characteristic of this fragment is haste, which develops and advances during the seven bars. The first “Ahi” is still quite heavy, reluctant, collapsing on the preparatory chord like a slab of stone. The second one, although still heavy and reluctant in character, already demands that the singer move on before the continuo has an opportunity to give her another impulse. The noticeable feeling of haste is created in the third by the quick preparatory gasp of air. The quickly spoken words “stelle ingiuriose” also accelerate the singing falling forward from the singer’s mouth, uncontrolled. There is no stopping them. The final “Ahi” occurs in the middle of this tumbling forward of words, almost on top of each other. Messaggiera no longer has any control over her speech or her breath.

Conclusion

I could go on and on, I could study my singer’s experience ever more closely, zooming into smaller and smaller details, finer and finer nuances. I could bring in my whole experience as a human being, reflecting Messaggiera’s situation against my own situation at different points in my life. This is not necessary, however, nor would there be any real sense in it. I have tried in these preliminary and certainly partial descriptions of the singer’s reading and singing of these cries to shed light on aspects of a musician’s experience that often remain concealed – and also to demystify the musician’s everyday work. What, then, does this small study of a singer’s experience with a piece of recitar cantando reveal?

The singing body is a body skilled in interior movement. The singer works with this interior movement and the resistance she feels in her body, which she connects to the whole of her singing body, to all her experience with and knowledge of the repertoire she is working on. For the singer reading the score, the signs on the page instantly turn into interior movements of her body and, if she decides to sing, into a voice that others can hear. Further, all her theoretical knowledge of the repertoire becomes flesh in her living body, thus blurring the split between theory and practice, between mind and body.

The singer’s embodied reading of the score reveals aspects that might be out of reach to a non-singer – many of which are invisible in the notation. A non-singer reading the score would probably not be able to detect them.

A singer reading the score uses tools of interpretation and analysis without consciously choosing them or limiting herself to one method at a time. She has absorbed all these approaches into her body throughout her training and career, converted from extra-corporeal structures and concepts into integral parts of the living, singing body. When the need arises, the singer will articulate these tools as well as the results of her interpretation and analysis, in speech using shared concepts. This happens in teaching, for example, or when writing an article or a paper.

The words used in speech and writing are nevertheless inevitably flat in that they conceal the richness of lived experience, even though they seemingly allow other people to share the experience. This flattening of meaning in the space between the person describing her experience and her listener is temporary. The moment the words reach the listener, they become meaningful to him/her – the meanings of the words now relate to the experience of the listener, not of the person talking about her experience.

Notes

1. Derrick de Kerckhove (1995, 324) coined the term 'point of being' as a more videocentric alternative to 'point of view'.
2. One of the novelties in Orfeo (in the words of Carlo Magni shortly before the first performances in Mantua, on 23 February 1607) was that “all the actors are to sing their parts” (see Fabbri 2006, 63). Emilio de’ Cavalieri (1977) coined a term for this novel style of speaking in song in 1600: recitar cantando. The singer and composer Jacopo Peri (1561–1633) referred to this kind of singing as “imitar col canto chi parla”. According to him, the movement of singing in recitar cantando assumes ‘a moderate course somewhere between the slow, sustained movements of song and the rapid movements of speech’ (see Palisca 1994, 456.) As with all so-called “new music” (nuove musiche), this style calls for a certain noble neglect of singing, or sprezzatura, as Giulio Caccini (1987) explains in the foreword to his 1601 collection of solo vocal music. Sprezzatura was an essential feature of all skilled action, including music performance, as Saccone (1983) and Berger (2000) discuss in detail.
   For a discussion on the different terms (genere rappresentativo, stile recitativo, recitar cantando, stile genere rappresentativo, in armonia favellare, imitar col canto chi parla) used for recitative in Monteverdi’s time, see Sternfeld (1983).
3. For an introduction to Henry’s philosophy, see O’Sullivan (2006).
4. On autoethnographical research, see Ellis & Bochner (2000), and Ellis & Bochner (2002).
5. Johan Sundberg discusses the chaotic terminology for and the lack of objective knowledge of the registers of the human voice. He finds no consensus on the issue, but discerns three main registers in the female voice: the breast register, the middle register and the head register. The change between the breast and the middle register occurs at around 400 Hz (g’ approximately), and between the middle and the head register at around 600 Hz (e’’). (Sundberg 1986, 62–63) Laukkanen & Leino (1999) divide the voice into two main registers, the modal (used for ordinary speaking) and the falsetto. They claim that it is possible for a woman to produce voice in the modal register up to approximately 750 Hz, which nevertheless requires a very loud volume approaching screaming. (Laukkanen & Leino 1999, 46) Both Sundberg’s and Laukkanen and Leino’s descriptions imply that the range just above c’’, where the need to change the mode of voice production becomes pressing, is potentially problematic for a female singer.
6. Depending on the pitch chosen (a’= ca 415/440/465 Hz), the d’’ and e’’ would be situated approximately between 553Hz and 620 Hz (d’’ ca 553/586/620 Hz; e’’ ca 622/660/697 Hz).
7. For a discussion on Monteverdi’s ideas on good singers and good singing as articulated in his letters, see Wistreich 1994.
8. No female singers were used in the first three performances of Orfeo in 1607. Castratos sung the soprano and mezzo-soprano parts, and it is possible that a castrato imported from Florence, Giovanni Gualberto Magli, took the role of Messaggiera (see Fenlon 1986, 14–15).
9. On singing in Monteverdi’s time, see Uberti (1981), Wistreich (1994), Wistreich (2001), and Potter (2006).
10. In ¼-comma mean-tone temperament the size in cents of a chromatic semitone is 76.05, and of a diatonic semitone it is117.1. The division of the octave into 12 equal parts produces semitones of 100 cents. There is no difference in pitch between chromatic and diatonic semitones in equal (12-part division) temperament. (Lindley & al. 2010)
11. There are differences in the way singers think about vowel production and equalization in singing. For a practical discussion on vowel equalization, focusing on the experience of the singer, see Hopkin (1997).

References

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