Messa di voce

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Messa di voce

mezza voce, meaning to sing at half voice or half strength
.

Technique

The messa di voce is widely considered an advanced vocal technique.

classical music.[citation needed] Currently the only known use case outside of classical music is in relation to trans voice work.[citation needed
]

History

In Western

papal court employed them in dramatic religious music, sometimes to promote religious conversion, as opera became a distinct genre. Popes and princes hired them from the Sistine Chapel.[3]

In the preface to Le nuove musiche (1602), Giulio Caccini detailed techniques of a new style of singing. He described the messa di voce as a "crescere e scemare la voce" ("crescendo and decrescendo of the voice") and linked it to vocal pedagogy as the main way to master intonation. Its use was expressive, not merely ornamental, technical, or virtuosic.[4]

Urban VIII in 1640.[b]

By the eighteenth century,

music historian Bonnie Gordon argued that the technique was also associated with instruments, to which singers were compared in terms of vocal control.[11]

In singing the roles of castrati (most popularly in Baroque opera), mezzo-sopranos and countertenors later adopted the technique.

It was popular in

La Forza del destino, is a later example in the transition from bel canto singing. Messa di voce became less common in the less stylized, speech-like singing of Romantic music
of the mid- and late nineteenth century.

In the

gospel and its stylistic descendents.[12]

Examples in recorded repertoire

Notes

  1. ^ Mazzocchi set Mary Magdalene's anointing of Jesus as a lament using a text attributed to Roberto Ubaldini.[5] Athanasius Kircher lauded it as an example of the "metabolic style".[6]
  2. ^ The music closely fit Gian Vittorio Rossi's account; thus Bonnie Gordon judged its identity as Mazzocchi's Lagrime amare likely. Loreto Vittori was seeking (and obtained) papal pardon for an alleged 1637 abduction.[8]
  3. ^ Farinelli's messa di voce, Giovanni Battista Mancini observed in his widely translated Pensieri e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato (1774), made him "eternally famous among singers".[10]

References

  1. ^ "Messa di voce" Merriam-Webster. Retrieved 21 November 2012.
  2. ISBN 0-8020-8614-4
    .
  3. ^ Gordon 2023, 249.
  4. ^ Gordon 2023, 257.
  5. ^ Gordon 2023, 233–255.
  6. ^ Gordon 2023, 233–234, 258–260.
  7. ^ Gordon 2023, viii, 26, 233, 249–258, 357.
  8. ^ Gordon 2023, 233–240, 248, 354.
  9. ^ Gordon 2023, 256.
  10. ^ Gordon 2023, 288, 364.
  11. ^ Gordon 2023, 128.
  12. ^ The New Harvard Dictionary of Music (1986)
  13. ^ Goldoni 2024, ¶4; di Profio 2023, ¶3

Bibliography

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