Song through the ages: a quick glance

We human beings possess a unique musical instrument that we carry around with us everywhere: our voice. At work or play, when we use our voice, we reveal who we are. In the timbre of our voices resonates not only the depth of our character but also the uniqueness of each of our identities. And when we raise our voices in song together, we sing as one. Through the ineffable and magic qualities of his or her voice, a singer can converse with one or several instruments and, with soaring high notes or sumptuous low notes, seduce and transport an audience to another realm.

Singing emerges from the amplified natural cadences of the spoken voice. Among the Australian aboriginals, there is almost no difference between singing and speaking. The role assigned to the voice ensued primarily from its various religious functions. The voice has not only been used as an instrument of peace (Medieval plainsong) but also of agitation (trance dances) and incantation.

The first singers we can put a name to were the troubadours and the trouvères who flourished in Europe from the 12th to the 14th centuries, at once poets, composers and performers. They sang satirical and political songs as well as love songs. Guillaume IX of Aquitaine is generally recognized as the first troubadour and Chrétien de Troyes the first trouvère. Adam de La Halle is probably the composer of that era best remember today.
By the mid-16th century, the solo voice, especially the female voice, assumed greater importance. We witness the birth of opera and the golden age of the castrati (male sopranos), veritable superstars of their time. Singers were enriching the melodic line with extensive ornamentation and passing tones, a technique that would later be used in instrumental music.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the darlings of the stage were the opera singers, their celebrity continuing into the 19th century. The range of their voices broadens considerably, thanks to the progression of vocal technique. To accommodate this newfound ability, composers begin to integrate these extra notes in their works. Vocal virtuosity – which will become the predominant aspect of what we call today bel canto – reaches the same level of perfection as did artistry, paramount value until then.

In the 19th century especially, the public was particularly fond of those with impressive vocal ranges, especially in the top register, who also demonstrated real power (a definite advantage when it came to filling the newer and larger concert halls with sound and projecting over an orchestra).

An instrument always in vogue
Up to the 20th century, most compositions for voice had been in the form of sacred songs, opera, and the often poetic art songs and lieder. Composers, however, soon began to write for the voice as an instrument. From the spoken to the sung, an array of vocal expression was now being explored. This ranged from rhythmic speech, or Sprechgesang (a highly stylized technique of vocal production halfway between singing and speaking), to recitative (best described as melodic speech set to music), close-mouthed singing (heard mostly in choirs), calling and laughing. In Wozzeck for example, Alban Berg exploits systematically all of the voice’s aptitudes.

As early as the 14th century, Saint Basil spoke of the power of singing to “unite people in the symphony of a single choir.” The great composers understood this and created works for voice that spanned the range between intimate and majestic, comedic and tragic, ultimately rooted in the province of the profoundly human.

How is sound produced?
Sung or spoken, the sound of a voice emanates from the larynx and the pharynx (the cavity behind the nose and mouth). A stream of air originating from the lungs is transformed into successive puffs of air by the vibrations of small horizontal muscle folds known as the vocal cords. These enclose a space called the glottis, but they vibrate unlike the reed of an oboe or a clarinet. When the muscle fibres contract, the glottis opens. Depending on the note produced, the larynx’s motor nerve transmits a certain number of salvos of pulses per second to the vocal cords. The vibration of the vocal cords, then, is entirely regulated by the brain. Every singer is endowed with a unique vocal range, strictly determined by the excitability of the recurrent nerve.

Lucie Renaud
Translation by Keren Penney

Voice types
Soprano: The highest female voice. Children generally sing with soprano voices.
Mezzo-soprano: The middle female voice
Alto: The lowest female voice or the male countertenor

Tenor: The highest male voice with the brightest tessitura or range. The leading romantic male roles are often reserved for the tenor.
Baritone: The middle male voice. Most men’s voices fall naturally into this range.
Bass: The lowest male voice

Back to the Interviews section