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From:  thomas mark montgomery <thomas8@t...>
thomas mark montgomery <thomas8@t...>
Date:  Sat Apr 21, 2001  12:06 pm
Subject:  HIP of vocal music



I'm sorry I am so slow in catching up on my mail, but the original posting
included some comments on the singing style of Emma Kirkby, vis-a-vis
'straight tone.' Several years ago, we had the privilege of having Ms.
Kirkby in residency at Florida State and during one of the classes, she
remarked that she and the musicologists she worked with (one was her lute
player and his name has escaped me this morning) had begun to rethink
their ideas about vibrato in HIP. In her own singing, there was a marked
difference in the use of vibrato from the straight-toned singing upon
which she built her career. A comparison of her early recordings (the
Handel Deutschen Arien spring to mind) and any of the operatic recordings
she made for Hyperion bear this out.

Mark Montgomery

> i believe the original point was to question the validity of the use of
> straight-toned singing in earlier music. the use of straight-toned singing
> seems to apply to females singing parts that were originally sung by either
> boys or castrati. as there are no legitimate models (one can't take
> moreschi as a model of baroque and earlier periods being too recent. isn't
> that a 'given'?), then any attempt at an historical rendering of this music
> is an educated guess. we know what forte-pianos sound like as they are
> still around. we can't say the same thing about the singers of previous
> eras.


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