The Teaching of Girolamo Crescentini

Can we know what the teachers of the old school taught? Yes, we can. In the extract below, we can trace the teaching of the famous castrato and soprano Girolamo Crescentini to Vincenzo Cirillo, who studied with Crescentini’s student Alessandro Busti. Here is the heart of it.

In vocalizing, we must use a compound vowel-sound made up of all the vowel-sounds of the Italian idiom. This is the mystery of the voice in which many ministers of the art are confounded to such an extent that they sometimes ruin voices by compelling them to adopt an unnatural vowel for the production of tone. This vowel-tone can only be communicated to the pupil by the expert teacher through the medium of his living voice; and when the pupil has imitated the teacher to perfection in this, then he first begins to sing.

This compound tone should be formed within the back cavity of the mouth, which is located behind the uvula, and connects with the pharynx; and thence the vibrations should spread into the front part of the mouth, striking against the hard palate, within an inclination toward the frontal bones and the various cavities of the skull, all of which assist in giving quality to the tone. The cavity of the chest, and in fact those in the entire trunk, are of great assistance in giving fulness and roundness to the tone.

By following this system of developing the voice there disappears any necessity of discussion concerning head medium and chest registers, which many teachers cultivate and impose upon the voice; and in this way the voice will acquire a homogeneous tone and character, enabling the pupil to express the inner sentiments of the soul, which will thus be spontaneously displayed by the singer, and not produced by artificial means, which are often more disagreeable than pleasant to the ear. —Vincenzo Cirillo, A Lecture on the Art of Singing, 1882, p 15-16.

This passage calls into question the notion promulgated by Cornelius Reid and others of the separation of head and voice chest before being joined. It bypasses the matter by seeking a unifying action and phenomenon of a hearing-that-is-a-feeling behind and above the soft palate. Those who have read William Earl Brown’s Vocal Wisdom: The Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti will know this as “the spot.” It’s also what Judith Doniger illustrated when she placed her index finger in front of her right ear and said: “This is where you make most of your tones.” When I mentioned Margaret Harshaw taught the same thing, she replied: “We’re from the same fount of knowledge.” Dongier was, of course, referring to the school of Manuel Garcia as taught by Anna E Schoen-René.

Ready to learn more? That is, how to do it? Find Cirillo and Brown on the download page.