THE EVOLUTION OF THE BEL CANTO THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY 

It is not the goal of this research to present a synthesis of the bel canto in detail. It is instead important to contextualize the evolution of the term, in order to have a frame that could help us to achieve a clearer understanding of this categorization. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, it is not completely clear when the concept bel canto fell into regular basis. There are some mentions to it during the 18^th and 19^th centuries, always using it as a synonym of beautiful singing, which is the direct and literal translation of bel canto. It might have been during the beginning of the 20^th century when the term started to be used as a reference to concrete Italian repertoire of the beginning of the 19^th century.  Especially relevant are the musicologist Robert Haas with his book Die Musik der Barocks (1928) and Manfred Bukofzer with Music in the Baroque Era (1947), who generalised the use of the concept in the Musicology, and extended the definition of the term to Italian vocal repertoire of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. From this, it is interesting to describe the common musical elements that evolved into the bel canto repertoire and how this ideas developed into the concept we are presently familiar with.

After the logical evolution of the monodic repertoires during the Medieval Period and the Renaissance, we find already some mention to new styles of singing during the 16^th century. The musicologist Christophe Combarieu relates some of those references in his book Le bel canto, mentioning for example Hermann Finck and his Practica Musica from 1556. In this treatise Finck talked about the ‘ars suaviter et eleganter cantandi’, presenting to the reader ornaments in the form of coloraturas that could be applied to some clausuli. Similarly, Combarieu mentions Adrian Petit Coclico and his Compendium Musices Descriptum from 1552, as well as Camille Maffei in 1562, both proposing new ornaments for specific moments in monodic singing. Despite these examples being far away from the modern ideas of bel canto, and ones that cannot be considered on their own as early singing treatises, we nevertheless have to observe a special interest into the art of vocal ornamentation; namely the “primitive” coloratura, the use of diminutions, etc. are all elements that will later inform the mainstay of what we understand as the bel canto way of singing.

Some years later, in 1602, Giulio Caccini published Le nuove musiche, where it is possible to find a new understanding of the singing, obviously influenced by the virtuosity of Caccini as a singer himself. He showed a special interest towards ornaments, coloratura and dynamics, especially those with a highly virtuosistic vision of the voice. This is a very interesting source of the singing practice during the 17^th century, and will help us to better understand the musical ideas of the composer Claudio Monteverdi. However, we find in Monteverdi’s operatic repertoire a bigger interest in the strophic and recited singing, following the path of the Fiorentine School and taking some distances from the style of Caccini. In his early operas, Monteverdi reserved the ornamented way of singing (in the style of Caccini) specifically for the roles representing divinities. But in later works such us Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria and L’incoronazione di Poppea, he also gave this privilege to a larger type of roles, like humans with high social status.  From that moment, the difference between the ‘speaking in song’ and the ‘singing in speech’ started to be so indistinguishable that it is complicated to point out a clear definition of what was singing and what speaking.  Nonetheless, we have to think about the role that improvisation played during that time as it had a fundamental impact on performance. It is impossible for us to deduce any solid thought about the real state of singing at that time. However, some ideas can be assumed with a certain conviction: the fact that the opera as spectacle moved from the palaces to the theatres required the orchestras to be placed in pits. The effect of this change resulted in increased space for performances and larger audiences. This inevitably provoked changes in how singing was understood and practiced. This fact leads us to Francesco Cavalli and Antonio Cesti.  Specially the second one, who “laid down some of the bases for true vocal virtuosity [achieving that] Italian singers […] began to be invited abroad as opera performers”[1]. After this moment ─ the first half of the 17^th century ─, we can probably talk about the rise of an operatic tradition started in Italy – and the consequent vocal technique progression in order to face the new repertoire ─ that spread along Europe and settled the basis of what we understand as bel canto. It is then easy to trace the progressive evolution of this ‘new’ vocal understanding, which concentrated the aspects that I mentioned on the introduction with the James Stark’s definition, namely: legato, portamento, glottal articulation, crescendo, decrescendo, messa di voce, mezza voce, floridity and trills. Following the temporary line, we find in the 17^th century, important names like Giovanni Legrenzi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Nicola Porpora and Baldassare Galuppi, the latter were all musicians who had compositional styles that advanced and embraced an increasing amount of the bel canto features mentioned some lines above and presented by J. Stark.

Already in the 18^th century, the revolution in the libretti implemented first by Apostolo Zeno and later by Pietro Metastasio, as well as the continually improving vocal technique that was needed to perform the repertoire of the time, gave composers the freedom to explore the maximal possibilities of singers. From that context, with Antonio Lotti, Georg Friedrich Händel and Johann Adolph Hasse (among others), the bel canto achieved its Golden age. Although I will talk more about this in the third chapter of this text, the appearance of names like Händel and Hasse proved the phenomenon started during Cesti’s time, namely that: Italian singers (and their way of singing) spread throughout Europe. Moreover this also became regarded as the proper manner of singing, the correct and only good singing style. This was no other thing than the bel canto.

Continuing with a chronological overview, it is hard to understand why the historiography decided to exclude W.A. Mozart from the bel canto canon. I personally do not think that this is due to Mozart’s non-Italian roots. If this was a viable reason, Händel and Hasse would also be excluded from this canon. We instead have to look more closely for an explanation in the opera reform carried out by Christoph Willibald Gluck. A reform which was a reaction against the extremes explored in the voice by the earlier composers of the first half of the 18^th century. In contrast to the styles cultivated by the bel canto composers of the baroque, and mentioned before, Gluck proposed a style where the text received the principal attention. The music, server of the poetry, must avoid certain aesthetic elements used previously by the bel canto school (such as extremely long coloraturas, or drastic changes of vocal register) in order to simplify the virtuosity of the singer and to concentrate the artistic focus on the dramatic development of the story. Although Mozart veered slightly away from the artistic ideals proposed by Gluck, he remained close enough to this aesthetic to see how the historiography denied him as part of the bel canto tradition. However, as a singer myself, it is extremely hard to understand how a role like the Ferrando of Mozart’s opera Cosi fan tutte, full of bel canto elements,  was and is still not considered a representative role of the bel canto school.

But putting away personal considerations, and continuing with our historical overview, we move onto Gioachino Rossini, who, at the beginning of the 19^th century, came back to the idea of the voice as the only transport of emotions and ideas. Rossini returned to the vocal virtuosity and brought the voice to the most challenging extremes and subtle corners.  In a letter written to Filippo Filippi in 1868, Rossini explained:

You will have noticed […] that I have deliberately ignored the word ‘imitative’ in the recommendation made to you by the young composers on Iitalian musical art, and I have referred only to the melody and rhythm. I shall always be inébranlabre in my contention that Italian musical art (especially the vocal aspect) is entirely ‘ideal and expressive’ and never ‘imitative’, as certain materialistic so-called philosophers would argue. Allow me to state my view that the feelings of the heart are expressed and not imitated[2]

In any case, the first half of the 19^th century is commonly understood among musicians as the golden age of bel canto singing, including on that idea the names of famous composers like Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini. However, in that period, and embracing the principles of Romanticism, the search for a more truthful and human quality lead composers to write for the voice in a new way, moving away from the previously described principles of bel canto. The closer we are to the end of the 19^th century, the bigger this search became. In 1831, the French tenor Gilbert Duprez started a revolution of the vocal technique which translated into the enhance of the middle register of the voice, closer to the spoken language, and allowed composers to concentrate their work in the central range of the voice, emphasizing greater importance to the text than was conceded by Rossini. Even Donizetti admitted that “music is nothing more than the stressed declamation of sounds hence any composer should feel a song and fashion it out of the prosody in declaiming the words”[3]. For these reasons, it is not hundred per cent correct to consider Donizetti and Bellini as pure bel canto composers, since they lie at the axis between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ school of opera composition. Moreover, this search for a more humanistic vocal aesthetic (fundamental for the Romantics), together with the new vision of vocal music, transformed opera in such a way that the bel canto ideal slowly disappeared with the rise of composers such as Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner, Ruggero Leoncanvallo, or Giacomo Puccini. It is only after the Romantic and the Verismo periods (and in part as a reaction against them) when the music historians start to talk about the bel canto style in reference to an older manner of singing.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to cover the full evolution of the bel canto style in a single chapter. However, the aim of this chapter is to give a short idea about the most important aesthetic aspects to take into consider when classifying a score as part of the bel canto operatic tradition. As I explained, it is very important to understand how the composer treats the relation between text and music. Thus, the textual approach carried out by composers like Gluck, Verdi and Puccini (among others) differs from the way Händel or Rossini set text to music. The latter usually understood the voice as the protagonist of the score, even if it meant sacrificing the understanding of the poetry through long coloratura passages, the change of registers, or the sequences of trills. Although, we can surely find examples of all kinds of textual treatments in all composers; hence I am not saying that Gluck or Verdi did not write coloratura passages, nor did Rossini never compose a syllabic passage. Instead, I am talking about their general understanding of how music and text were connected. Nonetheless, there are doubts about how to define whether something is part of the bel canto tradition or not, and this is most seen with composers like Monteverdi, Mozart or Donizzetti, all of whom existed on the border of major stylistic changes in music. We cannot create an extreme delimitation to assure who used the bel canto style and who did not. In actuality, it is even more complicated because we need to take into account several aesthetics that were co-existing at these times. For example: Hasse was a composer with clear bel canto tendencies; however, he died in 1783, only four years afterGluck. We should therefore not forget that all the Italian operatic repertoire in-between the 16^th and the 19^th centuries were part of the same tradition. Essentially, we should use the criteria exposed in the introduction of this text in order to classify the bel canto as an aesthetic and style of composition that can be separated into three historical time periods. These are as follows:

                  1- Pre-bel canto (1600-1660): From the origins of the opera, including Monteverdi, until Cesti and Cavalli.

                  2- Baroque bel canto (first golden age: 1660-1750): From A. Scarlatti until Händel

• • • •    Neoclassicism/Reform of the opera. No bel canto (1750 – 1800): Gluck and Mozart.

                  3- Romantic bel canto (second golden age: 1800 – 1830): Rossini and the first work of Donizetti and Bellini.

However, as I mentioned before, it is possible to observe a continuity of ideas in the Italian vocal tradition through all historical periods. While it is true that the understanding of the relation between text and music changed depending on the artistic sensitivities of each epoch, the technical point of view of the voice remained more or less constant throughout this entire period of time. This last aspect will be explained in the next chapter of this research.

>