A lineal succession of vocal teachers was well established by 1630. Several masters of the art had acquired excellent reputations even so early as 1600. Each famous teacher had many pupils who in their turn took up the profession of teaching and who almost invariably based their claims to recognition on the reputation of the master, as well as on their own excellence as singers. This maestral succession, or rather many of them, continued down to comparatively recent times. The changed conditions which came about in the twenty years following the invention of the laryngoscope (1855) finally broke down the influence of the teachers who had inherited the old masters’ system, and the authority of the old method was for a time almost destroyed. In recent years, however, there has been a great revival of interest in the methods of instruction followed by the old masters. There is a growing feeling that scientific methods have not fulfilled their promise, and vocalists look back upon the earlier centuries of voice culture as a golden age which has passed away.
The old Italian method is now considered to have possessed some merits which are not shared by modern scientific systems. Yet a certain degree of mystery still surrounds the old method. Welcome as its revival would be to many teachers and students, great difficulty is met with in determining of just what it consisted. Many analyses and explanations of the old method have indeed been suggested. But as these consist almost entirely of attempts to find in it some means for the direct conscious management of the vocal organs, they have necessarily brought forth little that is of value. All the mystery surrounding the old method is dispelled by the understanding that it did not treat the vocal problem as capable of solution by mechanical means.
The old Italian method was simply an amplification of the system of vocal education which had been in course of development for nearly a thousand years. It embodied no new conception of vocal management, but continued to treat the control of the voice as a purely instinctive matter. Its chief contribution tothe technical training of the voice was the adoption ofvocalisesand exercises specially designed for this purpose. Even that was a matter of rather slow development. During the early decades of the seventeenth century vocal teachers continued to select passages from standard musical works which lent themselves readily to the technical exercise of the voice, just as the teachers of the preceding century had done. Gradually it came to be seen that greater satisfaction could be obtained from the use of compositions arranged to bring in the various technical points and vocal embellishments one or two at a time. Thus the voice could be led by an easy gradation to the mastery of every technical difficulty and its training was rendered easier and more expeditious.
But the general scheme of instruction continued to be patterned after the traditional model. A complete musical education, not only the special cultivation of the voice, was the goal. The plan of combining the preliminary training in vocal management with instruction in the rudiments of music continued to be followed as late as 1750. Many famous masters employed assistant teachers to perform the drudgery of the initial stages of instruction, considering that their own high degree of culture entitled them to deal only with advanced students. This custom continued for at least one hundred years, and Tosi (1723) speaks of it as a system so well established as to need no comment.
It is sometimes said that a course of instruction in singing according to the old Italian method required from five to seven years of study. This is in one sense true. Yet it is by no means the case that so long a time was devoted to the technical training of the voice. A thorough musical education was included in this course, of which the first two or three years were spent entirely on the rudiments of music. The course of instruction included also a complete training for theoperatic stage, as well as a repertoire of parts sufficient to enable the graduating student to secure an engagement at one of the opera houses. In the latter part of the eighteenth century specialization in vocal education began to be the rule. Students whose parents foresaw for them the possibilities of a vocal career were prepared by a thorough musical education before being sent to a vocal teacher. Under these circumstances the technical training of the voice was frequently accomplished in less than two years.
It is to be regretted that so little mention is made by musical historians of the methods of instruction followed by the old masters. Vocal teachers of the old school seem to have been so absorbed in their work that the idea of writing books seldom occurred to them. A vast quantity ofvocalisescomposed by teachers for their students has been preserved and many of these are incorporated in books of exercises now available. A few masters were, however, thoughtful enough to provide posterity with some knowledge of their system of instruction. The first of these was Caccini, whose importance as a vocal teacher should not be overlooked on account of his especial eminence as the first composer to write music for the solo voice.
In 1601 Caccini published a large number of his compositions for the solo voice under the title ofLe Nuove Musiche, a book which is now of almost inestimable value. It contains vocal pieces in both the styles then in vogue. It is surprising to see from some of these florid songs the high degree of vocal virtuosity possessed by the singers of that early time. In his preface Caccini gives an outline of his system of vocal training. This consists entirely of rules and directions for the executionof the various ornaments of singing. Here he shows himself to have possessed a pure and refined taste, as well as a most profound love for the beauties of the voice. Yet he does not touch on the subject of vocal management, proving that he had not had occasion to depart from the instinctive methods in which he himself had been trained.