The use of vibrato: Continuous vibrato in vocal music 1750-1850
Lynne Murray

This is the summary of a paper given by Lynne Murray at the Graduate Symposium held at the Sydney Conservatorium on 15 September 2001

Published in Articulation vol. 4 no. 2, January 2002.

This paper examines the use of continuous vibrato in vocal music in the period 1750 to 1850 according to two important pieces of documentary evidence relating to vocal performance practice, the singing treatises of Johann Friedrich Agricola (1757) and Manuel Garcia fils (1840s).

In my view an analysis of documentary sources should be based on an understanding of vibrato’s physical causes and of the difference between vibrato, tremolo, and wobble, yet an examination of modern views by scholars who are in the main not singers reveals a confusing array of opinions that are rarely well founded, due to their lack of understanding of the vocal mechanism and misinterpretations of the terminology.

Vibrato is due to pulsations in the larynx which occur when there is an equilibrium between the muscles of the larynx and the muscles which manage the breath. Vibrato is heard by the ear as part of the timbre of the voice, as at a certain speed individual oscillations appear to merge into one rich sound. Oscillations perceptible to the ear indicate imbalances in the functioning of the vocal mechanism. Too fast a rate of undulation is heard as a tremble (‘tremolo’) and too slow a rate as a wobble. Both conditions are capable of correction.

In my view neither Agricola’s nor Garcia’s treatise advocated a lack of vibrato in artistic singing. Both were famous singing teachers, both worked closely with the greatest singers of their time, and their treatment of the physiognomy of the voice suggest a strong understanding of the way the voice works. Garcia’s comment that ‘the voice can vibrate only thanks to the brilliance of the timbre and the power of the emission of the air, and not by the effect of the tremor,’ coupled with his frequent references to the vibration of the glottis indicates that he was aware that a trained, well functioning voice naturally vibrates. Agricola mentions vibrato only once: ‘The vibrato on one note… is also an ornament that in singing is especially effective on long sustained notes.’ However he adds that ‘not all throats are capable of this type of execution’, which suggests that he could not have been referring to vibrato in the modern understanding of the term, because as a pre-eminent singing teacher he would have known that any voice can be taught to function with vibrato.

My view is that apparent references to vibrato actually refer to an aspect of singing technique which is now almost defunct, the ability to sing fast repeated notes. This makes sense of Agricola’s discussion of a vibrato on one note that ‘gently beats’ but does not change the pitch. It also makes sense of Garcia’s ‘drawing out the tone with inflections or echoes, and through rapid repetitions’ which he refers to as ‘vibrare la voce’ but which does not gel with a description of normal pitch vibrato or indeed of any commonly used ornament.

This is an area which requires further research, but I believe it could have important implications for the reconstruction of 18th and 19th century vocal performance practice.