Opera on the Move in the Nordic Countries during the Long 19th ...

64 Marianne Tråvén
on him transferring this knowledge to his Swedish students in the opera
school.
Nineteenth-century didactics
Of the nineteenth-century singing masters both Stieler and Berg left didactic
material. Stieler published a vocal manual for use in secondary and
grammar schools in 1820, and Berg wrote two manuals, left unpublished,
called “Testament to my students”, in which he shared his thoughts on vocal
aesthetics and the education of the voice. He also produced a collection
of vocal exercises, presumably used by students at the opera school as well
as by private students. The two manuals show a growing interest in science
as well as a wish to professionalise the school. Here we will concentrate on
the didactic developments between 1800 and 1850, into which the manuals
by Stieler and Berg will be incorporated.
An initial hypothesis in this article has been that a change of paradigm
took place between 1820 and 1830, in which the last remnants of the vocal
technique and aesthetics of the eighteenth century were eliminated and
replaced with a new concept of vocalising based on three unified registers,
a lower larynx and intercostal breathing technique. This process of change
can be linked to a set of technical and didactic changes. Those singled out
for closer study are:
1. The concept of registers and the consequences for vocal sound.
2. The breathing technique and its importance in the teaching curriculum.
3. The messa di voce exercise and its place within the curriculum.
4. The role of solfeggi.
The concept of registers
The concept of registers has been chosen because eighteenth-century singers
mainly worked with two registers, the chest voice and the head voice
or falsetto (Tosi 1723, pp. 14–15). In the nineteenth century a division into
three registers, mainly inspired by teachers like Manuel García, Jr, became
the norm, namely chest voice, head voice and falsetto, or chest, middle and
head voice (García 1982, p. 7). During the eighteenth century the concept
of registers was derived from empirical observation. The different registers
had different sound qualities, which were cultivated to a certain degree, as
the different sound characteristics were stylistically important. The regis-