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

Formed to Perform
a instead (Corri 1820, p. 36). The practice of single vowel solfeggio spread
with Italian teaching throughout Europe.
At the Paris conservatory, solfeggio was taught as a separate subject
from 1795 onwards. The French solfeggio collections, like the Solfèges
d’Italie, published by Levesque and Bèche in 1772, show a substantial interest
in the Italian form of solfeggio exercises. This collection was immensely
popular. It enjoyed several editions and was distributed and sold all over
Europe, and also found its way to Stockholm.
The collections of solfeggio from the eighteenth century are easily divided
into two categories, exercises for beginners comprised of intonation exercises
based on intervals and scales and exercises for advanced students,
with training in ornamentation, for instance, or agility. In the last category
we also find short arias in which a group of vocal problems is presented
together. The solmisation form of solfeggio seems, at least in the Italian
teaching, to have had a place in more advanced vocal studies, and this is a
form that survived in the nineteenth century, at which point we rarely find
the term solfeggio in connection with simple exercises designed to form
the voice. The term solfeggio was nearly always used to designate the small
aria-like pieces that could be sung on the solmisation syllables, but often
was not. Examples can be found in collections by Panofka and Bordogni. 21
Stieler’s manual
We do not know if the same principles as described in Stieler’s manual,
Lärobok i de första grunderna för Musik och Sång vid ungdomens undervisning
i Skolor och Gymnasier (Stockholm 1820), were applied at the opera
school, but it seems likely, although the students of the opera school were
probably supposed to have advanced in their studies farther than the ordinary
student in grammar school. 22 The manual was commissioned from
Stieler by the Royal Educational Committee. The idea of creating a manual
of singing for secondary and grammar schools rested on the assumption
that song and singing were the foundation of music.
In his manual Stieler tried to combine the older teaching method, using
the chorale as the sole didactic vehicle for oral imitation, with a new didactic
21 Marco Bordogni was a singer and teacher who sung in Milan and Paris and was later
appointed singing master at the Paris Conservatory. He was the teacher of Panofka and
published several collections of solfeggi. (Forbes 2012)
22 Franz Hedberg says that Stieler was the best teacher at the opera, surpassing
Craelius by far. (Hedberg 1885, p. 36)
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