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

68 Marianne Tråvén
approach using notated music, adapted to the ability of the student, in order
to teach students to read music. The first section of his manual is therefore
devoted to teaching the musical system, such as signs, scales, intervals,
and terms. In the second section, and the chapters that will play a major
part here, he discusses the formation of the voice, intonation and breathing,
as well as the vocal attack, keeping time, pronunciation, the use of chorales
and the further education of the voice. The third section of the manual, divided
into five chapters, consists of vocal exercises. The first is to exercise
without a fixed tempo, then comes interval practice, followed by mixed exercises
in major and minor and exercises containing several parts.
Stieler used the Italian “mastricelli” system in teaching, that is, older
students instructed the younger. He saw several positive effects in this;
first, the teacher saved time, and secondly, it was easier to determine
whether the students had understood the principles if they had to explain it
to their younger colleagues. It was also, as in Italian conservatories, a good
school for those who went on to become teachers themselves (Stieler 1820,
pp. 32–33). Let us now take a look at our four areas of attention.
Registers and registration
In the first chapter Stieler reminds his readers of how different voices are.
He discusses different voice types and explains that every voice has two
registers, the chest voice and the falsetto. In a soprano the chest voice
reaches g1 or a1; in an alto, e1 or f1. Stieler believed one could achieve an
imperceptible passage from one register to the other by singing the higher
notes of the chest register in falsetto. The chest register was considered
stronger than the falsetto, and one of the aims of his teaching was to make
them more equal in strength, that is, soften the chest voice and strengthen
the falsetto. High notes should be moderated since they were more prominent
than lower ones (Stieler 1820, pp. 36–37).
In this text we have traits of the eighteenth century as well as the nineteenth.
The division into two registers is a concept of the eighteenth century,
but striving for a more even voice is clearly a vocal aesthetic of the
nineteenth. Training this by suppressing and softening the chest voice,
while strengthening the falsetto was a method used during the nineteenth
century, while the soft top voice is a remnant of the eighteenth century,
when a strong chest voice and a soft falsetto were preferred. It would therefore
seem as though Stieler was at the breaking point of vocal change in his
concept of registers.