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

74 Marianne Tråvén
the singer only had to use the dark timbre to colour the transitional notes
(Berg 1868, pp. 49–58).
So what did Berg consider a dark timbre and what, a clear timbre? A
timbre is the inherent sound of an instrument, an individual quality in a
voice. 31 Berg’s division of the voice into two timbres is clearly linked to the
registers, and he used these different qualities both aesthetically and as a
didactic tool. Passing from one to another could be shaded in a thousand
different ways, giving the singer an endless array of dramatic possibilities.
As the singer went up the scale, he or she should be careful to observe how
the pharynx was lengthened with every rising note. Berg noted that the
rising steps were greater in the clear timbre than in the dark. In the same
proportion as the larynx was lowered, the pharynx was raised. Here Berg
means the soft palate. In a clear voice the form of the mouth should look
like a slightly squashed C (high larynx and low palate), whereas in the dark
voice the C was full (high palate, low larynx) (Berg 1868, p.42).
The clear timbre was the basis and core of the voice and should be practised
on the middle tones of the voice. Berg linked it to the speaking voice
and said that one should let the voice develop naturally and over time. It
should be practised separately, like the dark timbre, and the two later joined
together. The dark timbre should be practised even less and only to make
the student observe its beneficial influence on the high notes, where it was
essential. Using the clear timbre on high notes would, according to Berg,
create a shrieking, hard voice. The female falsetto was trained in the clear
voice, and for men the middle tones and the first tones in the first octave
(which includes the pitches from c1 to h1).
For Berg, solving the problem of how to pass from one register to the
other, effortlessly and imperceptibly, was essential to singing. To practise
this transition Berg used a decrescendo. To him, forte contained a large
amount of clear timbre, whereas the dark timbre was used in piano. Even if
Berg here used only a half messa di voce, the intention is the same as in the
eighteenth century, when messa di voce was used both to train the passing
between registers and the flexibility of airflow. In both cases a seamless
passing between the registers was desired. To practise a decrescendo instead
of a full messa di voce was a didactic choice based on the belief that
the crescendo was much harder for the student to perform and could result
in forcing. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Berg did not consider the
timbre to be a vehicle for expression (Berg 1868, pp. 42–48).
31 Berg wrote unique et invariable. He often used French words and expressions in his
text, something that indicates a French manual in his background. (Berg 1868, p. 39)