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

76 Marianne Tråvén
From this we can deduce that Berg gave breathing a great deal of attention
in his teaching, using exercises with and without tone. The focus on
breathing in the manual was inspired by both French and Italian teaching
methods of the time. In this way Berg was definitely at the forefront of vocal
didactics. Like Stieler, he commented on the most common fault among students,
using too much air, something that leads to lack of resonance in the
voice. In his view that breathing exercises were gymnastics for the voice,
Berg recognised the importance of training the muscles by themselves, a
thoroughly modern view.
The messa di voce
Berg did not use the messa di voce as it was intended during the eighteenth
century; in fact, he did not seem to use the full form at all in his basic practice.
It is certainly not a part of his exercise sheets and seems to be rare in
the solfeggi. The half messa di voce described above was preferred. Most of
his contemporaries, such as Laure Cinti-Damoreau or Luigi Lablache used
the messa di voce in their manuals, 34 but it is only in Garcí’s manual that we
find mention of using a half messa di voce. García divided the exercise into
two parts, making the student take a breath between the parts so as not to
strain the voice too much (García 1982, p. 39), but whereas García retained
the whole exercise, Berg used only half, so possibly the idea for this came
from García’s manual.
The solfeggi
Berg speaks about the solfeggio syllables in his chapter on amalgamation,
the union between vowels and consonants in the second part of his “Testament”
(p. 107–114). The syllables should be used to train language in
sound and give the voice strength and consistency. The goal of the practice
was to perform pure vowels and consonants with the right timbre. In this
approach Berg seemed to adhere to the eighteenth-century view. In the
manual he explained how each syllable is to be performed, the position of
the tongue and the sound desired. The singing of solfeggi was a wide field
34 The French soprano Laure Cinti-Damoreau was a teacher at the Paris Conservatory
between 1833 and 1856. She published a vocal manual entitled Méthode de chant in
1849. Luigi Lablache (1794–1858) studied violin, contrabass and singing from the age
of twelve at the conservatory Pietà dei Turchini in Naples. He had a deep bass voice
and became famous in Italy and France during the 1820s and 1830s. He published
a vocal manual called Méthode complète de chant including messa di voce in chapter 4
(Lablache 1997, p. 29).