Emotional States Excerpts
from García’s Art of Singing II (1847)
Sighs and Sobs
“Sighs, in all their varieties, are produced by the stronger or weaker, longer or shorter rubbing of the air against the walls of the throat, either when one takes the air into the chest, or when one lets it out.” (Garcia, pp. 145)
“Sobs are obtained by a short and jerky inhalation.”
“Voi Vedete il pianto mio,” from Scene 2, Turco in Italia, Rossini, pp.145
Short summary of scene, who is singing, (Fiorilla) and translation of lyrics – “you can see how I’m weeping.”
“La sciero ca varmi gliocchi…,” from Batti Batti, Don Giovanni, Mozart, pp.145
When one has recourse to the second means, that is to say, to the expulsion of the air, one produces the sigh properly so-called and the groan. The sigh precedes a note or follows it. When the sigh precedes the note, if it is placed on a vowel, it converts it into a sung exhalation; if it is placed on a consonant, it forms, before that consonant, the sound heu! [hø] aspirated. Example:
“L’error l’error,”
When the sigh ends the note, it is produced by a strong expulsion of air. Or else one first lets the voice fall in order to then push out the air, which produces a moan (plainte). Example:
Padre Mio
The sigh is also obtained by means of an ascending portamento which one muffles by the noise of the air. This portamento, at its beginning, should be only the friction of the air.
The exhalation also produces a kind of friction or tearing of the voice; but, although the effect of it is dramatic, the study of it is too laborious for us to dare advise it.
All these procedures formed by the inhalation and the exhalation are combined in different ways, as one sees in the following examples:
Ma Stan
Le Triste
Sul Mio
Ah ch’ei m’arresta
Laughter
Laughter is a kind of convulsive spasm which permits the voice to the escape only by jerks and shakes. It transverses then, in ascending and in descending, a somewhat irregular scale, but a rather lengthy one. The breath requires frequent and rapid renewal, and this need, added to the contraction which takes place in the vocal organ, brings about at each inhalation a rather loud rattle. in the pieces one should avoid as much as possible the stiffness and coldness of the written note; one should, on the contrary, imitate the abandon and the cantilena of the natural laugh. A free and musically rhythmic laugh can be obtained only as a result of long practice.
lei rider mi fa
l’alloco e la
Laughter belongs exclusively to comic opera; serious opera can permit it only in a painful feeling disguised by a forced laughter, or in a case of insanity [la folie].
Agitation
There is a kind of inner agitation which comes to us from the fullness of an experienced feeling, and which is betrayed outwardly by the faltering – or the hysteria [nerf] – of the voice, and from the delivery. This state of the soul, which is called emotion, is the necessary disposition which should take place with anyone who wants to act powerfully on others. If this agitation is caused by indignation, excessive joy, terror, exaltation, etc., the voice is emitted by a kind of shake.