Vocal cultivation in Europe had an independent beginning. It may be that some of the musical traditions of the Hebrew Temple had been carried over into the earlier churches which were founded in Italy, as there is no doubt that the same traditions were adopted as the basis of the Eastern church ritual at Constantinople. Certain it is that prior to the reform of St. Ambrose much of the music of the early Roman church was highly ornamental in character. At any rate, with the founding of the choir school attached to the Pontifical chapel at Rome in the year 590 voice culture made a new start; it underwent a steady development, and continued to progress without interruption until it reached its fullest fruition in the Italian school of singing in the seventeenth century. The choir school at Rome was intended to serve as a model for the entire Western church; it supplied singers for the papal choir, which was established to illustrate the proper rendition of Gregorian music. At the beginning the course of instruction followed in the Roman choir school was extremely rudimentary, and so it continued for several centuries. The maestro di cappella had as part of his duties the training of the singers’ voices. This was accomplished according to the purely instinctive system followed in the similar schools of the ancient temples. The students committed to memory the music as it was sung by the choir master; in the course of their constant repetition of the various musical numbers their voices received the necessary training and development. Schools similar to that at Rome were established at all the great cathedrals and the Roman system of musical instruction was thus spread over the entire church.
Throughout the Middle Ages musical learning and culture—what little there was of them—were the exclusive property of the church, and the only centres of musical instruction were the choir schools. Every advance which music made during these centuries involved an extension of the art of singing, and this necessitated of course a corresponding progress of the art of vocal training. Progress was painfully slow; indeed little can be pointed out as marking any distinct advance until the invention of the sol-fa system of instruction by Guido d’Arezzo about the year 1100.[4] On the basis of this system an entirely new form of musical education was erected, which continued to flourish until well along in the 17th century. The new system of musical instruction consisted of what we should now call a training in sight singing.
The first method of vocal culture worthy the name was a natural outgrowth of the sol-fa system. Students were trained in a knowledge of the intervals by singing the ut, re, mi syllables in different combinations. Choir masters were not slow to observe that this form of study offered excellent means for acquiring a command of the voice. With the exception of the first one, ut, all the sol-fa syllables are sonorous and easily sung. The difficulty attached to the singing of ut was obviated by substituting for it the syllable do. Constant singing of the syllables was found to have an admirable effect on the voice, and they were soon adopted as the basis of vocal instruction. Sol-fa practice was made to serve a double purpose; both the ear and the voice received the due measure of attention. Vocal training was not at this time, nor indeed for several centuries later, thought to require any very close attention. It was simply an incident in the general musical education. The demands made on the voice were slight in comparison with the requirements of the music of a few centuries later. Music had long been strictly unisonic in character, but about the time of Guido the need of some addition to a single melody began to be noted.
A peculiarity of the single voice is the fact that while capable of singing melodies of an almost infinite variety it seems to the cultured ear to need support of some kind. While untutored people are content to listen to the singing of a voice without any accompaniment, a certain degree of culture brings with it a sense of bareness conveyed by a performance of this kind. Toward the close of the dark ages this feature of the voice attracted the attention of the church musicians. They hit upon the device of having a second voice accompany the first, singing another melody which should have a pleasing effect in conjunction with the original one. This marked the beginning of counterpoint, and it gave a direction to the art of music from which it did not depart for many centuries.
With the gradual extension of polyphonic writing the education of singers became constantly a more complex and exacting matter. Greater demands were made on both the voice and the musicianship of the choral singer. No great modification was, however, made in the system of instruction; this developed along the lines already marked out for it. Sight singing continued to be the basis of musical education. As time went on it became necessary for the singers to master the system of musical notation, and this was accomplished by a farther extension of the course in sight singing. An understanding of the rules of counterpoint was not obligatory on the part of the choristers, but many of them received sufficient instruction to fit them for both composition and teaching. Composers and teachers were without exception graduates of the choir schools; a musical education could not be obtained elsewhere. Music study had indeed no other purpose than to train students in the music of the church. Instruction in counterpoint and composition was not undertaken until the students had mastered the rudiments of music and had also received their vocal training in the sight singing classes. Every musician was a singer as a matter of course.
Musical culture gradually spread from the church and began to embrace a wider field. During the 15th and the 16th centuries there was a steady approximation of the two orders of music, scholarly and popular. Every little royal and princely court had its retinue of musicians. Polyphonic music had reached a degree of development where its beauty brought it within the reach of the enjoyment of the great mass of the people.
Composers had, indeed, begun to write secular ‘art’ music as early as the thirteenth century. As civilization and culture advanced, and secular music received a constantly greater measure of attention, the demands made on lay musicians became more exacting. The old fashion of singing and playing entirely by ear no longer sufficed for the requirements of cultured people. Musicians were obliged to fit themselves for their profession by obtaining a fair degree of technical knowledge. Many who had enjoyed the training of the choir schools forsook their employment in the church and devoted themselves to the practice of secular music.
The field of musical education also broadened. People who looked forward to embracing the musical profession began to seek instruction from graduates of the choir schools. But the idea of private instruction did not become popular for a long time. Music had always been taught in special schools, and the need of such schools of a secular character soon became manifest. The first institution of this type to attain any degree of prominence was that founded in Bologna in 1482 by a Spanish musician, Ramis di Pareja. It adopted the system of instruction followed in the choir schools. The century following the establishment of the Bologna school was one of great activity in secular musical instruction. Conservatories were founded in most of the great European cities, although Italy was the chief centre of education in music.
Polyphonic music had been steadily progressing and, at the period we have now reached (the sixteenth century), its proper performance called for singers of no mean ability. The traditional system of musical education had steadily expanded and had without difficulty kept abreast of the demands made on it. The strictly musical education of the singer required a longer and more exacting course of study, and so also did the technical training of the voice. Composers of this period showed a marked fondness for florid counterpoint and voices had to be cultivated to a high point of flexibility to sing their works satisfactorily.
Yet no sweeping alteration was made in the system of vocal cultivation. Flexibility of voice was acquired through practice in the singing of individual parts of contrapuntal works, those being chosen which presented technical difficulties in a convenient form. This advanced stage of vocal training was undertaken only after the rudimentary principles of singing had been mastered in the sight-singing classes. In spite of the greater technical demands made on the voice, the proper management of the vocal organs was not seen to involve a problem of any difficulty. Sight singing classes numbered sometimes as many as forty pupils. The instructor in this primary grade was expected to see that the students sang clearly and in tune, and that they avoided the faults of nasality and throatiness. To the matter of tone production the teacher could of course pay very little attention, as the rudiments of music were the main subject of study. Yet the few hints and corrections occasionally given by the sight-singing teacher were all the instruction that the students received in the management of the voice. On the completion of the course in sight singing the students were expected to produce their voices properly, as well as to sing difficult music at sight. No pupil could be admitted to the classes for advanced instruction in singing whose voice was not properly controlled.