Vibrato
Encyclopedia
Vibrato is a music
al effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch
. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation ("extent of vibrato") and the speed with which the pitch is varied ("rate of vibrato").
are sometimes used interchangeably, although the strict definitions of each describe them as separate effects: vibrato is a periodic variation in the pitch (frequency) of a musical note, whereas tremolo usually refers to periodic variations in the volume (amplitude) of a musical note. In practice, it is difficult for a singer or musical instrument player to achieve a pure vibrato or tremolo (where only the pitch or only the volume is varied), and variations in both pitch and volume will often be achieved at the same time. Electronic manipulation or generation of signals makes it easier to achieve or demonstrate pure tremolo and/or vibrato.
There are some instances where one of the terms (vibrato, tremolo) is used to describe the effect normally associated with the other term. For example, vibrato is sometimes referred to as tremolo, notably in referring to the vibrato arm of an electric guitar
as a "tremolo arm", which produces variations of pitch
. Conversely, the so-called vibrato unit
built in to many guitar amplifier
s produces what is known as tremolo
in all other contexts. See vibrato unit
for a detailed discussion of this terminology reversal.
(best known through its historical and popular association with the Hammond organ
) creates vibrato as a byproduct of tremolo production. As a Leslie speaker is moved by the rotating mechanism on which it is mounted, it moves closer to or farther away from any given object (such as a listener's ears) not also mounted on the mechanism. Because amplitude varies directly with sound pressure (A = k1P) and sound pressure varies directly with distance (P = k2d), such that amplitude also varies directly with distance (A = k1(k2d) = k1k2d), the amplitude of the sound as perceived by the listener will be greatest when the speaker is at the point in its rotation closest to the listener and least when the speaker is farthest away. Because the speaker is constantly moving either toward or away from the listener, however, the mechanism's rotation is constantly affecting the listener-perceived sound's wavelength by either "stretching" the wave (increasing wavelength) or "squeezing" it (decreasing wavelength) -- and because frequency, i.e., pitch, is inversely proportional to wavelength, such that increasing wavelength decreases frequency and vice versa, any listener for whom the speaker's motion changes the sound's perceived amplitude (i.e., any listener whose distance from the speaker is changing) must also perceive a change in frequency
.
s the sound emitted is strongly directional, particularly at high frequencies, and the slight variations in pitch typical of vibrato playing can cause large changes in the directional patterns of the radiated sound. This can add a shimmer to the sound; with a well-made instrument it may also help a solo player to be heard more clearly when playing with a large orchestra.
This directional effect is intended to interact with the room acoustics to add interest to the sound, in much the same way as an acoustic guitarist may swing the box around on a final sustain, or the rotating baffle of a Leslie speaker
will spin the sound around the room.
) either side of the note, while singers in a choir typically use narrower vibrato with an extent of less than +/- a tenth of a semitone (+/- 10 cents
). Wind and bowed instruments generally use vibratos with an extent of less than +/- half a semitone.
tenor sax
player Coleman Hawkins
found he had this difficulty when requested to play a passage both with and without vibrato by the producer of a children's jazz album to demonstrate the difference between the two. Despite his technique, he was unable to play without vibrato. A symphony saxophonist was brought in to play the part.
Many classical musicians, especially singers and string
players, have a similar problem. The violinist and teacher Leopold Auer
, writing in his book Violin Playing as I Teach It (1920), advised violinists to practise playing completely without vibrato, and to stop playing for a few minutes as soon as they noticed themselves playing with vibrato in order for them to gain complete control over their technique.
onwards, especially by singers and string players. A drastic change in approach cannot be understood wholly without regarding the rise of notionally historically accurate ("period") performance from the 1970s onwards. However, there is no actual proof that singers performed without vibrato in the baroque era. Vocal music of the renaissance
is almost never sung with vibrato as a rule, and it seems unlikely it ever was. There are only a few texts from the period on vocal production, but they all condemn the too frequent use of vibrato. However, it should be understood that "vibrato" occurs over a wide range of intensities: slow, fast, wide, and narrow. Most sources in condemning the practice seem to be referring to a wide, slow, perceptible oscillation in pitch, usually associated with intense emotion, whereas the ideal for modern vibrato, and possibly in earlier times as well, was to imitate the natural timbre of the adult singing voice, from which a measure of vibrato (it has since been shown) is rarely absent.
Leopold Mozart
’s Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule
(1756), for example, provides an indication of the state of vibrato in string playing at the end of the baroque period. In it, he concedes that “there are performers who tremble consistently on each note as if they had the permanent fever”, condemning the practice, and suggesting instead that vibrato should be used only on sustained notes and at the ends of phrases when used as an ornament. This however, does not give anything more than an indication of Mozart's own personal taste, based on the fact that he was an educated late Rococo
/Classical composer. Mozart acknowledges the difference between the heavy, ornamental vibrato that he finds objectionable, and a more continuous application of the technique less obtrusively for purposes of improving tone quality (in which case he does not refer to it as "vibrato" or "tremolo" at all; describing it merely an aspect of correct fingering). In this respect he resembles his contemporary, Francesco Geminiani, who advocated using vibrato "as frequently as possible" on short notes for this purpose. Although there is no aural proof, as audio recordings were not around for more than 150 years, that string players in Europe did not use vibrato, its overuse was almost universally condemned by the leading musical authorities of the day.
Certain typtes of vibrato, then, were seen as an ornament, but this does not mean that it was used sparingly. In wind playing too, it seems that vibrato in music up to the 20th century was seen as an ornament
to be used selectively. Martin Agricola
writing in his Musica instrumentalis deudch (1529) writes of vibrato in this way. Occasionally, composers up to the baroque period indicated vibrato with a wavy line in the sheet music
. Again, this does not suggest that it was not desired for the rest of the piece any more than the infrequent use of the term in 20th century works suggests that it is not used elsewhere.
composers such as Richard Wagner
and Johannes Brahms
is now played with a fairly continuous vibrato. However, some musicians specialising in historically informed performances, such as the conductor Roger Norrington
, argue that it is unlikely that Brahms, Wagner, and their contemporaries would have expected it to be played in this way. This view has caused considerable controversy. The view that continuous vibrato was invented by Fritz Kreisler
and some of his colleagues is held to be shown by early sound recordings, which allegedly demonstrate that vibrato appeared only in the 20th century. Against this are cited sources which are said to prove that early 19th-century Viennese string players like Franz Clement
and Joseph Mayseder were noted for their tasteful use of vibrato. These musicians (and the two Hellmesberger
s) are said to represent the school on which Fritz Kreisler based his stylistic approach.
The alleged growth of vibrato in 20th century orchestra
l playing has been traced by Norrington by studying early audio recordings but his opponents contend that his interpretations are not supported by the actual samples. Norrington claims that vibrato in the earliest recordings is used only selectively, as an expressive device; the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
were not recorded using vibrato comparable to modern vibrato until 1935, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
not until 1940. French orchestras seem to have played with continuous vibrato somewhat earlier, from the 1920s.
Defenders of vibrato claim that the sonic limitations of 78-rpm recordings, particularly with respect to overtone
s and high frequency information, make an uncontroversial assessment of earlier playing techniques difficult (although, it must be said, early recordings of operatic singers manage to show clearly the extent to which a vibrato is present [or not] in their voices). In addition, the defenders of vibrato point out a distinction needs to be made between the kind of vibrato used by a solo player, and the sectional vibrato of an entire string ensemble, which cannot be heard as a uniform quantity as such. Rather, it manifests itself in terms of the warmth and amplitude of the sound produced, as opposed to a perceptible wavering of pitch. The fact that as early as the 1880s composers such as Richard Strauss (in his tone poems "Don Juan" and "Death and Transfiguration") as well as Camille Saint-Saëns
(Symphony No. 3 "Organ") asked string players to perform certain passages "without expression" or "without nuance" strongly suggests the general use of vibrato within the orchestra as a matter of course.
Despite this, the use of vibrato in late Romantic music is still common, though challenged by Roger Norrington
and others of the historically informed performance movement. Performances of composers from Beethoven
to Arnold Schoenberg
with limited vibrato are now not uncommon. Norrington caused controversy during the 2008 Proms season by conducting Edward Elgar
's Enigma Variations
, and the Last Night of the Proms, in non-vibrato style, which he calls pure tone. Some take the view that even though it may not be what the composer envisioned, vibrato adds an emotional depth which improves the sound of the music. Others feel that the leaner sound of vibratoless playing is preferable. In 20th century classical music
, written at a time when the use of vibrato was widespread, there is sometimes a specific instruction not to use it (in some of the string quartet
s of Béla Bartók
for example). Furthermore, some modern classical composers, especially minimalist
composers, are against the use of vibrato at all times.
In opera, as opposed to pop, vibrato begins at the start of the note and continues to the end of the note with slight variations in width during the note.
Traditionally, however, the deliberate cultivation of a particularly wide, pervasive vibrato by opera singers from the Latin countries has been denounced by English-speaking music critics and pedagogues as a technical fault and a stylistic blot (see Scott, cited below, Volume 1, pp. 123–127). They have expected vocalists to emit a pure, steady stream of clear sound — irrespective of whether they were singing in church, on the concert platform, or on the operatic stage.
During the 19th century, for instance, New York and London based critics, including Henry Chorley, Herman Klein
, and George Bernard Shaw
, castigated a succession of visiting Mediterranean tenors for resorting to an excessive, constantly pulsating vibrato during their performances. Shaw called the worst offenders "goat bleaters" in his book Music in London 1890-1894 (Constable, London, 1932). Among those censured for this failing were such celebrated figures as Enrico Tamberlik
, Julián Gayarre
, Roberto Stagno
, Italo Campanini
and Ernesto Nicolini
—not to mention Fernando Valero and Fernando De Lucia
, whose tremulous tones are preserved on the 78-rpm discs that they made at the beginning of the 20th century.
The popularity of an exaggerated vibrato among many (but by no means all) Mediterranean tenors and singing teachers of this era has been traced back by musicologists to the influential example set by the early-19th century virtuoso vocalist Giovanni Battista Rubini
(1794–1854). Rubini had employed it with great success as an affecting device in the new Romantic operas of Gaetano Donizetti
and Vincenzo Bellini
. A host of young Italian tenors—including the renowned Giovanni Mario
(1810–1883) — copied Rubini's trend-setting innovation in order to heighten the emotional impact of the music that they were singing, and to facilitate the delivery of fioritura
"by, as it were, running up and down the vibrato" (to quote Scott; see p. 126).
Prior to the advent of the charismatic Rubini, every well-schooled opera singer had avoided using a conspicuous and continuous vibrato because, according to Scott, it varied the pitch of the note being sung to an unacceptable degree and it was considered to be an artificial contrivance arising from inadequate breath control. British and North American press commentators and singing teachers continued to subscribe to this view long after Rubini had come and gone.
Accordingly, when Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) — the most emulated Mediterranean tenor of the 20th century — made his acclaimed New York Metropolitan Opera
debut in November 1903, one of the specific vocal attributes for which he was praised by music reviewers was the absence of a disruptive vibrato from his singing. The scholarly critic William James Henderson
wrote in The Sun newspaper, for example, that Caruso "has a pure tenor voice and [it] is without the typical Italian bleat". Caruso's gramophone
recordings support Henderson's assessment. (Other prominent Mediterranean tenors of the late 19th century-early 20th century who, like Caruso, did not "bleat" were Angelo Masini, Francesco Tamagno
, Francesco Marconi
, Francisco Viñas, Emilio De Marchi
, Giuseppe Borgatti
and Giovanni Zenatello
, while the phenomenon was rare among French, German, Russian and Anglo-Saxon tenors of the same period—see Scott.)
The intentional use of a pronounced vibrato by Mediterranean tenors is a practice that has died out over the course of the past 100 years, owing in no small measure to Caruso's example. The last really important practitioners of this style and method of singing were Alessandro Bonci
(in the 1900-1925 period) and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi
(in the 1920-1950 period). Both of them featured bel canto
works, dating from Rubini's day, in their operatic repertoires, and both of them can be heard on recordings which faithfully capture the distinct shimmer inherent in their timbre
.
Italian or Spanish-trained operatic sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and baritones exhibiting a pronounced vibrato did not escape censure, either, by British and North American arbiters of good singing. Indeed, Adelina Patti
and Luisa Tetrazzini
were the only Italian sopranos to enjoy star status in London and New York in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras, while such well-known compatriots and coevals of theirs as Gemma Bellincioni
and Eugenia Burzio
(among several others) failed to please Anglo-Saxon ears because, unlike Patti and Tetrazzini, they possessed unsteady, vibrato-laden voices—see Scott for evaluations of their respective techniques. To give an additional female example from a later date, whenever the vivacious mezzo-soprano of the 1920s and '30s, Conchita Supervia
, performed in London, she was admonished in print for her exceedingly vibrant and fluttery tone, which was unkindly likened by her detractors to the chatter of a machine-gun or the rattle of dice in a cup.
In 1883, Giuseppe Kaschmann (né Josip Kašman
) — a principal baritone at La Scala
, Milan—was criticised for his strong vibrato when he sang at the Met, and the theatre's management did not re-engage him for the following season, even though other aspects of his singing were admired. (Kaschmann never performed in Great Britain but he remained a popular artist in the Latin countries for several decades; in 1903, he made a few recordings which exhibit only too well his perpetual flutter.) Similarly, another one of Italy's leading baritones, Riccardo Stracciari
, was unable to turn his pre-World War I
London and New York operatic engagements into unambiguous triumphs due to an intrusive quiver in his tone. He subsequently moderated his vibrato, as the discs that he made for Columbia Records
in 1917-1925 show, and this enabled him to pursue a significant career not only in his homeland but also at the Chicago opera.
There is another kind of vibrato-linked fault that can afflict the voices of operatic artists, especially ageing ones—namely the slow, often irregular wobble produced when the singer's vibrato has loosened from the effects of forcing, over-parting, or the sheer wear and tear on the body caused by the stresses of a long stage career.
References: For more information about the historical employment of vibrato by classical vocalists, see Michael Scott
's two-volume survey The Record of Singing
(published by Duckworth, London, in 1977 and 1979); John Potter's Tenor: History of a Voice (Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2009); and Herman Klein's 30 Years of Music in London (Century, New York, 1903).
players for the first half of the 20th century used vibrato more or less continuously. Since around the 1950s and the rise of bebop
, continuous use of vibrato has largely fallen out of style in favor of more selective use.
singers and instrumentalists up to the present day rarely or never use vibrato. It tends only to be used by performers of transcriptions or reworkings of folk music that have been made by composers from a classical, music-school background such as Benjamin Britten
or Percy Grainger
.
The use of vibrato in some folk music
is rare, or at least less pronounced than in other forms of music, although in Eastern European gypsy music, for example, it can be very wide.
In the case of some pop balladists, the vibrato can be so wide as to constitute a pronounced wobble, although not as pronounced as that present in some badly trained or over-worked operatic voices. Many singers use pitch correction
software in which the effect can be reduced or eliminated as a result of pitch quantization
.
.
however, can produce the effect by altering the pressure of the air passing through the pipes, or by various mechanical devices (see the Hammond
or Wurlitzer Organs for example). The clavichord
, though technically a fixed-pitch keyboard instrument, is capable of producing a type of vibrato known as Bebung
by varying the pressure on the key as the note sounds. Some digital keyboards can produce an electronic vibrato effect, either by pressure on the keys, or by using a joystick or other MIDI controller.
s, for example, the finger used to stop the string can be wobbled on the fingerboard, or actually moved up and down the string for a wider vibrato.
Many contemporary string players vary the pitch from below, only up to the nominal note and not above it, although great violin pedagogues of the past such as Carl Flesch
and Joseph Joachim
explicitly referred to vibrato as a movement towards the bridge, meaning upwards in pitch,—and the cellist Diran Alexanian
, in his 1922 treatise Traité théorique et pratique du Violoncelle, shows how one should practice vibrato as starting from the note and then moving upwards in a rhythmic motion. In a 1996 acoustic study by the Acoustical Society of America
, along with Wellesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
, found that the perceived pitch of a note with vibrato "is that of its mean", or the middle of the fluctuating pitch.
The guqin
, a Chinese bridgeless zither, has documents describing over 25 different types of vibrato that can be executed. Most peculiar is the vibrato ting yin (literally "still vibrato"); ancient manuals state that the finger on the left hand that is pressing the string should only move or rock ever so slightly so as to alter the pitch minutely, and some manuals say that the finger should not move at all but let the pulse of the finger do the vibrato.
Wide vibrato, as wide as a whole-tone, is commonly used among electric guitar
players and adds the signature vocal-like expressiveness to the sound. This effect can be achieved both by the movement of fingers on the fretboard and by the use of a tremolo arm
, a lever that adjusts the tension of the strings.
players may produce vibrato by gently shaking the horn which varies the pressure of the mouthpiece against the lip. This is referred to as hand vibrato, and is more favored in higher brass. Alternatively, the embouchure
can be rapidly altered, essentially repeatedly "bending" the note. This is called lip-vibrato, and is probably the most commonly used technique of vibrato on a lower brass instrument. On a trombone
, a player may provide a slightly more pronounced vibrato by gently moving the slide back and forth, centering on one note to give a lyrical effect. Often, this is more of a jazz technique. This is called slide vibrato. In brass playing, diaphragmatic vibrato is possible, but not often preferred.
. Vibrato on the theremin
, which is a continuously variable-pitch instrument with no "stops", can range from delicate to extravagant, and often serves to mask the small pitch adjustments that instrument requires.
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
al effect consisting of a regular, pulsating change of pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
. It is used to add expression to vocal and instrumental music. Vibrato is typically characterised in terms of two factors: the amount of pitch variation ("extent of vibrato") and the speed with which the pitch is varied ("rate of vibrato").
Vibrato and tremolo
The terms vibrato and tremoloTremolo
Tremolo, or tremolando, is a musical term that describes various trembling effects, falling roughly into two types. The first is a rapid reiteration...
are sometimes used interchangeably, although the strict definitions of each describe them as separate effects: vibrato is a periodic variation in the pitch (frequency) of a musical note, whereas tremolo usually refers to periodic variations in the volume (amplitude) of a musical note. In practice, it is difficult for a singer or musical instrument player to achieve a pure vibrato or tremolo (where only the pitch or only the volume is varied), and variations in both pitch and volume will often be achieved at the same time. Electronic manipulation or generation of signals makes it easier to achieve or demonstrate pure tremolo and/or vibrato.
There are some instances where one of the terms (vibrato, tremolo) is used to describe the effect normally associated with the other term. For example, vibrato is sometimes referred to as tremolo, notably in referring to the vibrato arm of an electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
as a "tremolo arm", which produces variations of pitch
Pitch (music)
Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...
. Conversely, the so-called vibrato unit
Vibrato unit
A vibrato unit is an effects unit used to add tremolo to the sound of an electric instrument, most often an electric guitar. Vibrato units may be individual stomp boxes or built in to multi-effects units, but are traditionally built in to guitar amplifiers....
built in to many guitar amplifier
Guitar amplifier
A guitar amplifier is an electronic amplifier designed to make the signal of an electric or acoustic guitar louder so that it will produce sound through a loudspeaker...
s produces what is known as tremolo
Tremolo
Tremolo, or tremolando, is a musical term that describes various trembling effects, falling roughly into two types. The first is a rapid reiteration...
in all other contexts. See vibrato unit
Vibrato unit
A vibrato unit is an effects unit used to add tremolo to the sound of an electric instrument, most often an electric guitar. Vibrato units may be individual stomp boxes or built in to multi-effects units, but are traditionally built in to guitar amplifiers....
for a detailed discussion of this terminology reversal.
Leslie speaker
A Leslie speakerLeslie speaker
The Leslie speaker is a specially constructed amplifier/loudspeaker used to create special audio effects using the Doppler effect. Named after its inventor, Donald Leslie, it is particularly associated with the Hammond organ but is used with a variety of instruments as well as vocals. The...
(best known through its historical and popular association with the Hammond organ
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...
) creates vibrato as a byproduct of tremolo production. As a Leslie speaker is moved by the rotating mechanism on which it is mounted, it moves closer to or farther away from any given object (such as a listener's ears) not also mounted on the mechanism. Because amplitude varies directly with sound pressure (A = k1P) and sound pressure varies directly with distance (P = k2d), such that amplitude also varies directly with distance (A = k1(k2d) = k1k2d), the amplitude of the sound as perceived by the listener will be greatest when the speaker is at the point in its rotation closest to the listener and least when the speaker is farthest away. Because the speaker is constantly moving either toward or away from the listener, however, the mechanism's rotation is constantly affecting the listener-perceived sound's wavelength by either "stretching" the wave (increasing wavelength) or "squeezing" it (decreasing wavelength) -- and because frequency, i.e., pitch, is inversely proportional to wavelength, such that increasing wavelength decreases frequency and vice versa, any listener for whom the speaker's motion changes the sound's perceived amplitude (i.e., any listener whose distance from the speaker is changing) must also perceive a change in frequency
Doppler effect
The Doppler effect , named after Austrian physicist Christian Doppler who proposed it in 1842 in Prague, is the change in frequency of a wave for an observer moving relative to the source of the wave. It is commonly heard when a vehicle sounding a siren or horn approaches, passes, and recedes from...
.
Acoustic basis
The use of vibrato is intended to add warmth to a note. In the case of many string instrumentString instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
s the sound emitted is strongly directional, particularly at high frequencies, and the slight variations in pitch typical of vibrato playing can cause large changes in the directional patterns of the radiated sound. This can add a shimmer to the sound; with a well-made instrument it may also help a solo player to be heard more clearly when playing with a large orchestra.
This directional effect is intended to interact with the room acoustics to add interest to the sound, in much the same way as an acoustic guitarist may swing the box around on a final sustain, or the rotating baffle of a Leslie speaker
Leslie speaker
The Leslie speaker is a specially constructed amplifier/loudspeaker used to create special audio effects using the Doppler effect. Named after its inventor, Donald Leslie, it is particularly associated with the Hammond organ but is used with a variety of instruments as well as vocals. The...
will spin the sound around the room.
Typical rate and extent of vibrato
The rate and extent of the variation in pitch during vibrato is controlled by the performer. The extent of vibrato for solo singers is usually less than a semitone (100 centsCent (music)
The cent is a logarithmic unit of measure used for musical intervals. Twelve-tone equal temperament divides the octave into 12 semitones of 100 cents each...
) either side of the note, while singers in a choir typically use narrower vibrato with an extent of less than +/- a tenth of a semitone (+/- 10 cents
Cent (music)
The cent is a logarithmic unit of measure used for musical intervals. Twelve-tone equal temperament divides the octave into 12 semitones of 100 cents each...
). Wind and bowed instruments generally use vibratos with an extent of less than +/- half a semitone.
Vibrato's use in various musical genres
Vibrato is sometimes thought of as an effect added onto the note itself, but in some cases it is so fully a part of the style of the music that it can be very difficult for some performers to play without it. The jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
tenor sax
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
player Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Hawkins
Coleman Randolph Hawkins was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Hawkins was one of the first prominent jazz musicians on his instrument. As Joachim E. Berendt explained, "there were some tenor players before him, but the instrument was not an acknowledged jazz horn"...
found he had this difficulty when requested to play a passage both with and without vibrato by the producer of a children's jazz album to demonstrate the difference between the two. Despite his technique, he was unable to play without vibrato. A symphony saxophonist was brought in to play the part.
Many classical musicians, especially singers and string
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
players, have a similar problem. The violinist and teacher Leopold Auer
Leopold Auer
Leopold Auer was a Hungarian violinist, teacher, conductor and composer.-Early life and career:...
, writing in his book Violin Playing as I Teach It (1920), advised violinists to practise playing completely without vibrato, and to stop playing for a few minutes as soon as they noticed themselves playing with vibrato in order for them to gain complete control over their technique.
In classical music
The use of vibrato in classical music is a matter of some dispute. For much of the 20th century it was used almost continuously in the performance of pieces from all eras from the BaroqueBaroque music
Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...
onwards, especially by singers and string players. A drastic change in approach cannot be understood wholly without regarding the rise of notionally historically accurate ("period") performance from the 1970s onwards. However, there is no actual proof that singers performed without vibrato in the baroque era. Vocal music of the renaissance
Renaissance music
Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance. Defining the beginning of the musical era is difficult, given that its defining characteristics were adopted only gradually; musicologists have placed its beginnings from as early as 1300 to as late as the 1470s.Literally meaning...
is almost never sung with vibrato as a rule, and it seems unlikely it ever was. There are only a few texts from the period on vocal production, but they all condemn the too frequent use of vibrato. However, it should be understood that "vibrato" occurs over a wide range of intensities: slow, fast, wide, and narrow. Most sources in condemning the practice seem to be referring to a wide, slow, perceptible oscillation in pitch, usually associated with intense emotion, whereas the ideal for modern vibrato, and possibly in earlier times as well, was to imitate the natural timbre of the adult singing voice, from which a measure of vibrato (it has since been shown) is rarely absent.
Leopold Mozart
Leopold Mozart
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of...
’s Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule
Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule
Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule is a textbook for instruction in the violin, published by Leopold Mozart in 1756...
(1756), for example, provides an indication of the state of vibrato in string playing at the end of the baroque period. In it, he concedes that “there are performers who tremble consistently on each note as if they had the permanent fever”, condemning the practice, and suggesting instead that vibrato should be used only on sustained notes and at the ends of phrases when used as an ornament. This however, does not give anything more than an indication of Mozart's own personal taste, based on the fact that he was an educated late Rococo
Rococo
Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...
/Classical composer. Mozart acknowledges the difference between the heavy, ornamental vibrato that he finds objectionable, and a more continuous application of the technique less obtrusively for purposes of improving tone quality (in which case he does not refer to it as "vibrato" or "tremolo" at all; describing it merely an aspect of correct fingering). In this respect he resembles his contemporary, Francesco Geminiani, who advocated using vibrato "as frequently as possible" on short notes for this purpose. Although there is no aural proof, as audio recordings were not around for more than 150 years, that string players in Europe did not use vibrato, its overuse was almost universally condemned by the leading musical authorities of the day.
Certain typtes of vibrato, then, were seen as an ornament, but this does not mean that it was used sparingly. In wind playing too, it seems that vibrato in music up to the 20th century was seen as an ornament
Ornament (music)
In music, ornaments or embellishments are musical flourishes that are not necessary to carry the overall line of the melody , but serve instead to decorate or "ornament" that line. Many ornaments are performed as "fast notes" around a central note...
to be used selectively. Martin Agricola
Martin Agricola
Martin Agricola was a German composer of Renaissance music and a music theorist.He was born in Schwiebus in Lower Silesia. His German name was Sohr or Sore....
writing in his Musica instrumentalis deudch (1529) writes of vibrato in this way. Occasionally, composers up to the baroque period indicated vibrato with a wavy line in the sheet music
Sheet music
Sheet music is a hand-written or printed form of music notation that uses modern musical symbols; like its analogs—books, pamphlets, etc.—the medium of sheet music typically is paper , although the access to musical notation in recent years includes also presentation on computer screens...
. Again, this does not suggest that it was not desired for the rest of the piece any more than the infrequent use of the term in 20th century works suggests that it is not used elsewhere.
Vibrato wars
Music by late RomanticRomantic music
Romantic music or music in the Romantic Period is a musicological and artistic term referring to a particular period, theory, compositional practice, and canon in Western music history, from 1810 to 1900....
composers such as Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
and Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms
Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist, and one of the leading musicians of the Romantic period. Born in Hamburg, Brahms spent much of his professional life in Vienna, Austria, where he was a leader of the musical scene...
is now played with a fairly continuous vibrato. However, some musicians specialising in historically informed performances, such as the conductor Roger Norrington
Roger Norrington
Sir Roger Arthur Carver Norrington, CBE is a British conductor. He is the son of Sir Arthur Norrington and his brother is Humphrey Thomas Norrington....
, argue that it is unlikely that Brahms, Wagner, and their contemporaries would have expected it to be played in this way. This view has caused considerable controversy. The view that continuous vibrato was invented by Fritz Kreisler
Fritz Kreisler
Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler was an Austrian-born violinist and composer. One of the most famous violin masters of his or any other day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately...
and some of his colleagues is held to be shown by early sound recordings, which allegedly demonstrate that vibrato appeared only in the 20th century. Against this are cited sources which are said to prove that early 19th-century Viennese string players like Franz Clement
Franz Clement
Franz Joseph Clement , was an Austrian violinist, pianist, composer, conductor of Vienna's Theater an der Wien and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven....
and Joseph Mayseder were noted for their tasteful use of vibrato. These musicians (and the two Hellmesberger
Hellmesberger
Hellmesberger is a surname.Notable bearers include an Austrian family of musicians, which includes:* Georg Hellmesberger, Sr., father of Joseph Sr. and Georg Jr....
s) are said to represent the school on which Fritz Kreisler based his stylistic approach.
The alleged growth of vibrato in 20th century orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
l playing has been traced by Norrington by studying early audio recordings but his opponents contend that his interpretations are not supported by the actual samples. Norrington claims that vibrato in the earliest recordings is used only selectively, as an expressive device; the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
The Berlin Philharmonic, German: , formerly Berliner Philharmonisches Orchester , is an orchestra based in Berlin, Germany. In 2006, a group of ten European media outlets voted the Berlin Philharmonic number three on a list of "top ten European Orchestras", after the Vienna Philharmonic and the...
were not recorded using vibrato comparable to modern vibrato until 1935, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
The Vienna Philharmonic is an orchestra in Austria, regularly considered one of the finest in the world....
not until 1940. French orchestras seem to have played with continuous vibrato somewhat earlier, from the 1920s.
Defenders of vibrato claim that the sonic limitations of 78-rpm recordings, particularly with respect to overtone
Overtone
An overtone is any frequency higher than the fundamental frequency of a sound. The fundamental and the overtones together are called partials. Harmonics are partials whose frequencies are whole number multiples of the fundamental These overlapping terms are variously used when discussing the...
s and high frequency information, make an uncontroversial assessment of earlier playing techniques difficult (although, it must be said, early recordings of operatic singers manage to show clearly the extent to which a vibrato is present [or not] in their voices). In addition, the defenders of vibrato point out a distinction needs to be made between the kind of vibrato used by a solo player, and the sectional vibrato of an entire string ensemble, which cannot be heard as a uniform quantity as such. Rather, it manifests itself in terms of the warmth and amplitude of the sound produced, as opposed to a perceptible wavering of pitch. The fact that as early as the 1880s composers such as Richard Strauss (in his tone poems "Don Juan" and "Death and Transfiguration") as well as Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
(Symphony No. 3 "Organ") asked string players to perform certain passages "without expression" or "without nuance" strongly suggests the general use of vibrato within the orchestra as a matter of course.
Despite this, the use of vibrato in late Romantic music is still common, though challenged by Roger Norrington
Roger Norrington
Sir Roger Arthur Carver Norrington, CBE is a British conductor. He is the son of Sir Arthur Norrington and his brother is Humphrey Thomas Norrington....
and others of the historically informed performance movement. Performances of composers from Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
to Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
with limited vibrato are now not uncommon. Norrington caused controversy during the 2008 Proms season by conducting Edward Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
's Enigma Variations
Enigma Variations
Variations on an Original Theme for orchestra , Op. 36, commonly referred to as the Enigma Variations, is a set of a theme and its fourteen variations written for orchestra by Edward Elgar in 1898–1899. It is Elgar's best-known large-scale composition, for both the music itself and the...
, and the Last Night of the Proms, in non-vibrato style, which he calls pure tone. Some take the view that even though it may not be what the composer envisioned, vibrato adds an emotional depth which improves the sound of the music. Others feel that the leaner sound of vibratoless playing is preferable. In 20th century classical music
20th century classical music
20th century classical music was without a dominant style and highly diverse.-Introduction:At the turn of the century, music was characteristically late Romantic in style. Composers such as Gustav Mahler and Jean Sibelius were pushing the bounds of Post-Romantic Symphonic writing...
, written at a time when the use of vibrato was widespread, there is sometimes a specific instruction not to use it (in some of the string quartet
String quartet
A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...
s of Béla Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
for example). Furthermore, some modern classical composers, especially minimalist
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
composers, are against the use of vibrato at all times.
In opera
All human voices possess the capacity to produce a vibrato. This vibrato can be varied in width (and rapidity) through training.In opera, as opposed to pop, vibrato begins at the start of the note and continues to the end of the note with slight variations in width during the note.
Traditionally, however, the deliberate cultivation of a particularly wide, pervasive vibrato by opera singers from the Latin countries has been denounced by English-speaking music critics and pedagogues as a technical fault and a stylistic blot (see Scott, cited below, Volume 1, pp. 123–127). They have expected vocalists to emit a pure, steady stream of clear sound — irrespective of whether they were singing in church, on the concert platform, or on the operatic stage.
During the 19th century, for instance, New York and London based critics, including Henry Chorley, Herman Klein
Herman Klein
Herman Klein was an English music critic, author and teacher of singing. Klein's famous brothers included Charles and Manuel Klein...
, and George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
, castigated a succession of visiting Mediterranean tenors for resorting to an excessive, constantly pulsating vibrato during their performances. Shaw called the worst offenders "goat bleaters" in his book Music in London 1890-1894 (Constable, London, 1932). Among those censured for this failing were such celebrated figures as Enrico Tamberlik
Enrico Tamberlik
Enrico Tamberlik was an Italian tenor who sang to great acclaim at Europe and America's leading opera venues. He excelled in the heroic roles of the Italian and French repertories and was renowned for his powerful declamation and clarion high notes.-Career:Born in Rome, some sources claim that...
, Julián Gayarre
Julián Gayarre
Sebastián Julián Gayarre Garjón , better known as Julián Gayarre, was a Spanish opera singer who created the role of Marcello in Donizetti's Il Duca d'Alba and Enzo in Ponchielli's La Gioconda.Although he faced strong competition for this title from the likes of Roberto Stagno, Italo Campanini,...
, Roberto Stagno
Roberto Stagno
Roberto Stagno , was a prominent Italian opera tenor. He became an important interpreter of verismo music when it burst on to the operatic scene during the 1890s; but he also possessed an agile bel canto technique which he employed in operas dating from earlier periods...
, Italo Campanini
Italo Campanini
Italo Campanini was a leading Italian operatic tenor, whose career reached its height in London in the 1870s and in New York in the 1880s and 1890s...
and Ernesto Nicolini
Ernesto Nicolini
Ernesto Nicolini was a French operatic tenor, particularly associated with the French and Italian repertories....
—not to mention Fernando Valero and Fernando De Lucia
Fernando De Lucia
Fernando De Lucia was an Italian opera tenor and singing teacher who enjoyed an international career....
, whose tremulous tones are preserved on the 78-rpm discs that they made at the beginning of the 20th century.
The popularity of an exaggerated vibrato among many (but by no means all) Mediterranean tenors and singing teachers of this era has been traced back by musicologists to the influential example set by the early-19th century virtuoso vocalist Giovanni Battista Rubini
Giovanni Battista Rubini
Giovanni Battista Rubini was an Italian tenor, as famous in his time as Enrico Caruso in a later day. His ringing and expressive coloratura dexterity in the highest register of his voice, the tenorino, inspired the writing of operatic roles which today are almost impossible to cast...
(1794–1854). Rubini had employed it with great success as an affecting device in the new Romantic operas of Gaetano Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
and Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer. His greatest works are I Capuleti ed i Montecchi , La sonnambula , Norma , Beatrice di Tenda , and I puritani...
. A host of young Italian tenors—including the renowned Giovanni Mario
Mario
is a fictional character in his video game series, created by Japanese video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. Serving as Nintendo's mascot and the main protagonist of the series, Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation...
(1810–1883) — copied Rubini's trend-setting innovation in order to heighten the emotional impact of the music that they were singing, and to facilitate the delivery of fioritura
Fioritura
"Fioritura" is the name given to the flowery, embellished vocal line found in many arias from nineteenth-century opera. It is derived from the Italian fiore, meaning "flower".- External links :*...
"by, as it were, running up and down the vibrato" (to quote Scott; see p. 126).
Prior to the advent of the charismatic Rubini, every well-schooled opera singer had avoided using a conspicuous and continuous vibrato because, according to Scott, it varied the pitch of the note being sung to an unacceptable degree and it was considered to be an artificial contrivance arising from inadequate breath control. British and North American press commentators and singing teachers continued to subscribe to this view long after Rubini had come and gone.
Accordingly, when Enrico Caruso (1873–1921) — the most emulated Mediterranean tenor of the 20th century — made his acclaimed New York Metropolitan Opera
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an opera company, located in New York City. Originally founded in 1880, the company gave its first performance on October 22, 1883. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager...
debut in November 1903, one of the specific vocal attributes for which he was praised by music reviewers was the absence of a disruptive vibrato from his singing. The scholarly critic William James Henderson
William James Henderson
William James Henderson was an American musical critic and scholar, born at Newark, New Jersey.-Biography:...
wrote in The Sun newspaper, for example, that Caruso "has a pure tenor voice and [it] is without the typical Italian bleat". Caruso's gramophone
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
recordings support Henderson's assessment. (Other prominent Mediterranean tenors of the late 19th century-early 20th century who, like Caruso, did not "bleat" were Angelo Masini, Francesco Tamagno
Francesco Tamagno
Francesco Tamagno was an operatic tenor from Italy who sang with enormous success throughout Europe and America. On 5 February 1887, he cemented his place in musical history by creating the role of Otello in Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece of the same name...
, Francesco Marconi
Francesco Marconi
Francesco Marconi was an operatic tenor from Rome who enjoyed an important international career. In 1924, a reputable biographical dictionary of musicians called him 'one of the most renowned and esteemed singers of the last 50 years'...
, Francisco Viñas, Emilio De Marchi
Emilio de Marchi
Emilio De Marchi was an Italian operatic tenor. He had a significant career during the late 19th century and early 20th century, appearing at major theatres on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1900, he entered the annals of musical history as the creator of the role of Cavaradossi in Giacomo...
, Giuseppe Borgatti
Giuseppe Borgatti
Giuseppe Borgatti was an Italian dramatic tenor with an outstanding voice...
and Giovanni Zenatello
Giovanni Zenatello
Giovanni Zenatello was an Italian opera singer. Born in Verona, he enjoyed an international career as a dramatic tenor of the first rank. Otello became his most famous operatic role but he sang a wide repertoire. In 1904, he created the part of Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly.-Career:Zenatello...
, while the phenomenon was rare among French, German, Russian and Anglo-Saxon tenors of the same period—see Scott.)
The intentional use of a pronounced vibrato by Mediterranean tenors is a practice that has died out over the course of the past 100 years, owing in no small measure to Caruso's example. The last really important practitioners of this style and method of singing were Alessandro Bonci
Alessandro Bonci
Alessandro Bonci was an Italian lyric tenor known internationally for his association with the bel canto repertoire. He sang at many famous theatres, including New York's Metropolitan Opera, Milan's La Scala and London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.-Career:A native of Cesena, Romagna, Bonci...
(in the 1900-1925 period) and Giacomo Lauri-Volpi
Giacomo Lauri-Volpi
Giacomo Lauri-Volpi was an Italian tenor with a lyric-dramatic voice of exceptional range and technical facility. He performed throughout Europe and the Americas in a top-class career that spanned 40 years....
(in the 1920-1950 period). Both of them featured bel canto
Bel canto
Bel canto , along with a number of similar constructions , is an Italian opera term...
works, dating from Rubini's day, in their operatic repertoires, and both of them can be heard on recordings which faithfully capture the distinct shimmer inherent in their timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
.
Italian or Spanish-trained operatic sopranos, mezzo-sopranos, and baritones exhibiting a pronounced vibrato did not escape censure, either, by British and North American arbiters of good singing. Indeed, Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti
Adelina Patti was a highly acclaimed 19th-century opera singer, earning huge fees at the height of her career in the music capitals of Europe and America. She first sang in public as a child in 1851 and gave her last performance before an audience in 1914...
and Luisa Tetrazzini
Luisa Tetrazzini
Luisa Tetrazzini was an Italian coloratura soprano of great international fame.Tetrazzini's voice was remarkable for its phenomenal flexibility, thrust, steadiness and thrilling tone...
were the only Italian sopranos to enjoy star status in London and New York in the late-Victorian and Edwardian eras, while such well-known compatriots and coevals of theirs as Gemma Bellincioni
Gemma Bellincioni
Gemma Bellincioni was an Italian soprano and one of the best-known opera singers of the late 19th century. She had a particular affinity with the verismo repertoire and was renowned more for her charismatic acting than for the quality of her voice.-Her career:Matilda Cesira was Bellincioni's real...
and Eugenia Burzio
Eugenia Burzio
Eugenia Burzio was an Italian operatic soprano known for her vibrant voice and passionate style of singing.She was particularly prominent in the verismo repertoire, creating the role of Delia Terzaghi in Ruggero Leoncavallo's Goffredo Mameli as well as singing Minnie in the Italian premiere of...
(among several others) failed to please Anglo-Saxon ears because, unlike Patti and Tetrazzini, they possessed unsteady, vibrato-laden voices—see Scott for evaluations of their respective techniques. To give an additional female example from a later date, whenever the vivacious mezzo-soprano of the 1920s and '30s, Conchita Supervia
Conchita Supervia
Conchita Supervía was a highly popular Spanish mezzo-soprano singer who appeared in opera in Europe and America and also gave recitals....
, performed in London, she was admonished in print for her exceedingly vibrant and fluttery tone, which was unkindly likened by her detractors to the chatter of a machine-gun or the rattle of dice in a cup.
In 1883, Giuseppe Kaschmann (né Josip Kašman
Josip Kašman
Josip Kašman or Giuseppe Kaschmann, , was a famous operatic baritone...
) — a principal baritone at La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
, Milan—was criticised for his strong vibrato when he sang at the Met, and the theatre's management did not re-engage him for the following season, even though other aspects of his singing were admired. (Kaschmann never performed in Great Britain but he remained a popular artist in the Latin countries for several decades; in 1903, he made a few recordings which exhibit only too well his perpetual flutter.) Similarly, another one of Italy's leading baritones, Riccardo Stracciari
Riccardo Stracciari
Riccardo Stracciari was a leading Italian baritone. His repertoire consisted mainly of Italian operatic works, with Rossini's Figaro and Verdi's Rigoletto becoming his signature roles during a long and distinguished career which stretched from 1899 to 1944.- Life and career :Born near Bologna,...
, was unable to turn his pre-World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
London and New York operatic engagements into unambiguous triumphs due to an intrusive quiver in his tone. He subsequently moderated his vibrato, as the discs that he made for Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
in 1917-1925 show, and this enabled him to pursue a significant career not only in his homeland but also at the Chicago opera.
There is another kind of vibrato-linked fault that can afflict the voices of operatic artists, especially ageing ones—namely the slow, often irregular wobble produced when the singer's vibrato has loosened from the effects of forcing, over-parting, or the sheer wear and tear on the body caused by the stresses of a long stage career.
References: For more information about the historical employment of vibrato by classical vocalists, see Michael Scott
Michael Scott (artistic director)
Michael Scott is the founder of the London Opera Society. In his role as the society's sole artistic director, he brought to London Marilyn Horne, Joan Sutherland, and Boris Christoff. He was also responsible for introducing Sherrill Milnes, Ruggero Raimondi, and Montserrat Caballe...
's two-volume survey The Record of Singing
The Record of Singing
The Record of Singing is a compilation of classical-music singing from the first half of the 20th century, the era of the 78-rpm record.It was issued on LP by EMI, successor to the British company His Master's Voice — perhaps the leading organization in the early history of audio recording.The...
(published by Duckworth, London, in 1977 and 1979); John Potter's Tenor: History of a Voice (Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2009); and Herman Klein's 30 Years of Music in London (Century, New York, 1903).
In jazz
Most jazzJazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
players for the first half of the 20th century used vibrato more or less continuously. Since around the 1950s and the rise of bebop
Bebop
Bebop differed drastically from the straightforward compositions of the swing era, and was instead characterized by fast tempos, asymmetrical phrasing, intricate melodies, and rhythm sections that expanded on their role as tempo-keepers...
, continuous use of vibrato has largely fallen out of style in favor of more selective use.
In folk
Folk musicFolk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
singers and instrumentalists up to the present day rarely or never use vibrato. It tends only to be used by performers of transcriptions or reworkings of folk music that have been made by composers from a classical, music-school background such as Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
or Percy Grainger
Percy Grainger
George Percy Aldridge Grainger , known as Percy Grainger, was an Australian-born composer, arranger and pianist. In the course of a long and innovative career he played a prominent role in the revival of interest in British folk music in the early years of the 20th century. He also made many...
.
The use of vibrato in some folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
is rare, or at least less pronounced than in other forms of music, although in Eastern European gypsy music, for example, it can be very wide.
In pop
In pop (as opposed to opera), where vibrato is used at all, the vibrato usually starts somewhere in the latter part of the note.In the case of some pop balladists, the vibrato can be so wide as to constitute a pronounced wobble, although not as pronounced as that present in some badly trained or over-worked operatic voices. Many singers use pitch correction
Pitch correction
Pitch correction is the process of correcting the intonation of an audio signal without affecting other aspects of its sound. Pitch correction first detects the pitch of an audio signal , then calculates the desired change and modifies the audio signal accordingly...
software in which the effect can be reduced or eliminated as a result of pitch quantization
Quantization
Quantization is the procedure of constraining something from a relatively large or continuous set of values to a relatively small discrete set...
.
Techniques for producing vibrato
Not all instruments can produce vibrato, as some have fixed pitches which cannot be varied by sufficiently small degrees. Most percussion instruments are examples of this, for instance the xylophoneXylophone
The xylophone is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets...
.
Keyboard instruments
Some types of organOrgan (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
however, can produce the effect by altering the pressure of the air passing through the pipes, or by various mechanical devices (see the Hammond
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...
or Wurlitzer Organs for example). The clavichord
Clavichord
The clavichord is a European stringed keyboard instrument known from the late Medieval, through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical eras. Historically, it was widely used as a practice instrument and as an aid to composition, not being loud enough for larger performances. The clavichord produces...
, though technically a fixed-pitch keyboard instrument, is capable of producing a type of vibrato known as Bebung
Bebung
Bebung is a type of vibrato executed on the clavichord.When a clavichord key is pressed, a small metal tangent strikes a string and remains in contact with it for as long as the key is held down...
by varying the pressure on the key as the note sounds. Some digital keyboards can produce an electronic vibrato effect, either by pressure on the keys, or by using a joystick or other MIDI controller.
String instruments
The method of producing vibrato on other instruments varies. On string instrumentString instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
s, for example, the finger used to stop the string can be wobbled on the fingerboard, or actually moved up and down the string for a wider vibrato.
Many contemporary string players vary the pitch from below, only up to the nominal note and not above it, although great violin pedagogues of the past such as Carl Flesch
Carl Flesch
Carl Flesch was a violinist and teacher.Carl Flesch was born in Moson in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10, he was taken to Vienna, and began to study with Jakob Grün. At 17, he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire...
and Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century.-Origins:...
explicitly referred to vibrato as a movement towards the bridge, meaning upwards in pitch,—and the cellist Diran Alexanian
Diran Alexanian
Diran Alexanian was an Armenian cello teacher. He studied cello with Friedrich Grützmacher in Leipzig, as well as played chamber music with Johannes Brahms and violinist Joseph Joachim...
, in his 1922 treatise Traité théorique et pratique du Violoncelle, shows how one should practice vibrato as starting from the note and then moving upwards in a rhythmic motion. In a 1996 acoustic study by the Acoustical Society of America
Acoustical Society of America
The Acoustical Society of America is an international scientific society dedicated to increasing and diffusing the knowledge of acoustics and its practical applications.-History:...
, along with Wellesley College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, found that the perceived pitch of a note with vibrato "is that of its mean", or the middle of the fluctuating pitch.
The guqin
Guqin
The guqin is the modern name for a plucked seven-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family...
, a Chinese bridgeless zither, has documents describing over 25 different types of vibrato that can be executed. Most peculiar is the vibrato ting yin (literally "still vibrato"); ancient manuals state that the finger on the left hand that is pressing the string should only move or rock ever so slightly so as to alter the pitch minutely, and some manuals say that the finger should not move at all but let the pulse of the finger do the vibrato.
Wide vibrato, as wide as a whole-tone, is commonly used among electric guitar
Electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...
players and adds the signature vocal-like expressiveness to the sound. This effect can be achieved both by the movement of fingers on the fretboard and by the use of a tremolo arm
Tremolo arm
A whammy bar, tremolo arm/bar, or vibrato arm/bar is a component of a guitar, used to add vibrato to the sound by changing the tension of the strings, typically at the bridge or tailpiece...
, a lever that adjusts the tension of the strings.
Wind instruments
Players of wind instruments generally create vibrato by modulating their air flow into the instrument. This may be accomplished either through stomach vibrato, the pulsing of the diaphragm slightly up and down, or throat vibrato, a variation of vocal chord tension to manipulate air pressure as singers do. Players of other instruments may employ less common techniques. Saxophonists tend to create vibrato by repeatedly moving their jaw up and down slightly. Clarinet players rarely play with vibrato, but if they do, the saxophone method is common because of the similarity of the saxophone and clarinet mouthpieces and reeds.Brasses
Brass instrumentBrass instrument
A brass instrument is a musical instrument whose sound is produced by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips...
players may produce vibrato by gently shaking the horn which varies the pressure of the mouthpiece against the lip. This is referred to as hand vibrato, and is more favored in higher brass. Alternatively, the embouchure
Embouchure
The embouchure is the use of facial muscles and the shaping of the lips to the mouthpiece of woodwind instruments or the mouthpiece of the brass instruments.The word is of French origin and is related to the root bouche , 'mouth'....
can be rapidly altered, essentially repeatedly "bending" the note. This is called lip-vibrato, and is probably the most commonly used technique of vibrato on a lower brass instrument. On a trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
, a player may provide a slightly more pronounced vibrato by gently moving the slide back and forth, centering on one note to give a lyrical effect. Often, this is more of a jazz technique. This is called slide vibrato. In brass playing, diaphragmatic vibrato is possible, but not often preferred.
Auto-vibrato
Some instruments can only be played with constant, mechanical vibrato (or none at all), notably electric organists using a Leslie speakerLeslie speaker
The Leslie speaker is a specially constructed amplifier/loudspeaker used to create special audio effects using the Doppler effect. Named after its inventor, Donald Leslie, it is particularly associated with the Hammond organ but is used with a variety of instruments as well as vocals. The...
. Vibrato on the theremin
Theremin
The theremin , originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device...
, which is a continuously variable-pitch instrument with no "stops", can range from delicate to extravagant, and often serves to mask the small pitch adjustments that instrument requires.
External links
- Vibrato or tremolo? - technical treatment, but accessible to laypersons
- The Vibrato Page - collection of opinions and quotes against vibrato.
- Roger Norrington writing on vibrato - from a conductor's perspective
- David Montgomery: The Vibrato Thing - from a musician's perspective, debunking Norrington and Moens-Haenen
- Punctuating your Lead Guitar with String Vibratos
- Use of Vibrato in Baroque Vocal Music - Historical documentation, brief but clear scientific explanation, and a short bibliography
- David Hurwitz: Vibrato in the Classical Orchestra - latest of three-part essay refuting Norrington and his school; covers the Classical Period
- A riddle over vibrato of clarinet