Type of elaborate melody
Coloratura
is an elaborate
melody
with
runs
,
trills
, wide
leaps
, or similar
virtuoso
-like material,
[1]
[2]
or a
passage
of such music. Operatic roles in which such music plays a prominent part, and singers of these roles, are also called coloratura.
[3]
Its instrumental equivalent is
ornamentation
.
Coloratura is particularly found in vocal music and especially in
operatic
singing of the 18th and 19th centuries. The word
coloratura
(
COL
-?-r?-
TURE
-?
,
CUL
-
,
Italian:
[kolora?tuːra]
) means "coloring" in Italian, and derives from the
Latin
word
colorare
("to color").
[1]
History
[
edit
]
The term
coloratura
was first defined in several early non-Italian music dictionaries:
Michael Praetorius
's
Syntagma musicum
(1618);
Sebastien de Brossard
's
Dictionaire de musique
(1703); and
Johann Gottfried Walther
's
Musicalisches Lexicon
(1732). In these early texts "the term is dealt with briefly and always with reference to Italian usage".
[4]
Christoph Bernhard
(1628?1692) defined
coloratura
in two ways:
[4]
- cadenza
: "runs which are not so exactly bound to the bar, but which often extend two, three or more bars further [and] should be made only at chief closes" (
Von der Singe-Kunst, oder Maniera
, c. 1649)
- diminution
: "when an interval is altered through several shorter notes, so that, instead of one long note, a number of shorter ones rush to the next note through all kinds of progressions by step or leap" (
Tractatus compositionis
, c. 1657)
The term was never used in the most famous Italian texts on singing:
Giulio Caccini
's
Le Nuove musiche
(1601/2);
Pier Francesco Tosi
's,
Opinioni de' cantori antichi e moderni
(1723);
Giovanni Battista Mancini
's
Pensieri, e riflessioni pratiche sopra il canto figurato
(1774);
Manuel Garcia
's
Memoire sur la voix humaine
(1841), and
Traite complet de l’art du chant
(1840?47); nor was it used by the English authors
Charles Burney
(1726?1814) and
Henry Fothergill Chorley
(1808?1872), both of whom wrote at length about Italian singing of a period when ornamentation was essential.
[4]
Modern usage
[
edit
]
The term
coloratura
is most commonly applied to the elaborate and florid figuration or ornamentation in
classical
(late 18th century) and
romantic
(19th century, specifically
bel canto
) vocal music. However, early music of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, and in particular,
baroque music
extending up to about 1750, includes a substantial body of music for which coloratura technique is required by vocalists and instrumentalists alike. In the modern musicological sense the term is therefore used to refer to florid music from all periods of music history, both vocal and instrumental.
[4]
For example, in Germany the term
coloratura
(
German
:
Koloratur
) has been applied to the stereotypical and formulaic ornamentation used in 16th?century keyboard music written by a group of German organ composers referred to as the "
colorists
" (
German
:
Koloristen
).
[2]
Despite its derivation from Latin
colorare
("to color"), the term does not apply to the practice of "coloring" the voice,
i.e.
altering the quality or
timbre
of the voice for expressive purposes (for example, the technique of
voix sombree
used by
Gilbert Duprez
in the 1830s).
[4]
Vocal ranges
[
edit
]
The term is not restricted to describing any one range of voice. All female and male voice types may achieve mastery of coloratura technique. There are coloratura parts for all voice types in different musical
genres
.
[3]
Nevertheless, the term
coloratura
, when used without further qualification, normally means
soprano di coloratura
. A
coloratura soprano
role, most famously typified by the Queen of the Night in Mozart's
The Magic Flute
,
[5]
has a high range and requires the singer to execute with great facility elaborate ornamentation and embellishment, including running passages,
staccati
, and
trills
. A coloratura soprano has the vocal ability to produce notes above high C (
C
6
) and possesses a
tessitura
ranging from A
4
to A
5
or higher (unlike lower sopranos whose tessitura is G
4
?G
5
or lower).
[
citation needed
]
|
|
Richard Miller names two types of soprano coloratura voices (the coloratura and the dramatic coloratura)
[6]
as well as a mezzo-soprano coloratura voice,
[7]
and although he does not mention the coloratura contralto, he includes mention of specific works requiring coloratura technique for the contralto voice.
[8]
Examples of coloratura music for different voice ranges include:
See also
[
edit
]
Citations
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Oxford American Dictionaries
.
- ^
a
b
Apel (1969), p. 184.
- ^
a
b
Steane, J. B.; Jander, Owen, "Coloratura" in Sadie (1992)
1
: 907.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
Jander, Owen; Harris, Ellen T. "Coloratura" in
Grove Music Online
,
www.grovemusic.com
Archived
2008-05-16 at the
Wayback Machine
. Retrieved 27 November 2006.
- ^
Randel (1986), p. 180.
- ^
Miller (2000), pp. 7?9.
- ^
Miller (2000), pp. 12?13.
- ^
Miller (2000), p. 13.
Works cited
[
edit
]
- Apel, Willi, ed. (1969).
Harvard Dictionary of Music
, second edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press
.
ISBN
978-0-674-37501-7
.
- Miller, Richard (2000).
Training soprano voices
. New York: Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-513018-8
.
- Randel, Don Michael, ed.; Apel, Willi, ed. (1986).
New Harvard Dictionary of Music
. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
ISBN
978-0-674-61525-0
.
- Sadie, Stanley, ed. (1992).
The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
(four volumes). London: Macmillan.
ISBN
978-1-56159-228-9
.
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