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18-413: The Purcell Society , founded in 1876 (principally by William Hayman Cummings ) is an organization dedicated to making the complete musical works of Henry Purcell available. Between 1876 and 1965, scores of all the known works of Purcell were published, in 32 volumes. Advances in musical scholarship and editorial techniques in the decades after the first volumes were issued meant that by the second half of

36-546: A distinct genre . Popes and princes hired them from the Sistine Chapel . In the preface to Le nuove musiche (1602), Giulio Caccini detailed techniques of a new style of singing. He described the messa di voce as a "crescere e scemare la voce" ("crescendo and decrescendo of the voice") and linked it to vocal pedagogy as the main way to master intonation. Its use was expressive , not merely ornamental, technical, or virtuosic . Domenico Mazzocchi

54-414: Is also a new-comer, brought from England for this occasion, Mr. Wm. H. Cummings. He is a slightly-built gentleman, about five feet ten inches high, has light hair, a receding forehead, a light gentlemanly-looking (but not distingue) mustache, and stands quietly while singing. His voice is a tenor of good volume, and admirable quality—like a silver trumpet. The intonation is to be relied on, and his delivery of

72-473: Is buried in West Norwood Cemetery , South London . Messa di voce The messa di voce is widely considered an advanced vocal technique. To be properly executed, the only feature of the note being sung that should change is the volume, not the pitch, intonation , timbre , or vibrato . This requires an extremely high level of vocal coordination, particularly in the diminuendo. Thus

90-545: Is known as the 'tremolo'. It is, as the Doctor said, a reprehensible habit. Apart from the fact that it mars the beauty of many fine voices, it is, I agree, "a most distressing fault to the auditors, who frequently listen in doubt as to the precise pitch of the note the singer is endeavouring to produce". He later became a professor and later the principal of the Guildhall School of Music . One of his notable pupils at

108-580: The Birmingham Festival he was the last-minute tenor soloist at the premiere of The Masque at Kenilworth (1866) by Arthur Sullivan , taking Giovanni Matteo Mario 's place (with only half-an-hour's notice to prepare). He was also the tenor soloist there for the premiere of the sacred cantata The Woman of Samaria by William Sterndale Bennett in 1867. Cummings founded the Purcell Society in 1876. He served as singing professor at

126-619: The Royal Academy of Music for 15 years beginning in 1879. He held strong views on singing and delivered the occasional stern tirade attacking the "pernicious vibrato". As late as 1907 he gave an address on "The Culture of the Voice" in which he praised the messa di voce (which was obsolete by then) and, according to the Derby Daily Telegraph of 4 January 1907, administered: a crushing rebuke to those who indulge in what

144-544: The 20th century they were no longer meeting the needs of users. Beginning in the 1960s, the Purcell Society began to issue revised versions of the scores. The website gives details of the scores in the revised series that are currently available. The volumes of the edition (along with its companion series) were edited by a diverse group of musicians and editors, and moderated by an editorial committee. Editors and committee members include, among others: All volumes of

162-669: The complete work of Henry Purcell published by the Purcell Society are available in the Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin and the British Library in London. The FAL library at the University of New Mexico has in its possession most of the volumes, with some added revised editions. The FAL is missing vols. 1, 6, 8, 10, 16, 18, 21, 23. William Hayman Cummings William Hayman Cummings (22 August 1831 – 5 June 1915)

180-605: The execution as involving a quarter-tone rise in the crescendo. The symbol C , he wrote, denoted "to raise the voice only in volume and spirit". Loreto Vittori plausibly performed the Lagrime amare for Urban VIII in 1640. By the eighteenth century, Martha Feldman argued, the technique was a castrato hallmark entailing masterly breath control . Having visited Italy, Charles Burney wrote in his 1789 General History of Music that "none of all Farinelli 's excellencies ... so far surpassed all other singers, and astonished

198-512: The public, as his messa di voce , or swell". Farinelli's messa di voce inspired disbelief and even suspicion that he was somehow assisted by a musical instrument . Thus music historian Bonnie Gordon argued that the technique was also associated with instruments, to which singers were compared in terms of vocal control. In singing the roles of castrati (most popularly in Baroque opera ), mezzo-sopranos and countertenors later adopted

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216-534: The school was conductor Bruce Carey . He received an honorary doctorate in music from the University of Dublin in 1900 and was made a gentleman of the Chapel Royal . In 1902, he published a book on the origins of " God Save the King ". Cummings' other appointments included: Cummings married Clara Anne Hobbs, a daughter of his teacher, the well-known singer John William Hobbs (1799–1877). He died in London and

234-481: The technique is not often explicitly indicated and is heard infrequently outside classical music . Currently the only known use case outside of classical music is in relation to trans voice work. In Western art music , the messa di voce was historically associated with castrati . In the seicento , they performed both sacred and secular music. The papal court employed them in dramatic religious music , sometimes to promote religious conversion , as opera became

252-399: The technique. It was popular in bel canto opera, often as the opening dramatic flourish of arias . "Casta diva" from Bellini's Norma is a famous example. Verdi's "Pace! Pace, mio Dio", from La Forza del destino , is a later example in the transition from bel canto singing. Messa di voce became less common in the less stylized, speech-like singing of Romantic music of

270-454: The tone pleasant. The words are delivered as well as possible, both in recitative and the airs. I doubt whether Mr. Cummings be a great singer, yet he is a better oratorio tenor than I have heard. He is entirely innocent of tremolo and absurd affectation. He is credited in 1855 with linking music adapted from Mendelssohn's Festgesang to Charles Wesley 's words " Hark! The Herald Angels Sing ", which are now universally inextricably linked. At

288-681: Was an English musician, tenor and organist at Waltham Abbey Church . Cummings was born in Sidbury (near Sidmouth ) in Devon . He was educated at St Paul's Cathedral Choir School and the City of London School , becoming a pupil of Dr E. J. Hopkins, J. W. Hobbs and Alberto Randegger , and was for many years a chorister in St Paul's Cathedral and the Temple Church . In 1847, as a teenager, he

306-428: Was likely first to mark it in a score . He applied it twice, using the symbol V , in the 1638 Lagrime amare: la Maddalena ricorre alle lagrime of his Dialoghi e sonetti . In its three-page "Avvertimento sopra il precedente sonetto" ("Note on the previous sonnet"), Mazzocchi asked for performance "scritto à rigore" ("strictly as written"). With V , Mazzocchi still permitted shifts in pitch , describing

324-707: Was one of the choristers when Felix Mendelssohn conducted the first London performance of his Elijah at Exeter Hall . Cummings also sang at numerous festivals and concerts throughout Great Britain and twice toured in the United States. His performance at the Triennial Festival of the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston was noticed as follows by the Chicago Tribune of 15 May 1871: The tenor

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