A agilidade vocal das coloraturas: uma abordagem histórico-estilística, fisiológica e didático-pedagógica

Abstract

By qualifying the vocal coloraturas as a type of agile singing in the classical music tradition, this research sought to address its various facets, within its historical-stylistic, physiological, and didactic-pedagogical perspectives. To present the development of the coloratura, over time, in repertoires of European and Brazilian composers – establishing the melismatic style of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance flowery style as their points of origin – we consider it to be an important technical-vocal and stylistic trait of the so-called Italian school of singing (or bel canto). Thus, we analyzed the coloratura in early treatises of singing, whose publications cover the second half of the 16th century until the end of the 19th century. Also, in dialogue with more recent authors, we were able to investigate the different nomenclatures and typologies of vocal agility employed from the Renaissance to the present days, in addition to listing important guidelines and prescriptions aimed at their training and improvement. Moreover, we seek to bring up a discussion about the presumed innate ability to perform coloraturas, assumed by ancient writers, being contrasted by issues related to neuromuscular control and versatility in the practice of singing, in light of modern knowledge on physiology and neurophysiology human vocal production, as well as the training and improvement of the sung voice. By highlighting the coloraturas as rhetorical-musical figures in different repertoires, we were able to recognize not only their required technical-vocal refinement but also their dramatic and eloquent content, which leads us to believe that such ability demands other interpretive tools inherent to the performance of singing, such as the corporal expressiveness of gestures and features. This study also aimed to offer pedagogical aids that can optimize the didactics, regarding the practice of vocal coloraturas in modern teaching of singing.