Vibrato in baroque music?

[Savio]

Im going to play some Marcello and Galliard sonatas in a church soon. I have listen a lot of both trombone, sackbuts, singers and the old baroque cello performing baroque music. Mostly there is not much vibrato, even some few singers do it without. The cello and sackbuts mostly dont use it. Some trombonists and singers use it of course.

What did they do in the real baroque time? Probably nobody knows exactly. I would like to do a little bit but not everywhere. Im not sure. How do you perform this music?

Leif

[harrisonreed]

One town over they use vibrato, and play in A430 because the local organ finally got cut down due to lousy tuning practices.

But here in this town we have never used vibrato and never will. And we play in A415, because our organist doesn't overtune his organ.

But in Vienna. .... well wait, I've never been there and probably never will go there. So they are probably wrong, whatever they do.

My favorite baroque music group is caecilia-concert. They use a bit of vibrato, especially Wolfe the sackbuttist, when they have the leading melodic line.

[LeTromboniste]

Very little documented evidence either way, but the general assumption is that they generally sang and played fairly straight, and maybe used vibrato as an ornament, that is, locally, for instance on particularly expressive notes or where it helps bring out the affect of the text. What we do know very well about how they sang and play is that they favoured flexibility and variety and unevenness in pretty much every aspect they describe (that doesnt mean everything is permitted all the times, there are conventions and notions of good taste, which we also know lots about). So both extremes of totally flat tone on one side and constant operatic or string section vibrato on the other are probably fairly recent concepts.

For what it's worth I do use some vibrato, at times too much in fact, and most of my colleagues do too, but we do (or try to do) it sparingly. It most probably shouldn't be automatic and should be a conscious choice when it is added. It's not a bad idea to conceice it in terms of changing the colour of the sound. Vibrato can be seen as just a warming up of the sound.

[timothy42b]

This is my private theory. Oops. Oh well.

Period instruments sometimes have intonation quirks, at least today, and I would assume they always did.

So you could play with a straight tone but hear beats. Some HIP performances have rather strong beats to my ears.

Some modern instruments like saxophones use vibrato to cover poor intonation, but that would only apply to unskilled performers, and that's not the category I'm thinking of.

[LeTromboniste]

Mmh. I wouldn't say the instruments have inherently wrong intonation, but we usually play in tuning systems that the modern ear is not used to. Equal temperament favours nearly perfect fifths at the detriment of thirds (which are way out of tune, hence the need to correct them when we play chords as a trombone section), and is melodically perfectly equal. Tuning systems of the late baroque vary quite a lot and are melodically uneven and harmonically favour a mix of pure fifths and ok to good thirds on the most chords at the detriment of more foreign chords. The most common earlier tuning (in the 16th and 17th century, so the most common tuning sackbuts play in) has systematically pure thirds with the compromise that fifths are not as great (although theyre all equally so) and you might notice some beats. The compromise to allow for pure thirds also involves that enharmonics are never equivalent (and are in fact almost a quartertone apart) and there are two sizes of semitones (which is actually quite expressive melodically).

But a sackbut is not any less in tune than a modern trombone.

[LeTromboniste]

Leif, do keep in mind that Marcello and Galliard both worked in a time and places where trombones saw little to no use, so the performance practice of sackbut playing is not necessarily relevant to these works. I would suggest looking at flute, recorder and/or oboe treatises / methods of the 18th century to see if they talk about vibrato. Quantz would probably be a good one to start with.

[timothy42b]

Some vibrato here.

And here.

[Savio]

Leif, do keep in mind that Marcello and Galliard both worked in a time and places where trombones saw little to no use, so the performance practice of sackbut playing is not necessarily relevant to these works. I would suggest looking at flute, recorder and/or oboe treatises / methods of the 18th century to see if they talk about vibrato. Quantz would probably be a good one to start with.

I will do that. I will also try to get some information about at the 12 flute fantasies composed by Telemann. Today the flute use vibrato in nearly everything they do. Even in orchestra. Wonder if they did that originally in the baroque time. The recorder is not an easy instrument to make any vibrato I think?

I wonder how the string instruments did it back in that time? They certainly had the opportunity, did they do it?

Leif

[BeardedPicc]

Regarding Quantz and flute and recorder methods of the time, vibrato was used very sparingly. It was used, as stated earlier, to enhance certain melodic notes, and also to sometimes add a feeling of the musical line moving forward in a more exciting fashion. Something modern flautist struggle with in the Telemann Fantasies, myself included when I was in school, was resorting to using to much vibrato, which is the current playing style. But matching the same type of vibrato used then is going to tricky for the trombone. Flutes and recorders of the time used a couple of different types of vibrato, the most common one for flute is what is usually referred to as air vibrato. This involves the use of small muscles in the throat to rapidly compress the air stream, but never stoping it, to creat a vibrating sensation, and will usually bring the pitch up, and then back down. This was really only used on the transverse flute, and very rarely on recorders. This can only be reproduced in sound by doing it the same way, lip and jaw vibrato on the trombone don't quite sound the same. The next style of vibrato used was very common to both the flute and recorder, and that is finger vibrato. This involved wiggling the fingers that are not covering a tone hole, over open tone holes, to cause an almost oscillating sound. This allowed the airstream to stay constant, resulting in a fuller sound, and also altered the pitch less, meaning it was a more true vibration on the pitch and not as much a bending of pitch. While this was the most common it is never heard in modern wind playing, because with the advent of keys it cannot really be reproduced, even with open keyed instruments. This type of vibrato as far as I know cannot really be reproduced on the trombone, though I could be wrong. The third type was used mostly on the flute again, but very rarely on recorder, and that was what sounds most like our modern vibrato. This is caused by a combination of flexing of the air stream as well as small musculature changes. It can be reproduced in sound well on the trombone by using either lip vibrato, or slide vibrato, although slide vibrato will keep a more consistent air strem and can move the pitch more in both directions. Lastly was a very popular "vibrato" in the late renaissance and early baroque that held over in some places until later on. I cannot remember the name of it, but one of my musicology professors referred to it as a billy-goat vibrato. Essentially the pitch would be disrupted, almost stopped, and then brought back, very slow at first, nut then done so more rapidly at a dramatic pace, almost imitating the dah of a billy-goat. This can be reproduced on almost any wind instrument, but is very, very strange to get used to.