(Fr.: ‘stroke of the glottis’; Ger. harter Einsatz; It. colpo della glottide).
A term used by Manuel García, the inventor of the laryngoscope, to describe physically how the sung sound should be initiated. García writes that ‘the object of this [technique] is that at the start sounds should be free from the defect of slurring up to a note or the noise of breathing’ (Hints on Singing, 1894). That is, of the three ways of starting a vocalization that he enumerates, García rejects two. One, involving the aspiration of air (as if beginning with an ‘h’ sound) had always been criticized. Quantz (1752), for example, complains about ‘disagreeable, forced and exceedingly noisy chest attacks, in which vigorous use is made of the faculty of the Germans for pronouncing the h, singing ha-ha-ha-ha for each note’. The other, however, a ‘slurring up to a note’, was a technique that had been described enthusiastically by singers and tutors from at least the end of the 16th century (see Cercar della nota), but García described this practice as the result of ‘negligence or a lack of taste’.
The coup de glotte is difficult to describe but, as García writes, it is a ‘delicate action’. Later writers who misunderstood or exaggerated the technique equated the technique with ‘glottal attack’, which is an explosive action and damages the voice if used habitually. Franklyn Kelsey (The Foundations of Singing, 1950) argued that the stroke of the glottis, if used as García intended, was ‘essentially a gentle and skilful gesture into a light pressure’ rather than an ‘explosive release from heavy pressure’. C.L. Reid (A Dictionary of Vocal Terminology, 1983) helpfully suggests approaching the coup de glotte by [softly] singing a staccato, which provides the experience of a clear, initial attack without breathiness or slurring.
ELLEN T. HARRIS