(It.: ‘placing of the voice’).
The singing or playing of a long note so that it begins quietly, swells to full volume, and then diminishes to the original quiet tone. The messa di voce is one of the most important techniques of 17th- and 18th-century Italian singing style, first as an ornament and then as a pedagogic tool.
Descriptions of the practice are far more prevalent than the term itself. Caccini (Le nuove musiche, 1601/2/R) considered the swelling and abating of the voice ‘the foundation of Passion’, but does not use the term. Christoph Bernhard (Von der Singe-Kunst, oder Maniera, c1649) also described the effect without assigning it a name: ‘On whole and half notes it is customary to employ a piano at the beginning, a forte in the middle, and a piano once more at the end’. It is only in the 18th century that messa di voce is consistently used as a term to describe this practice. Tosi (1723) advised that the ornament be used sparingly. Mancini (1774) devoted a short chapter to the subject and suggested that ‘a truly accomplished singer will use it on every long note that occurs in a cantilena’. Farinelli was particularly known for his exquisite messa di voce. Burney (BurneyFI) wrote that in ‘the famous air Son qual Nave [1734], which was composed by his [Farinelli’s] brother [Riccardo Broschi], the first note he sung was taken with such delicacy, swelled by minute degrees to such an amazing volume, and afterwards diminished in the same manner, that it was applauded for full five minutes’. By 1810, Domenico Corri described the messa di voce as the ‘soul of music’ and offered it as a pedagogic exercise to be performed on all chromatic notes of the scale. García (1840–47) listed messa di voce as one of four methods of sustaining a tone (see Son filé) and advises the singer to practise it throughout the range in order to unite the registers. The term is also found in 19th-century scores, for example, in Act 1 scene vi of Bellini’s Norma (1831), where the first note of Adalgisa’s phrase, ‘Lo, l’obbliai’, is to be sung ‘con messa di voce assai lunga’.
With its establishment in vocal music, the messa di voce was taken over into instrumental music. The effect is described as early as 1638 in Fantini’s trumpet method, though without using the term itself. In 1658, Christopher Simpson did the same for the viola da gamba. Roger North associated the effect specifically with Italian violinists and called it the ‘arcata or long bow’. As with vocal tutors, the term messa di voce appears regularly only in the 18th century, for example, in treatises by Geminiani for the violin (1751) and Quantz for the flute (1752). Although the messa di voce is obviously appropriate only for instruments capable of dynamic change on a single note, C.P.E. Bach (Versuch, 1762) also advised keyboard players that ‘when the solo part has a long sustained note which by the conventions of good performance should begin pianissimo, increase by degrees to a fortissimo, and return in the same way to a pianissimo, the accompanist must follow with the greatest exactitude. Every means available to him must be employed to attain a forte and piano. His increase and decrease must coincide with that of the principal part: nothing more, nothing less’. It seems likely that Mozart had such an effect in mind in, for example, the sustained piano trills at the soloist’s entry (bars 80–83) in the first movement of his Piano Concerto in C k467, which is analogous to the implied messa di voce at the soloist’s entry (bars 72–3) in the Sinfonia Concertante k364 for violin and viola as well as to many passages within the violin and wind concertos (for example, the Violin Concerto k218, Andante, bars 15–16).
ELLEN T. HARRIS