(Fr.: ‘spun-out sound’).
(1) In vocal music, a term that has come to be the French equivalent of Messa di voce: a long note that is sung quietly at first, swells to full volume, and then diminishes. It is defined this way, for example, in Bérard, L’art du chant (1755) and J.F. Agricola, Anleitung zur Singekunst (1757). The earliest definition of son filé in Montéclair’s Principes de musique (1736, p.88) defines it as a sustained tone sung with no change of volume, but that meaning is more generally attached to the term Filar il suono (or fil di voce). In the 19th century, García (1847) describes four kinds of sustained tones (sons soutenus): those having (1) no change of volume (‘d’une force égale’), (2) messa di voce (or son filé), (3) a series of messa di voce (‘sons filés avec inflexions’), and (4) repeated tones (‘martellement ou répétition du même son’).
(2) In instrumental playing, the term was also first used to describe a long sustained tone with no dynamic change. Boyden (The History of Violin Playing, 1965/R) traces the change in meaning to ‘no later than’ 1803 when Baillot, Rode and Kreutzer in their Méthode de Violon, define son filé as a messa di voce. Although mutually exclusive, both meanings are still found in contemporary writings on the violin.
OWEN JANDER/ELLEN T. HARRIS