The Second Symposium on Early Vocal Practices Case Western Reserve University 29-31 October, 1982

n 29-31 October, 1982, Case Western Reserve University hosted its second Symposium on Early Vocal Practices. After a modest offering in October 1981, this year's meeting offered three concerts and two days of lectures by artists and scholars of international stature to about sixty registrants-twice the number who had attended the first symposium. The growing interest in this field is indicated not only by the increased number of participants this year, but also by the organization at this meeting of the International Society of Early Music Singers, which, quoting its by-laws, has as its purpose "the promotion of public interest and education in vocal music written before 1800; to improve and maintain performance standards in the field of early vocal music; and to provide an organization for the benefit and edification of singers and others in the field of early vocal music." The symposium was organized by Ross W. Duffin, and Quentin W. Quereau was program chairman. Both are on the Music Department faculty of Case Western Reserve University. All symposium events except one took place in the wood-vaulted intimacy of Harkness Chapel on the CWRU campus, a 1902 reinterpretation of English gothic architecture, with its chancel facade of gilded organ pipes, oak trim and Tiffany windows, whose acoustical warmth has shown it to be an ideal setting for performances of early music. The three superb concerts, under the separate title of "A Festival of Early Song," supported in part by the Ohio Arts Council and open to the public, were by Nigel Rogers, tenor, and Paul O'Dette, lute, in virtuoso music from the early seventeenth century; Paul Hillier, voice and medieval harp, assisted by Wendy Gillespie, vielle, in a program entitled "Minstrels and Minnesingers"; and the Cleveland Baroque Soloists, featuring Julianne Baird, soprano, in French and Italian cantatas, as well as Ms. Gillespie in solo viol works. Besides singing, Mr. Rogers, Mr. Hillier and Ms. Baird also presented papers at the symposium. The fourth presenter was James A. Stark (Mount Allison University, New Brunswick), who opened the symposium with a paper entitled "The Emergence of the Bel Canto Idiom." The paper, controversial though it may have been among the many singers in the audience, provided a framework and vocabulary for much of the discussion of the other papers in the ensuing two days. Dr. Stark began his paper with a working definition of the bel canto idiom: "those devices and qualities of the finely stressed idiomatic singing voice first appearing about 1600 and associated primarily with Italian opera, which differentiate it from the conversational or rhetorical voice, from 'vernacular' singing techniques, and from other musical instruments." Dr. Stark developed this definition with a detailed analysis in modern anatomical terminology of the component parts of the vocal apparatus: the respiratory system, the larynx, and the vocal tract (the complex tube between the glottis and the lips). According to Dr. Stark the bel canto idiom is dependent upon the concept of vocal efficiency, certain sophisticated vocal maneuvers which allow the greatest intensity of tone of optimum artistic quality from the least flow of breath. Basic to this vocal efficiency are "anterior phonation," in which the arytenoid cartilages of the larynx are clamped together and only the front 3/5 of the glottis vibrates (as opposed to "full glottal phonation," in which the entire length of S posium on Early Vocal Practices eserve University er, 1982 son