Artistic Principles

Singing and Voice

Often, the word "voice" is used interchangeably with "singing". Voice is not the same thing as singing, just as the sound of the violin is not the same as the act of playing the violin.

Voice, like all sound, is vibrating air. It is air set in motion through the vibration of the vocal cords as we breathe out while singing. "Singing" is an action. "Voice" is the audible outcome of that action. If we are preoccupied with the sound itself, it is like being distracted by a symptom from the underlying cause.

Singing can be described in terms of nervous and muscular processes in the body, but fundamentally it is a dynamic, expressive, aesthetic human act. Singing is music making. This is the essential thing, more important than the sound of the voice. If we are listening to our own voice, concerned about whether it is beautiful or not, we are inhibited from genuine musical expression.

Breathing, Singing, and Life

Singing, as an aesthetic, emotional, communicative human act, fulfills its potential only when it is a true expression. As such, it cannot be forced or directly controlled.

Through allowing the free play of musical, physical, and expressive impulses, we can attain a quality of music making which reveals the genuine life within the music and the singer.
No matter how refined or virtuosic the art of singing may become, it is never very far from the most basic human expressions. Singing is laughing and crying. Singing realizes its full potential when we are able to give voice without distortion or affectation to the entire spectrum of human emotion, within the dynamic form of music.

Pier. Francesco Tosi

Oh! how great a Master is the Heart!

Confess it, my beloved Singers, and gratefully own,
that you would not have arrived at the highest
Rank of the Profession if you had not been its
Scholars; own, that in a few Lessons from it, you
learned the most beautiful Expressions, the most refin'd
Taste, the most noble Action, and the most exquisite
Graces: Own, (though it be hardly credible) that the
Heart corrects the Defects of Nature, since it softens a
Voice that's harsh, betters an indifferent one, and perfects
a good one: Own, when the Heart sings, you cannot dissemble,
nor has Truth a greater Power of persuading:
And, lastly, do you convince the World,…that from
the Heart alone you have learned that Je ne sçai quoy,
that pleasing Charm, that so subtily passes from
Vein to Vein, and makes its way to the very Soul.

Pier. Francesco Tosi
Observations on the Florid Song, 1723

La Compagnia Amarilli

The Path to Free Singing

Artistic Principles

Methodological Principles

Practices

Artistic Principles

Singing and Voice

Breathing, Singing, and Life

Pier. Francesco Tosi