We do not know if the same principles as described in Stieler’s manual,
Lärobok i de första grunderna för Musik och Sång vid ungdomens undervisn- ing i Skolor och Gymnasier (Stockholm 1820), were applied at the opera
school, but it seems likely, although the students of the opera school were probably supposed to have advanced in their studies farther than the or- dinary student in grammar school.22 The manual was commissioned from
Stieler by the Royal Educational Committee. The idea of creating a manual of singing for secondary and grammar schools rested on the assumption that song and singing were the foundation of music.
In his manual Stieler tried to combine the older teaching method, using the chorale as the sole didactic vehicle for oral imitation, with a new didactic
21 Marco Bordogni was a singer and teacher who sung in Milan and Paris and was later appointed singing master at the Paris Conservatory. He was the teacher of Panofka and published several collections of solfeggi. (Forbes 2012)
22 Franz Hedberg says that Stieler was the best teacher at the opera, surpassing Craelius by far. (Hedberg 1885, p. 36)
approach using notated music, adapted to the ability of the student, in order to teach students to read music. The first section of his manual is therefore devoted to teaching the musical system, such as signs, scales, intervals, and terms. In the second section, and the chapters that will play a major part here, he discusses the formation of the voice, intonation and breathing, as well as the vocal attack, keeping time, pronunciation, the use of chorales and the further education of the voice. The third section of the manual, di- vided into five chapters, consists of vocal exercises. The first is to exercise without a fixed tempo, then comes interval practice, followed by mixed ex- ercises in major and minor and exercises containing several parts.
Stieler used the Italian “mastricelli” system in teaching, that is, older students instructed the younger. He saw several positive effects in this; first, the teacher saved time, and secondly, it was easier to determine whether the students had understood the principles if they had to explain it to their younger colleagues. It was also, as in Italian conservatories, a good school for those who went on to become teachers themselves (Stieler 1820, pp. 32–33). Let us now take a look at our four areas of attention.
Registers and registration
In the first chapter Stieler reminds his readers of how different voices are. He discusses different voice types and explains that every voice has two registers, the chest voice and the falsetto. In a soprano the chest voice reaches g1 or a1; in an alto, e1 or f1. Stieler believed one could achieve an imperceptible passage from one register to the other by singing the higher notes of the chest register in falsetto. The chest register was considered stronger than the falsetto, and one of the aims of his teaching was to make them more equal in strength, that is, soften the chest voice and strengthen the falsetto. High notes should be moderated since they were more promi- nent than lower ones (Stieler 1820, pp. 36–37).
In this text we have traits of the eighteenth century as well as the nine- teenth. The division into two registers is a concept of the eighteenth cen- tury, but striving for a more even voice is clearly a vocal aesthetic of the nineteenth. Training this by suppressing and softening the chest voice, while strengthening the falsetto was a method used during the nineteenth century, while the soft top voice is a remnant of the eighteenth century, when a strong chest voice and a soft falsetto were preferred. It would there- fore seem as though Stieler was at the breaking point of vocal change in his concept of registers.
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Formed to Perform
Breathing technique
Stieler recognised the importance of correct breathing technique. He point- ed out that the beginner usually exhales more than he needs to. The right way of taking a breath was to “raise the chest and pull in the lower abdo- men”, 23 something that could indicate more clavicular, or costal breathing
than intercostal breathing. In the beginning this can be done slowly, but in time the student should accustom himself to filling his abdomen rapidly and then let the air slowly escape until the body regained the position before the breath. With practice the breath should be prolonged. The student should guard against letting the chest become too empty, since this weakened the chest. To strengthen the chest, continual moderate exercise was needed (Stieler 1820, pp. 37–38).
It is not clear whether or not Stieler practised breathing without pitch, and therefore it is hard to determine the exact method of his practice. The high placement of the breathing indicates an older technique, but possibly this is a result of the wording. Stieler clearly understood the concept of sub- glottic pressure and reflexive breathing. Breathing does not occupy many lines in Stieler’s manual, a matter in which he follows older manuals. The messa di voce
In the fifth section of his manual Stieler introduced the messa di voce. To sing with expression, the singer should to master the different dynamic shadings of a pitch. To train this Stieler proposed using the first exercises on long notes as follows: The student attacks the tone piano and then lets it swell to forte and then again diminish to piano, thereby making a gradual
crescendo and decrescendo. The tone should be steady without wavering or going higher or lower. The exercise was to be performed in a comfort- able range, never too high, at least not in the beginning. It could also be practised over several tones and then combined with legato. Stieler points out that this exercise should not be performed by beginners since the voice needs good intonation and firmness.
This is a teaching method of the nineteenth century. Stieler used the ex- ercise of messa di voce to train dynamics and does not mention it as a means of training register.
23 In a footnote Stieler describes the wrong way of taking a breath, that is, no movement should be detected in the chest, and the lower abdomen should bellow out. (Stieler, 1820, p. 37)
Solfeggi
Stieler did not use the solfeggio syllables; it was the Italian system of vowel exercises that was most prominent in his manual. His programme of study started with single long notes in a comfortable register sung on the vowel
a. The vowel a, open as in “ack”, was the most important tool for the singer
and helped build the voice. The vowels should be given their right colour and be pure and clear. In this Stieler adhered to eighteenth-century manu- als in which each vowel was to retain its sound. This also indicates that he used a technique with a slightly higher larynx than was used in the late nineteenth century (Stieler 1820, pp. 45–46). Stieler did not use the aria- like exercises, but seems to have concentrated his efforts on teaching boys to sight-read and form the voice in a pleasing manner for congregational singing. In this sense he had no use for the ornamental niceties of a Porpora or Mancini.
To summarise, in Stieler’s manual we can trace the aesthetics of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The concept of registers is clearly based on eighteenth-century ideas. The interest in breathing points to the future, but the description of inhalation indicates an older technique. Stieler removed the messa di voce from its central position as a learning tool, some- thing that places his teaching closer to the nineteenth century, and the focus on single vowels instead of the solmisation syllables positions his methods in the Italian realm more than the German. Stieler’s manual contains both past and future; above all, he seemed to look at teaching as a concept of individual understanding, not mere collective reproduction, something that would be exceedingly important to later schools.