What does this mean?
Well, it just means that musicians kept creating new music, and kept discovering the new things we could do, and not really stopping to look back at what we had previously created. It had it's ups and downs.
A group of people decided in the 19th century decided to look back on the music of the Renaissance, Medieval and Baroque periods.
So began the Early music revival.
No, not yay. Bad. BAD BAD BAD.
The study of historical performance practice is unbelievably misguided, not only because before the invention of recording technology we can never know the sound of a medieval Cistercian monk, but also because it is a modern invention.
Early music revival enthusiasts insist upon certain things- the biggest, most pervasive and yes, harmful thing is the idea of no vibrato in singing- that for some reason, singers before the invention of Romantic opera did not do this.
First of all- vibrato is not a thing that you 'use'. Proper use of the voice will result in it. These academics who ARE NOT SINGERS, think that you 'use' it and you 'don't use' it. It's there when things go right.
Second- there is no actual evidence that the singers of this time employed a dangerous, vocally damaging technique to sing. Singing church services then was a far harder job, since they were longer, contained more singing, and were conducted in bigger buildings. So, to do something that is vocally tiring for that amount of time does not make sense.
At the invention of recording equipment, the Vatican choir was recorded. Now, let's get something straight- Palestrina, de Victoria, des Prez, and the greatest composers of that time wrote that music for these choirs. For that particular sound.
When the first ever recording of the choir that Palestrina wrote for sounds loud, strong, and full- with voices from the Rome opera house- who is are the Early music academics to say that that is wrong?
And yet, they do.
