Glossary

Short definitions of the technical terms used by Manuel García the son in the Traité complet de l'art du chant (1840–1847) and Hints on Singing (1894). They describe García's own usage, not later interpretations.

Coup de la glotte

García's term for the precise closing of the glottis at the moment the tone begins, so that the note starts cleanly, without a preliminary escape of breath. The term became the subject of a long controversy in the late nineteenth century; García himself warned that it must not be confused with a forcing of the throat.

Registers

García defined a register as a series of consecutive, homogeneous sounds produced by the same mechanism. He described three: chest, falsetto (or middle) and head, and set out how they are joined.

Timbre clair and timbre sombre

The bright (clair) and dark (sombre) timbres, which García related to the position of the larynx and the shape of the vocal tract. The singer chooses between them for expression.

Messa di voce

The swelling and diminishing of a single sustained note, from soft to loud and back to soft. García, like the older Italian masters, treated it as a fundamental study.

Portamento

The carrying of the voice smoothly from one note to another through the intermediate pitches.

Agility

García's general term for vocal flexibility in all its forms: scales, arpeggios, turns, trills and the various kinds of passage, legato, marcato and staccato.

Trill

The rapid, even alternation of two adjacent notes, which García treated in detail as one of the essential ornaments of the Italian style.

Laryngoscope

The instrument of mirrors with which García first observed the living larynx in 1854. See The Laryngoscope.