Pier Francesco Tosi
Pier Francesco Tosi (ca. 1653 – 1732) was a castrato singer, composer, and writer on music. Born in Cesena to Giuseppe Felice Tosi, a composer and organist, Tosi became one of the most famous castrati of his day.
Tosi began his career singing in church choirs as a boy and young man. He sang in a Rome church, 1676–7, belonged to Milan Cathedral choir from 1681 until his dismissal for misconduct in 1685, made his one recorded appearance in opera at Reggio nell’Emilia in 1687, in Giovanni Varischino’s Odoacre, and was based in Genoa before going in 1693 to London, where he gave weekly public concerts and taught. From 1701 to 1723 he travelled extensively as musical and diplomatic agent of Emperor Joseph I and the Elector Palatine. From 1724 he again taught in London for some years; sometime before 1681 he had become a priest. Although he composed a number of cantatas and arias, he is best known as the author of Opinioni de' cantori antichi e moderni (1723), a treatise on singing. This was translated into English as Observations on the Florid Song by Johann Ernst Galliard in 1742 and into German as Anleitung zur Singkunst by Johann Friedrich Agricola (who also provided an extensive commentary of his own) in 1757. Tosi also wrote some vocal works. He died in Faenza.
Literature
- Opinioni de’ cantori antichi, e moderni o sieno osservazioni sopra il canto figurato. (Bologna 1723).
- Observations on the Florid Song. English Translation by John Ernest Galliard, London: J. Wilcox, 1742 or 1743. Facsimile: London: William Reeves, 1967.
- Anleitung zur Gesangskunst. German Translation by Johann Friedrich Agricola. Berlin: George Ludewig Winter, 1757. Facsimile Edition with introduction and commentary by Kurt Wichmann. Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1966.
Opinioni de' cantori antichi, e moderni... [Observations on the Florid Song]
Opinioni is primarily directed to the singing teacher, laying out what and how they must teach their pupils. It also includes a chapter and several passages addressed to the future professional singer with advice on good taste, ornaments, performance skills and the life and business of singing professionally. Tosi stresses the need for a long period of student training in reading and composing music, singing and constructing ornamentation, as well as in grammar, diction, social decorum and acting. All the standard ornaments of the time are thoroughly presented: appoggiatura, messa di voce, eight kinds of trills, passaggi (divisions), and portamento. Tosi also dedicates a chapter each to recitative and aria singing, preaching throughout the necessity of improvising one’s own graces and divisions on the spot in performances.
There are a few teachings of Tosi’s in his Opinioni that have been particularly interesting to singers and scholars over the years. Tosi clearly advocates uniting and blending the chest and head registers, the first recorded vocal pedagogue to do so. While earlier writers such as Zacconi and Caccini stated that singers ought to only sing in their “natural voice,” Tosi went so far as to say “[I]f [the chest and head register] do not perfectly unite, the Voice will be of divers Registers, and must consequently lose its Beauty.”[1] Tosi’s is also the first recorded encouragement of the use of rubato as an embellishment. While he again and again rails on singers who accidentally sing out of tempo or self-aggrandizingly hold out notes as in the modern fermata, he encourages “[t]he stealing of Time […], provided he makes a Restitution with Ingenuity”; meaning, provided the singer catches back up the accompaniment, allowing them to keep tempo.[2]
Another interesting element of Opinioni is Tosi’s discussions on intonation and sol-fa-ing. During a period in which various methods of temperament were used by keyboards, strings and even singers, Tosi laments that “except in some few Professors, that modern Intonation is very bad.”[3] He speaks of a differing “Semitone Major and Minor” (or a larger and a smaller semitone) whose “[d]ifference cannot be known by an Organ or Harpsichord, if the Keys of the Instrument are not split.”[4] Consequentially, he warns that “if a Soprano was to sing D sharp, like E flat, a nice Ear will find he is out of Tune, because this last rises.”[5] Tosi’s remedy to poor intonation is to begin the singer young on solfege, using the traditional gamut created by Guido. While both the Guidonian hexachord system and meantone temperament were becoming antiquated at the time Tosi wrote his treatise, he nevertheless insisted on their use.
Opinioni was in fact a watershed for much more than just early Baroque music theory and tuning. Tosi spends a considerable amount of time in his treatise praising the “ancient” cantabile (or “Pathetick,” as the original translator put it) style of his generation, around the turn of the 18th century. He cannot seem to understand why “the Mode” has moved to the rapid, highly ornate “Allegro” style popular at the time of his writing, which he lumps with insufficient singer training, ignoring the traditional Church modes and “tasteless” virtuosic displays as the great sin of the “modern” music generation. Being a pragmaticist, however, he still encourages “it will be of Use to a prudent Scholar, who is desirous to be expert in both Manners.”[6]
References
Sources
- Malcolm Boyd/John Rosselli. The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie (1992). ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5
- Text for this article has been excerpted by permission of the author from the introduction to P.F. Tosi Observations on the Florid Song, Bel Canto Masters Study Series (Pitch Perfect Publishing, 2009). ISBN 978-0-557-12293-6.