BASSO-CANTANTE AS THE ORIGINAL QUALITY OF THE TIMBERS OF OPERA SINGING BASED ON ITS ECCLESIASTICAL GENESIS

Abstract

The purpose of the work is to reveal the specifics of the symbolism of timbre concepts in opera singing from its foundations in church practice to the theatrical artistic refraction in modern times. The methodological basis is the intonation approach of the school of B. Asaf’ev in the works of Ukrainian musicologists, including T. Verkina, I. Lyashenko, O. Markova, O. Muravska, O. Roschenko, etc., with the use of research methods of comparative stylistic, hermeneutic, biographical-descriptive, analytical-typological, etc. Scientific novelty – for the first time in Ukrainian musicology, the concept of first timbres of church and first operatic male singing as tenors and basso cantante was formulated for their correspondence to the vocal-singing mood in order to eliminate the prosaism of physical and speech expression. Conclusions. Bass singing, which concentrates the specific expressiveness of male voices, despite the fact that the male voice has the ability to sound falsetto, which is combined in timbre-register with the possibilities of children’s and female voices, showing itself as the bearer of the universal specificity of the male beginning, perceived as culture-creating in the cosmogonic concepts of various religious mythological systems. Basso cantante is an echo of church singing universalism in the voice, which includes the possibility of tenor falsetto and therefore the ability to sing “egently” in all three main registers – “track-tenor” middle, falsetto “upper” and bass “lower”. The modern practice of opera singing involves these different register singing skills, vividly declared in the baritone-tenor and soprano parts of B. Britten for P. Peirce.