I love a strong vibrant classically-trained voice on a solo part. There’s nothing like a firmly supported long phrase with lots of expressive volume control and phrasing, you know?
But I’ve long realized I have a point of departure from conventional western wisdom of this era: I’m not in love with excess vibrato.
Our choir is at that stage in rehearsing for concert where we bring in the orchestra and professional soloists and work on integrating all the musicians and focusing on expression and timing and anticipating what the conductor is going to do in concert. I like two of the soloists’ sounds quite a bit, but there’s a third whose voice I don’t care for much.
The range of pitches he oscillates around for any given “note”, combined with the bouncy fast pace of the melody line, makes it impossible to get any sense of a tune. If I didn’t already know how the line went from hearing it on the rehearsal practice tapes, I’d have no idea what notes he was considering himself to be singing.
This isn’t the first time by any means. Haydn in particular — to me — is no place for excessive vibrato. This season it’s “The Creation” but we did the “Lord Nelson Mass” a few years back and a different soloist murdered the second movement, the “Agnus Dei”, which should be floating crystal clear and not wobbling all over the staff like that.
I’m not opposed to any and all vibrato, but it has become overrated and overinflated. People should reacquaint themselves with how good a voice can sound with almost none. Go cue up some Roches tracks, folks. Those gals were classically trained but they don’t seem to have felt it necessary to quaver their way through every song.
Vibrato sounds best on a slow-moving line with a lot of swelling into a crescendo. Worst on a fast-zipping line that’s harmonizing with other vocalists or instruments to create chords on every note.
There’s a similar debate in the bowed instruments community. I think there are different sides to the question of vibrato.
Music Era
Some of the most hardcore HIPsters used to refuse any form of vibrato in Baroque works. Mischa Maisky has received a lot of criticism for his intense vibrato, which some view as an out-of-place, Romantic innovation, in Bach’s Cello Suites.
Variety
There are different types of vibrato, ranging from fast and “narrow” to slow and “wide” with every shade in between. Applying the same type of vibrato all the time gets old fast. Good musicians alternate between several types. Great musicians carefully select the type of vibrato that best serves each phrase.
Intelligibility
Vibrato is a wonderfully efficient way to add colour and expression to one’s playing but, as you point out, too much of it, in the wrong places, can make complex musical lines blurry.
I would suggest that bel canto style music always has some vibrato, but it can definitely vary in speed and pitch. (Some try to sing senza vibrato when singing old boy soprano parts, but real boy sopranos do have some vibrato.) And learning how to vary your vibrato is a skill that the best vocal musicians learn.
I don’t think the OP actually departs that much from the conventional wisdom. I’ve definitely read even fairly old critiques that were about the quality of the vibrato, and there is the old choir adage about the singer who uses a large vibrato to cover up for a lack of pitch accuracy.
No pony in this race, but I will note that there was a man who sang in the church choir back when I was a kitten [call it about 1967-70] who had an extreme vibrato - so noticeable that a 6 year old heard it and pointed it out [and was shushed about it since we were actually still in church] I was told that was the way they sang ‘back then’ I would guess implying he learned to sing somewhere around WW1 or so given he was a wrinkly little old man at the time. I admit that I am not fond of a lot of vibrato in singing.
I don’t like vibrato much. My mother abominates it. That said, I was on my high school’s academic competition team, and I earned some vital points once, by knowing the answer was “vibrato” when I heard the definition.
They might be right. Listen to Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald trill their way through Victor Herbert – or rather you could watch if YouTube would let me post a link.
I do find some vibrato can be too wide, making some sopranos too shrill for my taste, and some basses more buzzy than the note they’re supposed to be singing.
As for violinists, well fashions do change (portamento, anyone?). A few years ago, I was very taken by Pekka Kuusisto’s performance of the Tchaikovsky concerto at a BBC Proms concert, with little or no vibrato - it made much of it sound more like folk music than grand romanticism : here’s the full performance (worth waiting for the encore as well - he got the audience of several thousand to join in a Finnish folk song):
My problem is more shallow and rapid vibratos. There was this one singer at church who ended each phrase with a vibrato that I could only describe as the bleating of a goat. “Meh-eh-eh-eh-eh-eh.” Good lord did it drive me – and apparently no one else – batty. A gentle vibrato I like and I think is an important bit of musical coloration that “thickens” the note pleasantly, and I like variance of vibrato speed through the phrase when appropriate.
