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Full-Text Articles in Music Practice
The Vibrato Controversy, Frederick Neumann
The Vibrato Controversy, Frederick Neumann
Performance Practice Review
Today's early music specialists either ban the use of vibrato or restrict it drastically. This position suffers from three principal weaknesses: the failure to understand the nature of a well-produced vibrato in which the so-called impurities of pitch become inaudible above a certain threshold of speed, through a mysterious brain function (comparable to that involved in stereophonic sound or stereoscopic vision); a misinterpretation of sources; and an unawareness of extensive historical evidence for vibrato use through four centuries, culminating in Mozart's eulogy of a fine vibrato for voice and instruments.
Vibrato In Eighteenth Century Orchestras, Neal Zaslaw
Vibrato In Eighteenth Century Orchestras, Neal Zaslaw
Performance Practice Review
A rebuttal of Neumann, The vibrato controversy (see RILM 8965). The published writings of Galeazzi (1791-96), Geminiani (1751), Robert Bremner (1777), Carl Friedrich Cramer (1783), L. Mozart (1756), and the correspondence of W.A. Mozart (1778) maintain that vibrato was usually not employed by ripienists in 18th-c. orchestras, but only by soloists, and then used sparingly compared to modern practice.