Messa di voce
Swelling and diminishing of a sustained note.
What it means
Messa di voce designates the even swelling and diminishing of a single, sustained note: the note begins very softly, grows to full strength, and diminishes again to nothing, without pitch or tone colour changing. The exercise comes from Italian vocal teaching and has counted since the seventeenth century as a core piece of training; it tests breath control, support, and register evenness at once. It differs from filar il suono, the evenly sustained note, through the deliberate dynamic movement.
In the notation
It is called for by two hairpins placed end to end over a long note — first opening, then closing — or by the marking itself. It often stands without special indication within the stylistic context, for instance in music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, where it belonged to the natural manner of execution.
Musical use
As a means of expression, the messa di voce gives a single note an inner development and thereby weight: a long opening note can thus come out of silence and return to it. In the bel canto tradition it stands in alternation with agile passages and marks points of repose. Instrumentalists, too, know the task — string and wind players practise the same thing, and in works of the period the effect is often expected from both sides. The organ, by contrast, cannot execute it without a swell box, which shapes its music differently.
Performance practice
Practise first in the middle register on a comfortable vowel and divide the note mentally into two equally long halves. Begin with little air but full support; the most common fault is a powerless beginning that must later be pushed. Take care that vowel colour and larynx position do not change, and check this with a recording. Keep the growing and diminishing even, without steps. Plan the breath so that reserve remains at the end.
Bear in mind that the exercise was often expected in music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries without standing in the notation: where a long note stands at the beginning of a phrase, such shaping is often meant. Check the stylistic context. Divide the note mentally into two equal halves and plan the peak point. Check with a recording whether pitch and tone colour really stay the same.