The Short

Ex. 14.8.Baillot et al., Méthode, 137
VIBRATO 539
was intended. In the case of the above passage from the Conservatoire's Méthode de violon, the wavy line was given as
dots in Boosey's English translation and as a wavy line in J. A Hamilton's translation. 1026 In Bailleux's Méthode raisonné of
1779 the description of what he calls balancement, equating it with the Italian tremolo 1027 and marking it with dots under a
slur, as imitating the ‘tremulous effect of the organ’, 1028 certainly suggests that it is less detached than what might
conventionally be understood by portato. There seems likely to have been no sharp distinction between Bailleux's
balancement and the effect that Joseph Riepel, in 1757, indicated by a wavy line under a slur. 1029 In this context it must
always be borne in mind that not only was the Bebung on the clavichord normally marked by dots under a slur, but that
left-hand vibrato was frequently indicated in the same manner. 1030 Nevertheless, in all these cases there is often an
implication of a regular, perceptible pulsation in the sound.
In singing, this type of pulsation was undoubtedly cultivated in some quarters. Certainly, what W. A. Mozart described
and objected to in Meissner's singing in Munich in 1778 (‘turning a note that should be sustained into distinct
crotchets, or even quavers’, 1031 which he contrasted with the natural quivering of the voice at moments of emotion)
seems likely to have been a stylized embellishment of this type. Mozart's account seems to tally closely with the
description of the Bebung in a treatise published twenty years later in Munich, Lasser's VollstÄndige Anleitung zur
Singkunst. Lasser considered a Bebung to be produced ‘if, on a semibreve, during the sustaining of the same, one allows
four crotchets or eight quavers to be clearly heard by means of a slight pressure’ (Ex. 14.9.) 1032
Whether such effects in singing were produced by the chest, as suggested by Agricola in 1757, 1033 or by the throat, as
instructed by others, is unclear; a number of different means of producing these types of effect were probably
employed. Johann Adam Hiller observed in 1780 that the Bebung
consists in not holding a long tone steadily, but allowing it to weaken and strengthen some- what, without its
thereby becoming higher or lower. On string instruments it is most easily
1026
Rode, Baillot, & Kreutzer's Method of Instruction for the Violin, edited by Baillot… (London, Boosey, [c. 1880]), 15; R. Cocks and Co's improved and enlarged Edition, 17.
1027
For the I7th-c. antecedents of this practice see Stewart Carter, ‘The String Tremolo in the 17th Century’, Early Music, 19 (1991), 43–58.
1028
Méthode raisonné à apprendre le violon (Paris, 1779), 11.
1029
Gründliche ErklÄrung,
1030
See e.g. Ex. 14.13.
16.
1031
See Anderson, The Letters of Mozart, 552.
1032
p. 158 .
1033
Anleitung zur Singkunst, 135.