Custom-made Music: The Influence of the Dynamics Between Composers and Singers on Musical Creation in the 18th Century

Abstract

The current operatic canonical repertoire generally presents itself as a cultural heritage from the past cultivated in the present, to which today's singers need to adapt themselves in order to sing it. At the beginning of the 18th century, however, when the genre was in full creative fervor in Italy (and was beginning to assert itself as an export product) the music was, as we know, composed especially for the singers. Despite this apparent flexibility, the relationship between singers and composers was not always free from tensions caused by the idea that each one made of their own art – especially at a time when ornamentation and improvisation were the order of the day. Who was the real creator of the music? The composer or the performer? This relationship, often conflictual, is also portrayed in the satires and parodies of the “operas about opera” (or meta-operas), a sub-genre very popular during the 18th century. One of the great advantages of analyzing these satires is that they provide, in the form of irony, a detailed look at certain practices of musical creation at the time (as well as the professional and personal relationships between its various subjects) that are rarely covered by the traditional sources of the historiography of music.