Sistine Chapel Choir - Sicut cervus [Palestrina] - 1931

Sicut cervus by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Coro della Cappella Sistina
(Under Lorenzo Perosi)
Directed by Monsignor Antonio Rella
Recorded June 1, 1931

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This channel is mostly devoted to opera, but I make special exceptions for examples of liturgical/choral works from the Roman school, sung by Romans who were trained in Roman tradition. The training and emission of the voice are the same in both genres. The chiaroscuro, the squillo (the penetrating "ring" of the voice), the balance in registration (which allows for soft effects without collapsing the voice)—these have always been features of the Sistine Chapel choir and of the entire cultivated Italian vocal tradition because they are the result of a specific type of training that began in churches and went basically unchanged for at least 300 years (and had been developing much longer than that). The great Italian polyphonic works were preserved by this choir, their sound and articulation and atmosphere having been passed down orally and aurally from and to singers who were often trained from a young age in this living tradition. It can't be overstated that this training is evident even in these children's voices, whose sound, even on an an individual level, is wholly different from the hooty, throaty, "straight-tone" sound that is today taught to cathedral boys and mimicked by supposed "specialists" in early music but is IN FACT the adoption and cultivation of serious vocal/musical faults and a direct path to physiological damage. Such a sound is false because it interferes with and breaks the instrument before it can even be strung, so to speak. It is incoherent with fundamental laws of music, acoustics, physics, and anatomy.

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This channel is primarily about vocal emission—aural examples of basically correct singing, correct impostazione—chiaroscuro, vowel clarity, firm and centered pitch, correct vibrato action, absence of throatiness or thickness, sounds free from constriction and from the acoustic noise that accompanies it—with occasional video examples that demonstrate what the body, face, mouth, jaw, and tongue look like when used with correct impostazione—the vocal emission of the one and only Italian school.

Caveat: I'm biased in favor of baritones and baritone literature, but if you want to learn about and listen to all the greatest singers in the old-school tradition, explore this spreadsheet (voice parts are separated by tabs): https://bit.ly/2W4qmE3