Respiration in operatic singing: Intention to communicate

Abstract

Professional operatic singing can be performed technically for practice and rehearsal, or with heightened emotion through intention to communicate with an audience. Previous studies of respiration in operatic singing have not taken into account the professional performer's ability to differentiate at will between rehearsal and performance modes of singing. The aim of this thesis is to investigate the differences between singing 'with intention to communicate' (as if performing) and singing 'technically' (as if in rehearsal). The hypothesis is that this specified change of condition would change the respiratory patterns employed by the singers. Estimation of respiratory patterns was obtained using magnetometers. Performance singing was labelled 'IC' (intention to communicate). Rehearsal singing was labelled 'T' (technical) and also included 'TL' (technical loud) and 'TS' (technical soft). Each of the five singers performed two tasks (a free choice aria in Italian, and a set song). Only intra-subject analysis was used. One thousand and one breaths were analysed. These were then matched, so that only complete musical phrases (sung six times by the same singer) were compared with each other. Seven hundred and sixty-two matched phrases were analysed in this way. Measured variables were initiation lung volume (ILV), termination lung volume (TLV), the amount of lung volume expired (LVE), %VC released per second (Flow), the expiratory time (Te), and inspiratory time (Ti). Sound pressure level (SPL) was measured. This study also examined the ability of experienced listeners to distinguish between the T and IC performances from DAT recordings. Findings show that in comparison with T singing, IC singing used more air, with a greater percentage of vital capacity expired per second, but without a simple association with sound pressure level or expiratory time. Listeners were able to distinguish IC from T performances, demonstrating a perceived difference in the quality of the vocal output. These results demonstrate that performance intention to communicate, compared to rehearsal, results in a measurable difference in respiratory parameters, and therefore needs to be specified in future research.