Ancient Romans and Singing?

October 13, 2023 11:32 AM

I understand the Ancient Romans would have paid to attend concerts. Would the level of singing have been anywhere near the level of, say, opera singing? Or would it have been less advanced than that?
posted by iamsuper to Society & Culture (4 answers total)

It was probably very *different*, though I wouldn't want to say "less advanced."

The Ancient Romans would have used almost the same seven tones that you find in a modern scale but they would have used different tuning systems and modes than what we're used to now in post-1700 classical music and most pop music; their music might therefore sound more "folky" or "eastern" (which is often just a short way of saying "not in modern Western tuning"). There's some evidence that the Romans preferred musical lines to move in parallel fifths, which became quite unusual in Western classical music starting around the Renaissance.

The Romans also probably did not prefer the exact vocal qualities associated with modern operatic style. A lot of aspects of the modern operatic voice are optimized for singing over a modern orchestra in a modern (say, post-1700) opera house or concert hall. Ancient Rome did not have orchestras, and their instruments were pretty different from modern instruments. I don't know what types of venues Romans would have heard music in but I would be willing to bet that they were not very acoustically similar to La Scala or the Bayreuther Festspielhaus.

So, regardless of what they actually sounded like, were Ancient Roman singers trained similarly to modern opera singers? Their training probably didn't look a whole lot like a modern conservatory education, just because that, too, is a relatively new invention - even the way opera singers trained 300-400 years ago would be very different from the way they train today. But they probably did learn some of the same principles that are taught today - some aspects of vocal hygiene are pretty universal, and larynxes haven't changed all that much in the last few thousand years.

Basically I would be willing to bet that there were some extraordinarily skilled, well-trained singers in Ancient Rome, but they probably wouldn't have sounded quite like modern opera singers.

(This old r/AskHistorians comment, Do we have any idea what Ancient Roman music sounded like? deals more with instrumental music than singing but has some links to recordings attempting to recreate Ancient Roman music, including vocal music. There is also definitely some scholarly research into vocal music and vocal study in Ancient Rome, see e.g this article, but I couldn't find much in the way of freely-available articles. The wikipedia article on the Music of Ancient Rome is also good but doesn't talk much about singing specifically.)
posted by mskyle at 1:08 PM on October 13, 2023 [31 favorites]

Today singers are taught to make themselves heard (alone or in a group) using the assistance either of a microphone and PA or the acoustic characteristics of the building they are performing in. I imagine in Roman times the nature of the open amphitheater or smaller, enclosed odeon, would have been important to understand - both building types had sweet spots where it was necessary to be best heard - so the physical position of the singers on stage would have been important. The odeon buildings were built especially for music and had good reverb qualities.
posted by rongorongo at 3:12 AM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]

The sound of the modern opera singer has a certain amount to do with the necessity of singing over an orchestra and still being heard, so I think the answer is "likely not."
posted by less-of-course at 6:59 AM on October 14, 2023

mskyle's mentioning singing in parallel fifths (and it being October) reminded me of this cool song that uses that technique in the voice. To my ear it sounds spooky and cool, and different from most vocal harmonies in modern music which are more likely to stick with thirds.

Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson - Rattlin' Bones

My ears aren't perfect, but I believe the chorus vocals (Smoke don't rise ...) are sung in fifths.
posted by fritley at 3:39 PM on October 15, 2023