Material Detail

A Brief History of Singing

A Brief History of Singing

A concise history of singing organized in sections by historical periods from antiquity to the present day primarily tracing the history of opera. A glossary of terms is included at the end of each section and a bibliography of readily available English-language materials is also included.

Quality

More about this material

Comments

Log in to participate in the discussions or sign up if you are not already a MERLOT member.
Teri Herron
Teri Herron (Content Developer/Instructional Designer)
4 years ago
The title of this resource is a bit misleading, as it doesn't actually trace the full history of singing within the Western canon. Rather, the resources provides a history of singing in terms of opera. The author glosses over more than a thousand years in his section on singing prior to opera, which is rather disturbing in terms of the depth and breadth of content that amount of time represents. The resource is text heavy and provides links to the various periods within the operatic tradition. These periods are somewhat dated (the resource is from 1999) in comparison with how these historical periods are currently classified. However, there is some good information here. There are well written sections on opera in the 17th-20th centuries. We are, of course, nearly 20 years into the 21st century and a number of operatic developments have occurred since this resource was initially created. The mistake a learner may make is in thinking that this is somehow an exhaustive resource on the subject. This is especially concerning as it relates to the section on Antiquity - 1590. The print is rather small and because of the inline styling used on the website, it can be difficult to read across the entire page on a larger monitor. The links to the various historical periods are easy to navigate and, because of the simplistic setup of the web page, the learner would not need any more than basic browsing skills to use this material.
Time spent reviewing site: 1 day