Bel Canto:Its Historical Formation And Singing Technics

In this paper, study and discussion are carried out on the historical formation and singing skills of bel canto. Bel canto is presented as the general view of vocal music system, aiming at defining the profound connotation of bel canto vocal music art, thus providing more scientific and more improved theoretical support for the teaching practice of bel canto vocal music.As for historical formation, in this paper, the author carries out fundamental exploration on ancient Greek and Roman culture, the source of western vocal music art. The vocal music art form of bel canto which has a profound and extensive influence was formed as promoted by germination stage of singing techniques and styles in the Middle Ages and accompanied by the birth and spread of opera art in early Baroque. The Romantic Period is the brilliant climax of bel canto vocal music art, but it is not the terminal point. Bel canto has been constantly enriched and perfected in terms of phonating techniques, styles of works and teaching approaches, etc. in the long-term performance practice and teaching research. The integral, scientific and unified comprehensive bel canto vocal music system didn’t authentically form until the 20th century when modern science and technologies such as Physiology and Physics were applied to it and traditional vocal music teaching was involved into modern teaching research mechanism.Phonating technique is the core of the entire bel canto vocal music system. The paper demonstrates the scientificity of its phonating function and adjustment method from four respects of breath, throat vibration, resonation and articulation based on physiological and physical principles. In addition, analysis is carried out on the training of phonating techniques as well as their applications in different works by synthesizing the experience summary and singing cases of bel canto vocal music educators and singers at all times and in all over the world according to the "practicalness-oriented" professional characteristics. Based on this, considering the emphasis of phonating techniques in vocal music teaching practice, study of physical experiment is carried out on the test objects (teachers and students of Music Department of East China Normal University) in terms of Singer’s Formant and its related acoustic parameters. Moreover, it is the feasibility of a series of mechanism methods in teaching practice, that is also discussed by analyzing the experimental data.