Emotional expression code in opera and lied singing

Abstract

Emotional expression in singing is encoded at the microlevel of the single individual tone, and is deciphered by FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) analysis. FFT spectrograms of vocal tones, from recordings of opera arias and lieder sung by famous artists, reveal a large variety of (tonal) temporal structures, composed of several initial stages, that are correlated in a very systematic way with the emotions expressed in the text and the music. Over 50 distinct types of vocal tone structures (to be called modes) were identified, and classified into eight main categories: Neutral‐Soft, Calm, Expressive, Transitional‐Multistage, Intermediate, Short, Excited, and Virtuoso, in a very well‐defined hierarchical scheme. These various types of temporal structures, and in particular the tone beginnings, are controlled by the interplay of seven mechanisms: 1) onset of phonation (voicing); 2) vibrato; 3) excitation of higher harmonic partials, (particularly the singing formant); 4) transition — a gradual pitch increase from the onset to the sustained stage; 5) sforzando — an abrupt pitch increase at the very onset of the tone; 6) pitch change within the tone; and 7) unit pulse.

The large number and variety of these temporal structures (modes) are so shaped deliberately (but unawarely), by the singers for expressing the large richness and variety of emotions from sadness to joy, and from happiness to anger. Furthermore, these modes indeed constitute the language of emotional expression in singing — deciphered in the present study. A notation, based on the operating mechanisms was developed, and is in effect the alphabet. The various modes are the vocabulary, and the categories and their use in the melodic phrase constitute the grammar and syntax rules of this language.