In musical performances, the human voice is usually accompanied by an instrument or a microphone that complements the sound effects of the voice. However, sometimes singers show their vocal prowess without any complementary resource and sing with their voice as the only instrument. When this occurs, it is sung a cappella. As is logical, this way of singing has a high degree of difficulty and, at the same time, involves certain risks, since any small error is revealed to the public.
Whoever sings a cappella does so live and direct, without playback, without instrumental accompaniment and without any type of artificial musical effect (in many musical performances the human voice is digitally corrected, for example with voice synthesizers).
The origin of the expression “singing a capella”
The expression “singing a capella” comes from Italian, specifically from the word chapel or church. Therefore, “a capella” literally means “as in the chapel”. It must be taken into account that in the past the use of musical instruments was prohibited in churches, so the singing was done with the voice as the only element. Thus, singing a cappella refers to the songs that took place in churches.
Until the Middle Ages, the only music in the churches was Gregorian chants and it was from the fifteenth century when the use of other musical instruments other than the human voice was introduced.
Musical terms of Italian origin
A cappella is an Italianism that is part of our language. Other words that come from Italian are used in musical terminology. There are numerous examples in this sense: mezzo-soprano, opera, loudspeaker (comes from loudspeaker), piano, sotto-voche or in a low voice, allegro (a musical composition), adagio (movement of a musical piece), aria, cantata, double bass , quatrain, fermata, minuet, score, quintet, serenade or cello.
These examples force us to ask ourselves the following question: why is Italian so closely linked to the language of music? There is not a single answer, but several:
1) musical writing as we know it was consolidated in the Roman civilization and later this tradition was consolidated in the Italian musical tradition (the words used in the scores are mostly Italian and almost all come from Latin),
2) some musical genres are Italian (such as opera),
3) some instruments were invented by Italian craftsmen (the best known are the violin and the cello).
Photos: Fotolia–Morphart / Igor Zakowski
Following