According to Baroque theories, affect is an internal aspect of the musical phenomenon, while rhetorical language (and the features of its articulation) is the external aspect of that phenomenon. Rhetorical figures were first formed in vocal music, capturing many intonational aspects of colloquial speech: the question and response, where the voice rises at the end of an interrogatory sentence and falls in the answer, phrasing mirroring the intonation of the sentence, pauses, accentuation and emphasis of individual structural elements. The rise and fall of the tone of speech (the gradation of tensions) represent a constant connection between rhetorical language and music. The principles of rhetoric were transferred from vocal music, in which they were especially effective due to the influence of the verbal text, to instrumental music, where, in the absence of words, the organisation of the sound material remained subordinate to the principles of rhetorical utterance—intonation.

Song is an extension of speech, while instrumental music is the transfer of song to an instrument. Words are an accidental thing in the content of a song. The essence of a song is its melody, which is like one long word in sound.Footnote 1

The thoughts of non-professionals about music are frequently noticeably deeper, and closer to its philosophical-substantive side, than those of specialists, who are focused only on their “parochial” interests, often falling into the mire of instrumentism and corporate mentality. To put it more vividly, such an orientation can be compared with a person looking through a window, who sees not what lies behind it, but only the window pane itself.

While recognising the influence of rhetoric on the organisation of both vocal and instrumental music, it is worth exploring the seemingly distant but essentially closely connected qualities of vocal and instrumental expression: their growing more alike and close to each other and eventually becoming so. When we say that an instrument sings, that is the highest accolade for the person playing but also the goal of their expression.

[Instruments] with their sound are more remote from the expression of the soul and remain, in general, an external matter, a dead thing, while music is inner movement and activity. If the externality of the instrument (external, since it is not part of the human organism—J.R.) disappears altogether, i.e. if inner music penetrates this external reality through and through, then in this virtuosity the foreign instrument appears as a perfectly developed organ of the artistic soul.Footnote 2

Aristotle asserted that art is mimesis (imitation)—so tracking the human voice, and its imitation, is also a mimetic act. The pursuit of song-like instrumental expression (“thinking in terms of song”—C. P. E. Bach) is one of the most important forms of musicality, because it presupposes a number of features necessary for instrumental expression: articulation, intonation and sound modulations.

My childhood vocal experiments were significant in shaping my future (and, as it transpired, professional) musical expression. While I was still studying at the Middle School in Prienai, Lithuania, between the ages of 10 and 12, I liked to sing solos, including Italian songs: through this I developed a vocal orientation, which later became one of the main principles of my musical expression when playing the oboe. Having not become a singer, I tried to transform the sound of an instrument (the oboe) into a voice. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, in concert halls, in addition to performing on the oboe, I started to sing Lithuanian folk songs, “turning full circle” and returning to the singing expression engendered in my childhood, enriched by many years of instrumental musical interpretation. The pursuit of vocal expressiveness when playing, as a mimetic act, can be felt in the nature of the intonation by comparing these recordings made at different periods of my life:Footnote 3

Grave from the Oboe Concerto in C major by F. Dall’Abaco (1675–1742)

(recording dated 1973) [3:55]

vs.

Lithuanian folk song Vai tu, aglala (“O, you little fir tree”)

(recording dated 2019) [1:54]

Largo by J. IndraFootnote 4 (1918–1968)

(recording dated 2002) [2:38]

vs.

Lithuanian folk song Rūta žalioj (“Green rue”)

(recording dated 2005) [3:48]

Balys Sruoga, who researched the songs of our nation,Footnote 5 said that “the basis of primordial song was not words, but melody, rhythm, movements, actions, in connection with which the primordial songs were created, and which in turn were a more or less tangible expression of psychic processes.”Footnote 6 In our times, when the emotional connection with the sound process is weakening, the claim of Susanne Langer already mentioned, that music is a tonal analogue of emotive life, sounds nostalgic. Although the musical works of the past are alive and performed quite widely as a permanent universal value, they often lack expression adequate to their worth. Maybe the reason for this is the lack of thinking in terms of song?

The vocal quality of sound expression is achieved through the so-called leading of sound (agogics) and dynamic phrasing (messa di voce)—making sound dynamic. Here the most important thing is the manner of passing from one sound to another, and the quality when doing so.

The human voice, as well, is an instrument; it is rare, and paid for dearly. How it is shaped, is the first care of the inquisitive public, and its next, how it is played with: what it plays, is immaterial to the generality. The Singer knows better: for what he sings must be so formed, as to make it easy for him to play on his voice to great credit.Footnote 7

People say, “a beautiful voice,” and the assessment ends there.

What makes vocal expression special? “The oldest, truest, most beautiful organ of music, the organ to which alone our music owes its being, is the human voice. The most naturally was it counterfeited by the wind-instrument, and this again by the stringed instrument.”Footnote 8 The plastic movement of sounds, without any leap or break, is called portamento. A singer cannot jump at all from note to note, if they are combined in one breath and not separated by a pause. They (the singer) must fill this interval with sound. In valve instruments, breathing technique partly helps to achieve this effect, but for keyboard instruments and the xylophone, sliding portamento is out of the question. In this case an effort is made to combine autonomous tones without a pause, in a way that avoids the preceding sounds merging with new ones. This absence of caesura creates the illusion of a portamento-like connectedness. It is as if the aim is to eliminate the opposition of nature and culture (if we consider the human voice as nature, and the instrument as a product of culture), and of the organic and mechanical. However, in history there has also been a reverse process, when the voice has used the properties of instruments and acquired a different quality. The singer, when perfecting their technique necessary to meet the highest artistic challenges, acquires the traits of instrumental virtuosity, yet at the same time does not lose their own characteristic naturalness. Whatever instrument is played, whatever voice is used when singing by a musician, in every circumstance the process of sound movement demands sensitive modulations, which make up an uninterrupted action of sound.

Instruments (especially wind instruments) also have parts which are equivalent to vocal sound apparatus. The human voice is the breath, the vocal cords and the resonant cavities. In instruments (primarily wind instruments, because, due to the common generator of their sound—breathing, they are closest to the voice) breathing performs the same role as in singing, the reed or the lips of the player substitute for the vocal cords, and the resonator is the instrument itself. In string instruments, the equivalent of breathing is the movement of the bow—the dynamic force of the player’s hand. The hand movements on the instrument’s fingerboard, the passing from one string to another, make up nearly the full portamento imitation. Breathing or its equivalent (in string instruments) is the factor which stirs and shakes the instrumental matter. As with the wind itself, its essence is agility (in English, “wind” equally describes the wind and wind instruments). “In Italy, not only the human voice began to sing; the principle of singing based on breathing took possession of all music.”Footnote 9 The humanisation (vocalisation) of instrumentalism should not be understood simply as echolalia (the Greek echolalia meaning the mechanical repetition of another person’s words or sounds). The essence is not imitation or mimicking but the aspiration for the expressiveness and emotional warmth of the human voice to be reflected in instrumental expression.

In the eighteenth century the song-like instrumentalism which conquered Europe was also emphasised in the theoretical treatises of the time. The convergence of instrumental and vocal music is illustrated by the instrumental obligatos of the arias of J. S. Bach’s cantatas. Here the obligato instruments are elevated to such heights of melodic and virtuoso expressiveness and artistic responsibility that this form of their use alone evidences and affirms the aesthetics of the vocal means of expression. These tasks of expressiveness presented to the instruments are the facts of their spiritualisation and humanisation, their recognition as the alter ego of the human voice.

The importance and influence of vocal expression for instrumental expressiveness was understood by Anton Stadler, the legendary inspirer and interpreter of W. A. Mozart’s music for clarinet, who apparently even attracted Mozart’s attention through the quality of his vocal expression. This is evidenced by the character of the musical works dedicated to him: without external bravura, but with a marked melodic quality, even in the quick parts. German instrumental culture, having moved in the direction of thinking in terms of song (singende Denken), achieved extraordinary results in artistic expression, which is illustrated too by works with a special song-like quality.

The following three works of W. A. Mozart are interpreted by the author:

String Quartet No. 12 (KV 172)—Adagio [link] [2:55].

(recorded in 2007 in the studio of Lithuanian Radio, performed by Juozas Rimas, oboe, and Alfreda Rimienė, piano).

Three German Dances (KV 605): No. 1 [link] [1:47].

German Dance (KV 611) [link] [1:47].

(recorded in 2007 in the studio of Lithuanian Radio, performed by Juozas Rimas, oboe, and the Sostinės styginių trio[the String Trio of the Capital] of Lithuania).

Phonation oriented towards vocal expression offers a greater opportunity for rendering sound aesthetic in the instrumental sphere. This is characterised by stability of pitch—timbre—and lively dynamism. This unity is conveyed by conducting sound through various ways of dynamic phrasing, through soft and energetic transition from one sound to another, and through the emotionally sensitive and diverse nature of the vibration.

If one does not train oneself to perfection in the “vocal”, i.e. the “tangible”, feeling of the tension of intervals and their interrelations, their resiliency, their resistance, it is not possible to understand what intonation in music is.Footnote 10

Unfortunately, as instrumental music has developed, it has deviated from the principles of ars cantandi, and this trend has damaged its expressiveness. However, even in our time, the principle of vocal intonation is not forgotten in the best examples of instrumental interpretation, and should not be forgotten, since it is one of the most important ways of achieving meaningful expression.