ABSTRACT
The most compelling evidence for bass singers in Rome practising ‘multi-register’ singing, and the source which mentions Giulio Cesare Brancaccio by name, is the famous passage from Vincenzo Giustiniani’s musical memoir, thought to have been compiled in 1628:
In the Holy Year of 1575 or shortly afterwards, there began a style of singing very different from that which had gone before, and which continued for some years afterwards, principally singing solo to an instrument, for example by one Giovanni Andrea (Neapolitan) and by Signor Giulio Cesare Brancaccio and Alessandro Merlo (Roman), who all sang bass with a range extending over 22 degrees of the scale, with a variety of passaggi new and pleasing to everybody’s ears. They inspired composers to write works which could be performed by several voices, as well as one [voice] alone accompanied by an instrument in imitation of the above-mentioned singers and [also] a woman named Femia, but obtaining [in their compositions] superior invention and artifice. And there emerged, as a result, some mixed villanelle combining aspects of polyphonic madrigals and villanelle, many books of which are seen today by … composers [including] Orazio Vecchi and others. 1
