How composers viewed performers' additions

Historically informed performances of 18th-century vocal works generally add embellishment to the composer’s notes. While evidence does exist for this practice, certain factors have not been considered in the modern literature. One is the difference between ‘skeletal’ and finished writing. Skeletal works, written mainly by secondary composers, lack any embellishment or figuration; thus pieces in this style, for which performers had to supply the ornamentation, have mostly vanished. Finished compositions, on the other hand, were to be sung as written. Gradually a fashion arose, particularly after the mid-century, for re-embellishing these finished pieces. In an effort to protect their work, composers added more notes to eliminate any opportunity for singers’ improvisations. Or a composer might leave an occasional bar unadorned to give the singer an opportunity to embellish, thereby keeping the peace while preserving his own work. This article will present views about singers’ ornamentation from the composers Johann Kuhnau, Johann Joseph Fux, Georg Frideric Handel, Johann Adolph Hasse, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Vincenzo Manfredini, André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry and Joseph Haydn.