What's the difference between trills and vibrato?

Hi, i was listening to some Joan Sutherland interviews and was wondering what the difference between a trill and the vibrato of the voice is. They sound very similar in tone, but i'm guessing the trill is a bit quicker?

Baroque singers considered a good trill ("shake," was the term that they used) the most difficult of all technical challenges.

To begin with, let's contrast trill with vibrato. Any good singer (and especially for Baroque music) should control and limit vibrato throughout one's singing. Too often, the current trend is to ignore this established prerequisite to good singing. Some people have heavy vibrato because of their voices aging, others because of poor training, and yet others because teachers believed that they had to instill an unnatural vibrato into a singer's voice because "this is the current fashion." Examples of the singing of female sopranos Gundula Janowitz and Maria Cristina Kiehr are included on this site because of their exceptionally fine voices. Despite the fact that some singers claim that heavy vibrato and loose technique make singing "more dramatic", excessive vibrato muddies and obscures the musical line, and it also reduces the hearing effectiveness of a trill.

Occasionally and with good judgement, some vibrato may be used to good effect. If you listen to countertenor Andreas Scholl, for example, he may start out a long note in a very pure fashion and gradually, near the end of a note, add slight vibrato (and possibly crescendo) to enrich the sound; however, he does not do so excessively.

In a trill, the starting note, rapidity, and duration of the trill often depend upon the type of music being sung and the particular aria, air, or song. The end target note of the trill, however, should be very clear and not slighted. The end note then can lead logically to the next note in the musical line. In order to accomplish these aspects of a good trill, one may employ varying speeds and emphasis of notes.

The physical mechanism by which a good trill is produced depends upon your own physical capabilities, correct training, and careful practice.

I guess I like vibrato myself, of course not a wobbly one. I sing with vibrato and I do sing like Scholl does and end with a vibrato. Trills are another question. They are hard to do!

chris

but there are some special shakes for example the "goat shake": you repeat a note many times at the end of a phrase but your always getting quicker; its often used in early baroque music
then there is the "nightingale shake" an example of it is on youtube sung by vivica genaux in the aria "Quel'usignolo" its kind of an irregular shake and there is the "trillo toscano". normally a shake is sung in the Masque, but this one not. its sung in the throat
and there a lot of more of them

I know that there are different ways of pronouncing trills but I've never read information similar to what you posted above.. How would you classify the trills in the beginning of this aria? Randall Wong Videos - Randall Wong, Hasse: Spera Si Che Amor Pietoso, from Cleofide.

In preparation for her Farinelli aria CD, Vivica Geneaux studied Baroque scores that had performance notations added in an attempt to discern typical vocal ornamentation including "shakes." Her own voice, however, is astoundingly inappropriate because of her heavy warble, making for a painful listening experience to the trained ear. I am puzzled as to why Rene Jacobs allowed her to make the CD, considering that his previous history was to choose the very best voices such as Andreas Scholl and Maria Cristina Kiehr.

to the eternal boy: I know, i only found two books, where there was made such a classification: the nightingale trill was mentioned in the memoires of Filipo Balatri, a castrato who travelled also to khan of the mongols (in a gruop, the russian zar sent out). There he describes, that the shake of the nightingale sung by " a castrato , who came from the school of Napoli" (he means Farinelli) is much beautifuller than his own one; and he hates it, because it took nearly two years to study a nightingale and to write an aria ( he wrote it himself), and then Farinelli comes, and is better than him.
the "trillo toscano" and the "old-fashioned" goat shake is described in Agricolas "Anleitung zur Singkunst" what is a translation of Tosi's opinioni de cantori...