Competing with Handel: Porpora’s “Third Style” of composition in London

When the fourth and final volume of Charles Burney’s General History of Music appeared in 1789, it contained two pages of musical extracts headed “Vocal Divisions and refinements in Dramatic Music from 1740 to 1755” (see p. 150). They claim to show the development of “divisions”, that is, the division or diminution of the note values of a melodic line into several shorter, faster-moving, notes. As here, it was also used to describe improvised coloratura ornamentation as used by opera and stage singers; and this is clearly the way in which Burney employed it.