A cappella (Italian for “in the manner of the chapel,” i.e. “in the church style”) is the performance of vocal music without instrumental accompaniment, by human voices alone. It is the purest form of choral and ensemble singing, where all the beauty, harmony, and polyphony are created by voices only.
Historically a cappella reigned in the church music of the Renaissance (Palestrina, Josquin). But it is also the heart of the folk song tradition: Ukrainian polyphony — communal singing, ritual songs, dumy — sounds precisely a cappella, and in it lies the very soul of the nation. Today a cappella is flourishing in popular music too (vocal groups, beatboxing). Singing without accompaniment demands perfect intonation and ensemble, and so remains a model of vocal mastery and the most intimate expression of the power of the human voice.
