--- Dre de Man <dredeman@y...> wrote:
--- Dre de Man <dredeman@y...> wrote:
> If you sing Lieder it is even more important to read
> the music.
> The more you study a score, the more you will see
> and hear in it. Sometimes singers do things so
> subtle, that you won't hear it consciously, if you
> did not study the score thoroughly.
Once again, I think you're confusing the ability to
read music and decipher a score -- the ability to read
through the score, to count correctly, to come in on
time and on the right note, to understand what key
you're in and how that relates to composition and
interpretation, harmonic theory and how the piece is
written, understanding dynamic and tempo markings,
etc. -- with the ability to sight sing, which is the
ability to pick up any piece of music and sing through
it. Sight-singing only happens the very first time
you encounter a piece of mucic; once you've heard it
even once, you're not sight-singing (you're doing a
combination of reading music and using your ear).
Musicians must be able to read music. Concert
pianists must be able to understand their written
music. But do singers need to be able to sing a piece
correctly at first sight, rather than using other ways
-- many different recordings, going to the opera and
hearing it live, playing it on the piano before
singing it, using a computer musical notation program
to play it back, having a teacher or coach teach it to
you -- of hearing the music the first time? Should a
concert pianist be able to sight-read -- is the
concert pianist who has to take the lines apart and
practice them separately before putting them together
before playing the piece as a whole a lesser musician?
I submit not.
Again, in choral situations, where singers spend a lot
of time singing through new pieces at first sight and
performing them shortly afterwards, sight-singing is a
very useful skill to have. If you have to learn and
perform literature quickly, it's very helpful. Opera
singing often demands months or even years of working
a role into the voice before it's ready to be
performed; situations where you are called upon to
sight-sing and then immediately perform are not the
most desireable vocal states to be in, albeit we all
know they happen in emergencies.
The most convincing argument against learning music by
hearing it first (by either seeing the opera before
learning the part or listening to recordings) is that
people say you are prone to imitate and/or learn other
people's mistakes. I don't think this is an issue if
you listen to more than two or three recordings,
however. But unless you have acess to a good library,
buying four different interpretations of a score is
expensive. Non-biased ways of learning with the ears
also have drawbacks; computer notation is
time-consuming, and coaches are expensive. No one has
argued against playing through your part on the piano
first, as opposed to singing it first; and aside from
the expense I can't see why multiple recordings, a
live performance, a coach, or an instrumental
rendition would be in any way musically inferior to
using your voice to first learn the role. I welcome
reasons from this other perspective (and have
appreciated the arguments in favor of sight-singing so
far).
Reading music/understanding how to decipher a score,
and being able to sing through a piece at first sight,
are two different skills. I question whether the
second is as necessary as some listers are saying; no
one is disputing that the first skill is mandatory.
Isabelle B.
=====
Isabelle Bracamonte, ibracamonte@y...
San Francisco, CA
moderator of Vocalist: the mailing list for singers
(vocalist-temporary@yahoogroups.com)
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