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From:  laurence.kubiak@b...
laurence.kubiak@b...
Date:  Thu Oct 4, 2001  2:58 pm
Subject:  RE: [vocalist] A Personal Question (long, sorry!)


Dear Miss Grubor,

You write very movingly of a phenomenon I have observed at music colleges,
and indeed in the wider world of singing. Reading your post, I couldn't help
but wonder whether what lies behind the whispering campaign is adulation of
another teacher. This is something to which singers seem particuarly
susceptible, although I think it is worse in some places than in others.
London is the worst example I have so far encountered. I've been living here
off and on for nearly fourteen years, and during that time every teacher in
town has had their nine months of glory. During those nine months every
singer one encounters suggests, encourages, pressurises, insists that one's
vocal salvation can only be secured by sitting at the feet of this godlike
creature. A year later, one is surprised to discover that last year's
teacher of choice wrecked X's voice, destroyed Y's relationship, and drove Z
into a monastery, but never fear, the soul of Bel Canto is safe in the hands
of another teacher who can walk on water.

Could this be an element in your predicament? If it is, tread carefully:
divine status is only conferred on any particular teacher for a limited
period of time. If everyone is trying to desert Tweedledum to have lessons
with Tweedledee, watch Tweedledee carefully for six to twelve months before
you decide whether the adulation is justified. The biblical injunction is as
good an evaluation method as any: by their fruits shall ye know them. Are
the new students singing better and more easily after 6-9 months with the
teacher? If they are singing better, were there any pay-offs, was an
improvement in one area of the voice bought at the expense of a
deterioration in another area? This is commoner than one might suppose.

As to your own singing the progress you are making with your teacher, some
of the things you touch are susceptible of independant evaluation - you
don't have to (and you shouldn't) take your teachers word for everything. Is
becoming easier or more effortful to sing? When you tape yourself to compare
different placements, do you agree with your teacher that her recommended
placement is brighter? Phone up the opera critic of the local rag and ask
him/her if brighter is what you need. Another biblical injunction applies
here: 'Prove all things, hold fast to that which is good.' This is the
adventure of learning to sing. I almost hate admitting it in this forum, but
many of the finest singers I have know have not been those who accepted
everything their teacher said. They have tended to be people with wide
interests, including wide musical interests, whose musical and vocal
personalities have grown through their habit of testing many different
views, opinions and perspectives. Once you have left college you will find
this to be useful: conductors, colleagues, directors, agents: all these will
have opinions which will be as (or more) important as that of your teacher.
So form the habit now.

Singing teachers can be very insecure about this sort of thing, and you may
have carry out a certain amount of work discretely, or even without her
knowledge. I'm certainly not suggesting that you undermine your teacher,
merely that to be able to make informed decisions one must first be
informed, which means teating one's opinions against several independent
criteria. In this way you will build a base of knowledge more reliable than
that of your flatmates. You must also be sensitive to the fact that in
learning to sing there are things that must be taken on trust, at least
initially, and that due deference is part of the relationship between
teacher and student. But let that deference be well founded, and let not
that trust be blind.

The other danger which may accompany the approach I recommend is that of
teacher-hopping. It really is better to collect the mistakes of just a few.
In my own case, I have had five:

DH: 1 year Limited, but good, and certainly what I needed at the time
AM: 3 years Diabolically bad, but I didn't realise quite how bad, and in
what ways for several years
PM: 2 years Mixed. Good at delineating the possibilities of my voice,
but the method he recommended for their achievement caused me a lot of
problems
FB: 3 years Good. Very good at recognising and fixing problems before
seeking to impose technique. Not always clear or patient in eludidating that
technique - could be me.
GP: 10 years Good. Virtues and vices much as for FB, but much
better at letting me work out my own damnation, and sweeping up afterwards.
Also gets drunk more quickly than I do, which is useful.

The last two overlapped, and GP is himself a student of FB. Changing
teachers can be good or bad. It depends on what you're coming from and where
you're going to, and there are times when you won't really know for years
after the event. 20/20 hindsight is a marvellous thing, but I do wish I'd
never gone anywhere near AM, but at the time it was felt to be an honour to
study with her, at, at eighteen years old, what did I know about singing,
anyway? Looking back, I think the only way I might have made better
decisions is following some of the recommendations I made above. Trusting
the standing of an institution is certainly not reliable for finding a
singing teacher: the first three teachers on my list are all still on the
staff of respected conservatories. I suspect things are different in the US,
but over here it would be a brave person who asserted that to find the best
singing teachers, one should look first in the music colleges.

It must be acknowledged that there is a subjective element in all of this.
Some people just prefer one technical approach over another, even when both
deliver equivalent results in terms of the ability of the voice to cope with
the requirements of its repertoire. I used to accompany singing lessons for
my sins (in my youth I sinned a great deal: nowadays I have my garden), one
of the teachers for whom I played was VR, who at that time had, and had had
for some years, a number of top-flight international names among her pupils.
Her pupils sang in a consistent manner, which means she was a real teacher
teaching a real technique. However, I really didn't care for the technique.
Objectively there was nothing wrong with it: her pupils were singing their
repertoire efficiently at the very top of the profession, it's just that I
came to realise that I preferred other methods of achieving comparable ends,
and that this was no reflection on the excellent work she was doing.

I hope these thoughts are some help to you. It might start a thread about
the pervasive guru-ism in the singing world, which I suspect lies behind
your present difficulties, but that, while interesting would be of no help
here and now.

I hope you decide wisely, and that success will be yours.

Best Regards,


> Laurie Kubiak
>

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