Off and on over the years, as I've discussed my own vocal training and challenges, some folks may recall the occasional mention of my daughter, the three-year-old who, impatient with my attempts to perform an exercise for my professor, planted her pudgy little hands on her hips, said "Mom! It's like THIS," and showed me how it's done. The 4-year-old singing John and Abigail Adams duets from "1776" in the grocery store ("...and is my lover's, fav'rite pillow, still firm and faaaaiir... what was there, John, still is there, John..." in the checkout line got us our fair share of stares).
It's time to bring her up again. I started singing MUCH later in life, and have no direct experience to use as guidance for where she is now. I welcome and deeply appreciate your input.
This now-11-year-old is still singing all the time, everything she can, and that's becoming quite a lot. A couple of months ago she began weekly voice lessons. Two things she wants to work with are "Music of the Night" and "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." (!!)
This teacher is not allowing my daughter to belt this stuff -- or belt at all, feeling that it's quite harmful for the young voice. They work on the same things that I did and do: diction, breathing, posture, interpretation, rhythm, line, vowels, etc. I hear no stress, no strain at all, no pushing in class, but I still worry about those two adult songs.
Sometimes I feel that I'm feeling overprotective, but how many 11- year-olds sing this stuff? I'm fearing the Voice of an Angel example of what can happen with overlarge repertoire at a young age...
And speaking of range, I'm not finding many online examples of kids working more than 1.5 octaves of their range. Is that because children are not supposed to have much range, or is it more that they have the range, but they just shouldn't use it? This one's usable range is well in excess of my good, solid, but no Yma Sumac range.
Now this is not a complete surprise -- throughout her life one of her favorite singalongs has been "Ashes are Burning" in which Annie Haslam hits and maintains that high Eb(?) several times. I can hit that note on a good day, but don't ask me to skip around the room with Barbie dolls while doing so, or to hold it like Haslam does. But the kid doesn't think it's particularly high.
My ears are telling me that the teacher isn't asking for dangerous things -- but a lack of info on the web and parental paranoia are kicking in and making me at least ask the question -- what are the possibilities for harm to a young vocal mechanism, if any, in vocalises that cover a range that is large for an adult?
It's not that I don't trust this teacher -- I'm just thinking back on my own experience of having this friend of a friend, after hearing me sing a scale or two, declare me a dramatic soprano, and hand me "In Questa Reggia" as my first piece. Naturally I couldn't do it, and learned some terrible habits in trying to. Even though that friend of a friend ultimately _was_ right about my fach, that piece was too much too soon.
But then, I was clearly straining, and the kid equally clearly is not.
I want to encourage her in anything that gives her fulfillment, but I also feel the responsibility of making sure that if singing is going to be what she does, that she have a voice left to do it with -- but putting too many roadblocks in front of her that leave her frustrated is also counterproductive.
What to do? She wants to look at Olympia (Tales of Hoffman, not Washington).
If you've made it this far, you have my heartfelt thanks.
Shannon
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