Dre makes wonderful points about the demands of
lieder, especially the linguistic significance, with
which I totally agree.
In fact, I think that lieder, in many ways, is much
more demanding of an individual instrument than opera,
which is why I totally disagree with the practice of
giving young singers a steady diet of lieder until
they are mature enough to "handle" arias and roles.
To take one example, singing a high pianissimo
(correctly, now, not just flipping it into falsetto or
flooding the tone with air for a breathy soft sound,
or, of course, choking back the sound in
strangulation) is one of the most difficult technical
concepts that exists, and one that often comes quite
late in the training, when the bodily strength and
understanding of good vs. bad tension are able to be
grasped. There are famous pianissimi in arias, but
there are many, many more art songs that demand quiet
singing constantly. Hard stuff! And you're teaching
a 21-year-old to phrase a lovely, whispering line
before she can produce all those notes at a correct,
healthy mezzo-forte?
I have seen a lot of (well, maybe 11 or 12) senior
recitals in undergraduate conservatories where the
student has been polished and poised, and sings in a
lovely, artistic, intelligent manner, with perfect
dynamic control and linguistic understanding, and the
tone is totally untrained and still immature (breathy,
lacking in ring, placed too high or falling into the
throat, etc.). I would personally MUCH rather see a
21-year-old blast his way through a handful of arias
with a correct and exciting tonal quality and no
interpretation or dynamics at all. Learn to sing the
notes! Technique has to come first -- you can't pick
it up on the job! Those artistic "extras" can be
taught after you have the tools, the basic instrument;
but going back and building a voice from the ground up
is not what grad schools and apprenticeship programs
are for. Much as I despise the ageism in the Met
competitions, they will ALWAYS take the promising
voice over the package of
acting/languages/phrasing/dynamics/musicality. Why?
Because their job is to teach a young singer the
latter group of skills, but without a promising, raw
voice, they're just polishing a lump of coal. Same
with apprenticeships -- same with beginning contracts
in Germany -- they want a good voice that won't fall
apart under technical pressure, and they can teach you
the rest of the skills on the fly. Yes, even theory!
Yes, it's ideal to have it all, but you have to pour
ALL your energy and time into learning the technique
in the beginning. If you still have free time when
you're not practicing, taking lessons, listening to
your tapes, scrutinizing old recordings to hear and
feel what great singers are doing technically, reading
the books about the differing vocal schools, keeping a
technical journal for writing down your thoughts and
repertoire and new concepts and what you felt worked
during that day's lesson, going over your repertoire
mentally and imagining what your current concepts
should feel like (singing without singing), getting
enough sleep and water and exercise for your voice --
if you still have free time during this technical
process, study your languages. But for heaven's sake,
if you aren't doing all this because you are spending
the time taking acting classes and theory and piano
and history and gesticulation classes and
lieder-repertoire classes and audition workshops and
coachings -- you are walking before you can crawl!
After you are in control of your voice and can sing
every note in your range correctly (not perfectly, but
correctly), and have the ability to create effects
(soft, loud, colors, diction) without cheating or
compromising your tonal quality -- THEN jump into the
rest of the package. But don't sacrifice the first
step because you're so busy with all the polish!
[Disclaimer Notes: I tend to get all passionate and
overstate my opinions on vocalist, because I feel like
I'm a lone voice against the academic tradition
sometimes -- so please note that I do not think
operatic singing eschews diction, dynamics, etc. But,
in my experience, people are willing to listen to a
young singer forte through an aria paying attention to
technique, while a lieder song, for some reason,
demands attention to all the "polish" details from the
beginning. It's acceptable to listen to a technical
rendition of "Il mio tesoro," but not Dichterliebe.
The first is a slightly boring step on the path to
mastery, the second is a violation of the whole lieder
law of text-and-melody-superceding-vocal-technique.
And of course there are lieder and art songs that
young singers can have fun with and learn from (and
I'm not talking about the Italian 24, which were
really arias originally, weren't they?), but the 80/20
ratio of song to opera that I see undergrads learning
(with the arias/roles learned in the last couple of
years) just doesn't cut it, in my opinion. And
clearly, you *can* teach anyone to sing correctly with
any material (like Porpora and the 5 years of
vocalises), but I really think that hopeful opera
singers learn to sing opera by singing opera. And,
yes, the American schooling system produces working
singers, but I still don't think it's the best way of
learning how to sing. Whew.]
Isabelle B., getting all worked up again...
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Isabelle Bracamonte
San Francisco, CA
ibracamonte@y...
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