> Really? Good technique is good technique and the > student should be > applying those principles learned regardless of > whether they are > singing artsong or arias
I've heard this argument so many times... yes, you can, painfully, teach a young student to sing "Auch kleine dinge" technically correctly from the start. But can you really teach a 19-year-old to sing a correct pianissimo? If so, this is a different type of pianissimo than I am familiar with. And this song is marked, by Wolf, pp -- then pp -- then ppp. All of the high notes are dolce.
Also, can you really teach a beginning singer to taste and color every word with the exacting diction that lieder demands? In my understanding of training, a singer has to learn to sing the line before adding in the consonants -- this often involves vowel modification, dropping out or mutating certain consonants so they don't hurt the tone quality, things like that. Arias -- people are more willing to listen someone bastardize the words for the sake of vocal beauty. Lieder -- it's almost sacrilege for suggest sacrificing the text for the technique.
And isn't it frustrating for a young singer to have to blast through a delicate song like Auch kleine? I wouldn't ask a young singer to compromise and sing with bad technique to achieve good musicality (a soft, breathy tone or a choked-off one). I'd rather give that singer Caro nome instead. Yes, there are a few pp notes in that, but a) it's more satisfying to ignore a few pianissimo notes than to totally disrespect the concept of a delicate song, and b) the aria is so bloody hard that the student is forced to sing every note correctly (or else they die -- if you start going wrong in C.N., you know it right away; on the other hand, you can "float" your way through the Wolf, and come out with a pleasant rendition of it, and have done nothing to further your technical progress).
By the way, I don't advocate nothing but vocalises for 5 years, simply because a singer would get bored. It's the best way to learn, but not practical. And yes, I study privately and have for the last four years, do no performing, but study roles and arias that further my technical growth (not necessarily roles and arias that are part of my "package," although I am familiar with what those arias are, should I need them for an audition).
Isabelle B.
===== Isabelle Bracamonte San Francisco, CA ibracamonte@y...
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