Dear Vocalisters:
It is interesting that the topic of types of voices and their
training should come up on this list and on another list to which I
subscribe. I am posting this little bit on both of these lists, for
what it is worth.
Lloyd
A singer sings. Simple. What a singer sings is determined by so
many different influences that it defies codification.
In opera we have almost as many different voice types as we have
voices. There is a constant disagreement raging, now and the the
past, over who or what voice should sing what role. The singer for
whom a role was written will find that another singer of a very
different voice type will make that role his or her own. There are
no rules about this; there is only the taste of a time and the
personal ideas of opera producers, conductors and stage directors.
In art song we have the same situation. There are specialists in
this field who have made their vocal inadequacies an accepted norm
for this art form. There are stylists who replace technique with
mannerisms that obscure the composers expression. One can add to
this the same argument about what voice type should song what kind of
art song.
In music from Broadway or pops music, both forms of music built on
the concept and emphasis of individual expression, all of the
arguments mentioned above are still argued regularly. It would
appear that in these genres, especially, there would be little
necessity to even consider the possibility that one type of singer is
better equipped than another to give "authentic" performances of the
songs. Yet we do.
As a teacher of singing I teach just singing. Not opera, not art
song, not pops, not Broadway, not folk song. Just singing. I have
had students who are comfortable in only a few of these forms and
students who are comfortable in all of them. People are different.
But I have never had any student with whom I found it desirable to
discourage the singing of any form of song. Each student finds their
own form of expression. The only difficulty I have consistently
encountered is the protective instinct of students to restrict
themselves to literature that is too narrow in scope. And it is my
duty to broaden their horizons just as my teachers had to do with me.
Some day I will try to figure out why I and many others need so
desperately to put things in "boxes" and make judgments about those
"boxes" and who or what they should contain.
The Vocalist is certainly one of the best discussion groups to
explore these needs.
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA
Professor of Voice, Pedagogy
School of Performing Arts
Northern Arizona University
Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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