> I'm sorry - as much as I love operatic music - the choral parts
>in opera do not compare in musical complexity to the motets of Bach,
>Brahms and Distler. If students are having trouble singing in choirs and
>"blending", it is because of technical skills.
While I have to agree that in "chamber choir" music the musical complexity
is
usually higher (though If you've ever perfomed the choir part of Peter
grimes you
might rethink it) than most operatic scores, singing in an opera choir is a
bigger
test of ones musicality. In a concert you are there, sitting or standing in
one position, where
you see the maestro directly and do not have to worry about anything other
than singing
the right notes at the right time with the right color and dynamic level,
you have the orchestra (or accompanist, or the singing is acapella) right in
front of you and your text right there.
In operatic music you have to sing BY memory (oh and it is a lot harder to
remember that THAT note takes 2 bars in an opera than when you have it
written right in front of you), in languages that might not be familiar to
you, worry about staging, worry about this wonderfull piece of scenery that
might be exactly between where you are supposed to be and the line of sight
to see the conductor or maybe that hugely obese soloist that stands right in
front of you while STILL singing the right notes at the right time with the
right color and dynamic level.
Ask if ANY orchestral musician could play most of their parts by memory - I
don't believe many can, and they don't even have to worry about the text.
Oh I do agree that difficulty in blending is usually a problem of bad
technique. Usually of everybody else. I will always stick out in an
amateur choir, because I simply cannot ignore years of voice building to
sing at a ridiculously low dynamic level (most choirs out there sing in
piano at a dynamic level that a solo voice would be absolutely inaudible
over an orchestra) or to straighten (and flatten) out the tone or to simply
not have squillo in my voice. I blend perfectly in a choir of trained
voices (some people can't, and that is usually a problem of technique, of
adjusting to the "slightly darker" voice quality that a choir setting has to
have) as long as the maestro knows how to work with trained voices, and
there are not that many out there!
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