In response to requests, I obtained Don Miller's permission to post his review of the Stark book I mentioned in an earlier post, and it appears below. He asked that I also post his e-mail address, in case anyone had a question, and it is d.g.miller@m...
James Stark's Bel Canto
In the introductory chapter of his superb new history of vocal pedagogy, James Stark quotes a bit of hyperbole from the pen of George Bernard Shaw:
Every private teacher with whom I am or have ever been acquainted, has rediscovered Porpora's method, can explain it at considerable length, teaches exclusively on it, and is the only person in the world who can do so, all others being notorious quacks and voice destroyers.
Shaw, who had his own ambitions to be regarded as an authority on singing, surely overstates the case of teachers' typical misuse of the historic tradition, but who among serious students of singing has never felt the need for a more authentic understanding of the great teachers of the past? Porpora allegedly gave his "secrets", written on a small and forever lost piece of paper, to his gifted pupil __. But even in the cases where their writings are available, without the possibility of demonstration, how is it possible to determine the factual content of the teachings of the great maestri, when they are shrouded in the vague and often idiosyncratic language that singers use to describe their actions and perceptions?
In Bel Canto, James Stark has done monumental labor in sifting through treatises on singing of the last four centuries, as well as scientific writings of the more recent past. With the understanding of one who knows singing from the inside, he has arranged all of this material, in clear and intelligible language, into six extended chapters on the major topics of singing instruction: vocal fold vibration, vocal tract resonance, registers, breath management, vibrato, and idiom and expression. The original sources, both historical and scientific, are examined carefully and with due respect, but everything is brought into focus with a unified language that relates to the factual knowledge concerning the singing voice that has emerged with recent applications of technology. There are in addition valuable chapters of a summary function, as well as an account of the author's own substantial experience as a subject in a leading international voice lab. An unexpected reward for this reader was Stark's explication of the writings of the great theoretician and observer Manuel Garcia, whose understanding of the singing voice was so advanced that his contemporaries seemed only to grasp it in part.
It takes a teacher of singing to write such a book, but Stark avoids the common affliction of many pedagogues who become authors: he demonstrates that he is more interested in getting at the historic and scientific truth than in selecting those bits that seem to prove that his own teaching is the correct way.
Clear as the thought and writing are, even this book cannot make it easy to understand the skill and art of singing. Singing technique is complex, and the variety of voice types and individual gifts to be understood guarantee that knowledgeable teachers of singing cannot be produced quickly. But the big questions are thoroughly discussed, and the reader is guided through the material in a way that invites further reading in the sources. The misuse of history or science to lend support to an idiosyncratic method will be more difficult to defend once this book has taken its assured place in the standard literature. A book to read and then to read again, as one's knowledge of singing deepens.
Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy, by James Stark, 325 pages. University of Toronto Press, 1999, ISBN 0-8020-4703-3.
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