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From:  "Robin L. Frye" <R.L.Frye@w...>
"Robin L. Frye" <R.L.Frye@w...>
Date:  Sun Oct 1, 2000  6:04 am
Subject:  Re: [vocalist-temporary] Vocal Ped Question...


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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