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From:  taylor23f@h...
taylor23f@h...
Date:  Tue Jan 23, 2001  2:41 am
Subject:  Aesthetics vs. Function/Result vs. Process debate..............




Mary Beth wrote:
>As teachers we need to separate result from process.

Dear Listers and Mary Beth,

This is a fabulous statement folks. The result vs. the
process and aesthetics vs. function are usually at odds with each
other. At times, what sounds good to the ear(aesthetically pleasing)
is NOT necessarily functionally correct. Inversely, what sounds bad
to the ear is not necessarily functionally incorrect either. A well
known voice teacher(remaining nameless) taught a soprano friend of
mine. In the year of lessons she had with this teacher, the only
comment my friend ever heard was, "make it pretty dear- that's it-
good."
After many months of this my friend moved on to another
teacher that solved her problems with voice function. No, this did
not happen over night- but it came after some hard work. My point is
that sometimes it becomes necessary to keep aesthetics and healthy
function in different camps in order to reach technical goals.
Some of you may know that I have been observing and taking
lessons on and off with C. Reid for the past 20 months or so. He has
been teaching for 62 yrs. and is 90 right now (amazing huh!). When I
was there over Christmas(current German baritone Thomas Quastoff was
there observing that day!) Reid reminded me of the fact that the
vocal methods employed by Mancini and others of his time were
virtually extinct by the early 20th century.
I a NATS article a while back, Oren Brown, another brilliant
pedagogue I've seen at work, summed the same thing up like this:

"In the 19th century, the focus was on breathing- in the 20th
century, the focus was on resonance- in the 21st century, maybe the
focus will be on brains." When I first read this I thought, "Wow
that Oren Brown guy- what an absurd comment to make to a journal-
they actually published that!" However, as I thought about it for
the afternoon, things got clearer for me. He was talking about
getting back to basics as related to healthy function. Why do so
many of us at times, myself included, concentrate soley on one aspect
of vocal technique while excluding the others?

Mary Beth wrote:

However, there are
> definitely different registers that occur within each persons
voice, and this
> is due to known physiological reasons. At different pitches, the
vocal folds
> et al, behave in different ways in order to make the required
pitches, that
> is the PROCESS .

Wonderful comment Mary Beth! Along these lines I could propose
that the 'functional process' of singing often gets confused with
the 'art of singing' itself.

Take Care All,

Taylor L. Ferranti
DMA Cnadidate in Vocal Pedagogy
LSU


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