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From:  "Dre de Man" <dredeman@y...>
"Dre de Man" <dredeman@y...>
Date:  Tue Feb 13, 2001  9:39 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Re: vowel quandry/'covering'


Dear John, sjdr? and co vocalisters,


First: I put two examples on our site:
one of Fritz Wunderlich and one of Hans-Peter Blochwitz (Harnoncourt) both
doing 'Dalla sua pace'.
Strange is, that the Wunderlich recording is a half tone lower. Maybe one of
the first authentic recordings? On the other hand: it is a low quality cd, made
from a LP, so everything is possible. I'll try to find out, because I know the
guy from the record company, he is - like me - a member of the Dutch Fritz
Wunderlich society. One thing is for sure: Wunderlich did not need to sing it
lower.
If you use good speakers to listen to them (no pc-speakers of course), you'll
hear that they do cover, but only slightly.


John wrote:
'[...]Wiser heads than I should weigh in here, but: I would caution against
doing too many things with an open "A", though I've noticed the same
modifications in singers. Just my opinion, but: I think "Dalla sua pace" is
a tremendously hard piece for a tenor, because you have to have that sense
of tenderness, but also vulnerability - and you won't sound vulnerable if
you have too much cover. Don Ottavio is the opposite of Don Giovanni - he
actually
cares about others, and at the same time is part of, instead of apart from
his society and its mores. My own feeling is that the p dynamic really
should mean "as quiet as you can get it and still have the tenorial ring".
I don't want to sit and listen to a tenor only to hear him cover his glory
notes! Leave that to baritones![...]

I don't want to suggest I am a wiser head, but as a tenor who did sing the
above mentioned Mozart aria's, although of course not as good as Wunderlich and
Blochwitz, I do have some experience.

As I wrote above, both singer do some vowel modifications But in my experience,
if you just sing the words tender, you'll do all the covering you need.

I cover (hardly, or maybe even not audible) towards O, and that is what Mozart
had in mind, I think: AmOrOsA.
To be more precise: when singing Mozart, I seldom think about covering, the man
was a genius, and put the right words on the right notes to begin with. If you
sing the word 'Pace' tender, you will not open your mouth as explosive as you
would otherwise, so you will pass the u, then the o and arrive at an a which is
slightly modified towards o. I think that is all it needs ... at least for a
singer who's passagio is not too low. But in that case you should not be
singing Mozart, i.m.o.

I think it is more a matter of a good head/chest mix, than of covering. But
some modification of the vowels you should do, because if you make the vowels
very pure, you cannot sing the legato line Mozart asks for, e.g. in the word
amorosa. If you are a spinto or heavier, you may have to modify the vowels too
strongly for other reasons, and then it is not Mozart anymore either.

So I do agree with John on the general idea of the role and on how to sing it,
but I don't agree on the difficulty of the aria: for a Mozart tenor, Mozart is
not that difficult, but for a spinto it might be a lot of trouble already. And
of course the other way around for Verdi, but everybody knows that.

P.S. There is no written pianissimo, so you do have some freedom, as long as
you can sing it tender.

Best greetings,

Dré





  Replies Name/Email Yahoo! ID Date Size
9492 Re: vowel quandry/'covering' gsanders@b...   Thu  2/15/2001   3 KB
9507 Re: vowel quandry/'covering' Dre de Man   Thu  2/15/2001   4 KB
9510 Re: vowel quandry/'covering' Dre de Man   Thu  2/15/2001   2 KB

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