Who is the guy in the photo? This is Randy Mickelson who gave me my first singing job in New York City. He also introduced me to Garcia and his writings. When we talked about Garcia, Randy mentioned that he was working on his own translation of the Complete Treatise with which he hoped to surpass the only translation then available. His enthusiasm inspired me to read the books, and, being a tenor, I went the quick route and started looking for that available translation.
Tenors are slow, but at least I found and purchased that translation. Now it is a joy to open my copy of Donald Paschke’s collation and translation of Garcia’s work that was published in French so, so long ago. The price was certainly right when I bought the two volumes of A COMPLETE TREATISE ON THE ART OF SINGING at Patelson Music for just over thirty dollars each. Nice to see that even the open market has set a high value on Garcia’s words. Maybe if I had payed the Joseph Patelson Music House the price these two volumes would cost me today on Amazon, Imight still be able to find that store across the street from the Carnegie Hall stage door.
I say the value of Garcia’s books is beyond price. They are the effort of an expert voice teacher to pass on practical knowledge to a world full of expert self promoters. He did a wonderful job in his book and Paschke did me and everyone else a great service by collating two editions. Paschke tells us he intended to reveal the evolution of Garcia’s thinking concerning vocal pedagogy, and I thank him for that effort. But I have an even greater debt to Paschke for making the comparison between the two editions.
I have to admit that it took me many years to come to any understanding of the stuff Garcia seemed intent on revealing. The reality that he was describing seemed distant and confusing to me. When I began to question the operation of my vocal instrument i.e.. “How did I do that?” I was at a loss to explain my abilities to anyone. Tenor that I am I was not very interested in giving away any secrets, but the mechanic in me was very curious about what those secrets might be. At that point of self inspection Garcia began to make sense to me. What I began to discover was that he (Garcia) was describing everything I had learned from my voice teacher, Renata Carisio Booth.
She’s the red head in the photo. I just didn’t know she had taught me a lot of his stuff. Her style of teaching did not include explanation of any of the principles upon which the whole singing thing is based. To her I was a tenor in the rough. Lets say a voice with no accessories. She told me one day that her work was done, and I was on my own to figure out what I had learned. Many years later she reminisced about teaching me and essentially said that I did what she asked. She challenged me and I refused to give up until I met the challenge. I never asked “Why?”, and she never had to tell me a single “Because…..”.
As I dug into Paschke’s translation of Garcia an intellectual understanding began to form in my “Tenor Mind” and it soon dawned on me something that I would have surely missed but for the collation Paschke did of the two editions. Garcia’s 1872 edition was a lot shorter than the 1841 edition. The stuff cut from the later edition did not, at first, seem super important, but even so I thought it strange that Garcia would make these abridgments. Because, in part, a lot of the missing material became really helpful to me, I began to believe that the deletions were made under pressure motivated by Editorial parsimony to which Garcia reluctantly acceded.
I am super convinced that Garcia’s understanding and explanative capabilities increased over his life time. This would not be unique to him. I think it’s normal for anyone in the professions to increase in wisdom as experience accumulates, tenors being the normal exception. Garcia was a baritone by the way. I believe the word count should have increased with each new edition. That the opposite seems to be true is sufficient evidence for this tenor to understand that printing costs money. Tenors don’t want to give away secrets, and publishers can be forgiven for feeling the same about paper.
Now we get to the real “So what?”. So….. I am convinced that Garcia wrote his first edition under the same Editorial Parsimony that I believe resulted in the Condensed Version that followed his original publication. Again “So what?”. The best idea this tenor ever had “Is what!”….. Of course there are other ideas that are closer to #1 on the “Top Ten list of Best Ideas I Ever Had”. I just can’t resist an opportunity for hyperbole. A good example of an even better idea is me asking my wife to marry me. That statement is not hyperbole. Now back to Garcia. I thought I should read Garcia as if it were some sort of Short Hand. That started me really digging in, and now I think I can offer some thoughts on the message that Garcia was trying to compress into way too few pages.
Thank you Donald V. Paschke wherever you are.