There are those among the family of man who set perfection as their goal with no pretentions about being capable of attaining it. I am one of them. This does not confer on me any elite status. I fully admit that I continue to fail to attain to those standards by which I measure my life and my singing, at least while I was still singing. When I recently reread Quantz seeking to cover my “proverbial back side” concerning some of my assertions in earlier blogs, I ran across the following text. I read it as if I had not read it before, because my memory is selective. I seem to have conveniently forgotten what I once read years ago. Anyone measuring himself or herself against this description of “good singer” may feel a little stress.
The chief requirements of a good singer are that he have a good, clear, and pure voice, of uniform quality from top to bottom, a voice which has none of those major defects originating in the nose and throat, and which is neither hoarse nor muffled. Only the voice itself and the use of words give singers preference over instrumentalists. In addition, the singer must know how to join the falsetto to the chest voice in such a way that one does not perceive where the latter ends and the former begins; he must have a good ear and true intonation, so that he can produce all the notes in their correct proportions; he must know how to produce the portamento (il portamento di voce) and the holds upon a long note (le messe di voce) in an agreeable manner; hence he must have firmness and sureness of voice, so that he does not begin to tremble in a moderately long hold, or transform the agreeable sound of the human voice into the disagreeable shriek of a reed pipe when he wishes to strengthen his tone, as not infrequently happens, particularly among certain singers who are disposed to hastiness. The singer must be able to execute a good shake that does not bleat and is neither too slow nor too quick; and he must observe well the proper compass of the shake, and distinguish whether it should consist of whole tones or semitones. A good singer must also have good pronunciation. He must enunciate the words distinctly, and must not pronounce the vowels a, e, and o all in the same way in passage-work, so that they become incomprehensible. If he makes a grace on a vowel, this vowel and none other must be heard to the very end. In pronouncing the words he must also avoid changing one vowel into another, perhaps substituting e for a and o for u; for example, in Italian pronouncing genitura instead of genitore, and as a result evoking laughter among those who understand the language. The voice must not become weaker when i and u appear; during these vowels no extended embellishments should be made in the low register, and certainly no little graces in the high register. A good singer must have facility in reading and producing his notes accurately, and must understand the rules of thorough-bass. He must not express the high notes with a harsh attack or with a vehement exhalation of air from his chest; still less should he scream them out, coarsening the amenity of the voice. Where the words require certain passions he must know how to raise and moderate his voice at the right time and without any affectation. In a melancholy piece he must not introduce as many shakes and running embellishments as in a happy and cantabile work, since they often obscure and spoil the beauty of the melody. He should sing the Adagio in a moving, expressive, flattering, charming, coherent, and sustained manner, introducing light and shadow both through the Piano and Forte and through the reasonable addition of graces suited to the words and the melody. He must perform the Allegro in a lively, brilliant, and easy manner. He must produce the passage-work roundly, neither attacking it too harshly nor slurring it in a lame and lazy manner. He must know how to moderate the tone quality of his voice from the low register into the high and, in so doing, how to distinguish between the theatre and the chamber, and between a strong and a weak accompaniment, so that his singing of the high notes does not degenerate into screaming. He must be sure in tempo, not rushing at one moment and dragging the next, particularly in the passage-work. He must take breath quickly and at the proper time. And if this becomes rather trying, he must try to conceal the fact as much as possible, yet not allow it to throw him off the time. Finally, he must seek to rely upon himself for whatever he adds in the way of embellishments, instead of listening to others like a parrot who knows only the words his master has taught him, as most do. A soprano and a tenor may allow themselves more in the way of embellishments than an alto and a bass. A noble simplicity, a good portamento, and the use of the chest voice are more suitable for the alto and bass than use of the very high register and the abundant addition of graces. This is a precept which true singers have respected and practiced at all times.
On Playing The Flute – Johann Joachim Quantz – translation: Edward R. Reilly pages 300, 301
If you try to find all the above text on Google Books, you will be disappointed. Someone, perhaps the marketing people, at Google Books decided to make some major cuts that make my above inclusion necessary. This text is a wonderful, intense white light with which any singer may engage in self-examination. Humble is hardly a word one can expect a tenor to entertain in his mind much past gathering a good definition, but it must have stuck on me when I first read that “good singer” definition. Selective is as Selective does.
Let’s get one thing straight, if I failed to be clear on this point before. Singing, acting, public speaking, dancing or any other form of performance art is personal. We each must examine, as meticulously as possible, who we are before we can really expect to be able to communicate with our audience. One singer who would seem to have been able to be comfortable with and even agree with the above Quantz text would be Manuel Garcia Sr.
Quantz sets the standard for how to prepare to live the life of a “good singer”. Garcia Jr. did not invent the label “good singer”, but he watched his father live it and Manuel Jr. was the first one to capture the essence and practical principles that his father lived by. His first edition of “A Complete Treatise on The Are of Singing” appeared eighty eight years after Quantz published his book. I believe the “art” of singing actually improved from the days of Farinelli, a singer of the same era and known to Quantz, all the way to Garcia’s days when composers began to change the demands they made on singers. But from those days forward the move has been toward diminishing the use of Garcia’s tools for singing. Sorry, I don’t wish to imply that Manuel Jr. invented the tools you can find in his “Tool Box”. He just knew them and organized them well. Quantz knew the results he wanted to see in a “good singer”. He just didn’t know the tools. After all, he was carving flutes not voices.
I bring his text to your attention because it tells us a great deal about the traditions that Garcia Sr. was born into and to point out that Garcia Jr. could have made reference to Quantz for much of the content of his own book about “good singing”, and still retained a lot to say about the practical issues. However, Garcia did not need to rely on Quantz. He had a living, breathing, singing best example to watch throughout his father’s life. Everything Quantz wrote was, in the days of the Garcia family, well known. That is what tradition is. What everyone understands as basic to the métier.
I do have some advice for the young of voice who wither under the first flash of the Quantz “good singer” specifications. It really is harder than a modern thinker might believe. Taking the path of a singer should be carefully considered. If you are willing to shoulder the responsibility of completing the quest, you should read the rest of that long ago flute player’s book. It is an amazing guide to the attitudes to which Garcia gives little space in his writings. But I have every confidence that Manuel and his father lived by them and assumed everyone else was in line with their thinking.