Torino Bound
Summer is starting to cool its heals, and leaf fall is already covering some lawns in my neighborhood. In short order, frost is going to bring my “weeds war” to an end. I’m already planning the day that I’ll have our traction expert change those smooth rolling treads on car and truck for our noisy ice munching studded numbers. They’ve been under wraps since spring rang the bell on our quick bout with short sleeve temperatures. I am happy to foresee the snow that Global Warming seems unable to steal from us, and the redirection of my energy from garden to Garcia. I still have a lot of work to do on Part 1.
I missed doing a master class in Plattsburgh this summer. When my wife and I retired, I believed that living in the North Country would effectively isolate us from the Opera addicted and we could cherish just a few visits from our artistic friends. You know, the ones that happen to be passing our little ‘burgh on their way to somewhere else on Route 87. I was also sure that students of singing would only venture this deep into the woods if they were really serious about asking my help. Well, that isolation worked better than I expected this summer. Preparations were made, thank you Jo Ellen Miano, but interest in visiting us in the woods just wasn’t enough to cover costs. Thanks also to Dr. Karen Becker for making herself available, even if we didn’t get to work together this year.
With weed wars soon to be well behind me, I am looking forward to a Master Class that is, happily for anyone wanting to attend, more convenient for traveling. I’ve been charged with two Master Classes in Torino. The interest of potential participants in the upcoming Master is already greater in Torino than we saw in Plattsburgh. After the press conference scheduled for September 21 that Armando Caruso set for presentation of this year’s activities, see and click on little poster to the right of this text, I hope even more participants will register to participate. Sorry to post an un-translated Italian document, but if you can make the conference, I think you can read it.
For those of you, who don’t dream of becoming stars of stage and screen in the shrinking Opera world but read my blogs anyway, please let me tell you why I think these Master Moments are important. There is no shortage of gifted humans among us on this earth, and I want to help those blessed with the gift of voice. Writing this blog and putting an English translation of Garcia’s books back into print isn’t enough. You may ask: “Enough for whom?” or even “Enough for what?”
I’m glad you asked. Garcia was all about empowering the singer to a high degree of effectiveness with his/her audience. Now that a century has passed since his death, I can see that Garcia’s mission has become a little more complicated. The need for “empowerment” is still with us, but I must add “Audience Expansion” to it. “A.E.” is on the mind of many an arts mogul and opera operative. It has become a subject of “Higher Learning” and a professor of this subject has a clear view of the problem (click to read his latest evidence). I don’t think he and I agree about what is needed to stop the audience shrinkage bothering the Arts, but he can see the problem as well as anyone else. I would say it is just an added component to “Development” (fundraising) as I first discovered it about a third of a century ago. I signed up with an able salesman hired by Houston Grand Opera to “develop” Texas citizens with largish bank accounts. What did I do? I sang for quite a number of lovely ladies and a few handsome fellows in a number of living, meeting and dining rooms. My salesman friend wanted me to help him inspire these well-dressed individuals into donating large sums of money to the benefit of HGO. When I sang for those small groups of happy and successful Texas types, I knew why I was there and did my best to get everyone excited with my singing. I must have been effective enough. Requests to come help out didn’t stop until I was out of town.
If money was pulled from purse, pocket and/or bank account, it wasn’t because of the nobility of the Art of Opera. It was because those open handed cash flush individuals had a good time, and wanted to support a fun art form that was never really profitable. Opera cannot support itself or better yet, it is unsustainable without an excited fan club that can afford it.
News of unsold seats at the bastions of Operatic life make the big, BIG buttons: “DONATE NOW“, “BUY TICKETS“, “SUBSCRIBE“, “GIVE“, “DONATE” and “SUPPORT” quite unsurprising. Unfortunately, just as unsurprisingly we see opera operative elites beginning to view dragging a big bag of cash out the door before the roof falls in as an attractive alternate choice to the rigors of “A.E.”. Click to follow one such story.
The Operatic roof no longer shelters my grey hairs, but I want the roof to stay up. The present and future generations of gifted singers seeking entry into the House of Opera need that roof, and the roof needs them, or it will fall in.
My crusade includes the prayer: “If it be the Lord’s pleasure, may all those relevant buttons on Opera Internet pages be clicked enough to break them.” I believe Garcia has the answer for how to get people to DONATE NOW and BUY TICKETS to the Opera. Garcia offers an un-simple answer, but it is what Opera needs: Gifted and talented singers trained to excite their audiences.
I wrote about Garcia’s first ingredient offered to The Opera World in Factory Made. The relevant quote is:
“Often one needs an experienced judgement (sic) to recognize in the voice of the student the germ of the true qualities which it possesses. Generally, these qualities are only in the rudimentary state, or well veiled by numerous faults from which it is necessary to free them. The essential point is to first establish the existence of them; one then manages to complete the development of them by patient and orderly studies.”
Garcia tells us to discover in the student a voice worth the effort, and then develop that voice. Such developed vocal gifts are Garcia’s first ingredient. The second part of his answer to the question:“How do we develop donations and sell tickets?” is in his second book. In it he tells us how each artist should use his/her fully developed gift with his/her fully functional technique to excite an audience to ecstatic applause. That empowerment to excite is just the ticket to develop donations and ticket sales.
I answer Garcia’s first call to arms in every Master Class. I always discover vocal gifts! Each class gives me a chance to help the owners of these gifts to develop them. When an artist with enough preparation shows up, I can put Garcia’s second book to good use, and teach “Excite your Audience”.
If you want to become a star and you have a gift sufficient to carry you there, the Opera world needs you. I want to find you and I want to help you. Come to Torino.
If you are an Opera lover, and want to see and hear how good singing is key to the survival of Opera, there is room for you.
For the purpose of demonstration, I dust off my vocal chords every day in those classes. Some have lamented about never hearing me sing in the flesh. Well, there’s room for you, too. Come to Torino next month.
Read MoreWho was Mario Salerno?
This blog’s for Debbie. (My wife.) The die was cast when I mentioned Mario Salerno in my previous blog. I don’t usually take requests, but I could not resist Debbie’s enthusiasm.
When I kick started my career at Washington Opera in 1976, I met Mario. I found him sitting at our rehearsal piano located about level with the surface of the Potomac River somewhere deep in the bowels of the Kennedy Center in our Nation’s Capital. Great building, lovely river and a familiar sight because I had sung many times just downstream from that great white titan for the arts in open air concerts behind Lincoln’s back at his memorial on the shore of the Potomac with the United States Navy Band. It was one of my goals to sing at the Kennedy Center, but I had no idea how my singing would be impacted when it happened.
George London scheduled a production of “L’Italiana in Algeri” for the early days of 1976 and populated it with some of the best talent I could ever hope to work with and steal from. I did steal a lot from one of them, Renato Capecchi, but Mario became a key figure in my musical life. I hope to tell you about Renato in a future blog.
What I know of Mario’s history was gleaned from tidbits of information that he let slip during our conversations. It would be a boring bit of info to know that he studied at the Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini in Florence, Italy if it were not for the fact that my voice teacher Renata Carisio Booth studied there too, and they were contemporaries. I was so disappointed that they did not remember one another from those school days, but, even so, I suspect that their teaching styles were so similar because those long ago school days had profound influences on them.
Before Mario found work along the Potomac, he had spent more than ten years at La Scala in Milano, Italy during the golden years of singing, and around fifteen years working for Swiss Radio in their classical music broadcasting program.
When I found him, I needed everything he had learned over his long musical life and he was ready to share. I loved the way he worked in studio. He was full of musical suggestions and was dedicated to improving or just varying an interpretation. He was challenging, meticulous and not easy to please.
Mario became my go to guy for help with repertoire and, after Washington, I made the trek to Milano one summer to work with him at his home. It was wonderful. He would hand me suggestion after suggestion for how to sing 4 measures at a time. Not that he had to hector me to sing the way he wanted, because Renata Booth had done the work necessary to prepare me technically to do everything he asked of me and, sometimes, after only one rendition of his suggested interpretation he would say good, now why don’t you try……… I found this work ethic addictive, and when I was invited to return to Wolf Trap in the young artists program, I suggested to Frank Rizzo that he bring Mario in to coach us youngsters. Frank knew how good Mario was, and I got my wish. The only problem with his method of working, that I loved so much, was that it inspired some of my colleagues at Wolf Trap to leave Mario’s studio with tears streaming down their cheeks. I didn’t know that many of my fellow Wolf Trap singers-in-training were accustomed to running all the way through arias before coaches would make any suggestions. The best comment I remember was from a wet faced soprano that couldn’t believe she had spent the better part of an hour working on 8 measures. If my tenor memory serves, I told her that she must be really good, because Mario had the habit of making me work on only 4 measures at a time!
Nothing was too small to address. While I was doing my best in Milano to sing Mario’s musical suggestions, he got frustrated with me doing recitative according to the composer’s notation. That is to say, me following the note values I had memorized. He decided I should study the recitative as spoken language, and he told me he wanted me to learn the rhythm that would be natural to the language. I was all for it, that is at first. He assigned this teaching task to his teenage daughter. I had my doubts that this young lady was going to be able to do anything for me, but we got started. She listened to me recite the recitatives before telling me “Non sembra Italiano.” (That’s not Italian.) During my month long sojourn her three word comment became less and less frequent. She was more than qualified for the job, and she got it done. Mario was pleased with the way I did my best to forget the note durations in those recitatives and rambled over the notes with the replacement rhythm associated with my recitations that had garnered an OK from his young daughter.
Mario and my voice teacher, Renata, may not have remembered each other from Conservatory time, but I think they remembered a lot of what was taught them while they were there. I wish I had asked Mario about his professors at Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini. Renata had spent time under Ottorino Respighi’s instruction way back then, and I wish I could say the same for Mario. What I can say is that they were consummate professionals who knew what making music was all about, the traditions and how to drill them into their students. They also taught, Renata by insistence and Mario by example, humility along with confidence in one’s abilities and understanding.
Mario was the natural next step in my preparation for the professional life. Renata dragged me out of the woods, pruned off some of my North Country bumpkin culture and put my voice in order. Mario showed me what I should try to do with my voice and my Renata inspired appreciation of sophistication. It was a long, interesting and fulfilling road with many more people stepping in at just the moment needed to point me along in the direction that my life took.
Along the way, Garcia was dropped in my lap… or on my head… Whichever seems more appropriate to your attitude concerning tenors. These formative influences were living introductions to Garcia. I think of them as:
Introduction to, and implementation of Garcia Part One: Renata Carisio Booth
Introduction to, and implementation of Garcia Part Two: Mario Salerno
(and daughter – sorry, I don’t have a picture of her).
Almost Two Weeks to Torino!
I left my previous blog with the promise to write “more” about “Una furtiva lagrima”. I’m back with a little bit more Falsetto stuff, and an invitation to meet me in Torino, Italy for a Master Class. It starts on June 9, and I am looking forward to making new friends as well as getting back to work with those of you signed up already for more of what Garcia spent his life teaching. Even if you haven’t already signed up, I hope to see you there if you will let me help you.
In case Torino is too far to travel or just doesn’t fit your calendar, please come to my home town, Plattsburgh, NY, for a Master Class. It will begin August 10 and finish with a concert on August 16. Last year’s Plattsburgh event was a blast that moved some of our participants to make some really big changes in their vocal lives. Come and see if we can bring your singing to a higher level.
Now to get back to dragging Falsetto out of today’s confusion, let’s first remember what the Great Master had to say about discerning talent:
Garcia writes:
Often one needs an experienced judgment to recognize in the voice of the student the germ of the true qualities which it possesses. Generally, these qualities are only in the rudimentary state, or well veiled by numerous faults from which it is necessary to free them.
A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One by Manuel Garcia II
I don’t think anyone needs any experience or judgment to admit that Luciano Pavarotti had a fantastic talent, and successfully sang all over the World. I seem to remember that when anyone wanted to talk about the “faults” that Luciano may have possessed while he was still singing, critics and theatre goers were more concerned with non-vocal imperfections. I don’t remember anyone quibbling with his vocal qualities.
Let’s push off into the Falsetto fog by agreeing that Luciano is not displaying any “faults” in the little video embedded at the end of this blog.
The audience response recorded at the end of this video should help me convince you to agree.
Mario Salerno
Luciano used enough Falsetto in his interpretation of Nemorino’s aria to fulfill the traditional interpretive mannerisms I learned from a fantastic old man of the theatre, Mario Salerno. “Who was Mario?” could be a stand-alone blog, or a page, and I may get to it one day, but for now I introduce him as my guide to a lot more Falsetto use in Nemorino’s aria than Luciano used when he was caught on video tape.
Falsetto can be a big fault in the singing of a student when it appears unintentionally on notes that a composer would argue should be sung in Chest Voice. I encountered, in Roveretto, just such a student.
In that same jewel of a town, Roveretto, I ran into an un-tenor that reported the displeasure of certain important Italian Opera operatives with a tenor that used a lot of Falsetto in Nemorino’s aria just as I had I taught him to sing it in Torino last year.
I can agree that when Falsetto is the only function used by a fella, it is a fault.
When Falsetto is used convincingly, according to traditional interpretive values, it is not a “fault” but is a wonderful tool.
Back to Luciano: I suggest you download the music (by clicking here) and follow along with the video. You will find that my markings in the music indicate where Luciano used “CGC” – “Complete Glottal Closure” or “Chest Voice” and where he incorporated in his singing “IGC” – “Incomplete Glottal Closure” or “Falsetto”.
This blog is an introduction to my analysis of Luciano’s performance and only addresses two issues.
- Where did Luciano change from Chest Voice to Falsetto?
- What does Falsetto – IGC and Chest Voice – CGC sound like?
Luciano’s voice has a striking divergence of quality when he moves from Chest Voice to Falsetto and back. The difference that you can hear in this video is an excellent example to use for recognizing these two functions in the singing of other vocalists, and in your own singing if you happen to be a guy.
How much of either function should a singer use?
An answer to that question was dumped on me by that un-tenor in Roveretto who put me on notice that Falsetto is just not good singing. I’m glad Luciano knew better.
Luciano used Falsetto much less than I would like to hear. Falsetto only appears on 35 notes of his singing as compared to Luciano using Chest Voice on 159 of the notes he sang. But then I can understand that Luciano’s voice was just so beautiful when he sang in “CGC” – Chest Voice, that making his listeners wait and wish for that gorgeous flow of glowing vocal gold by singing a lot of Falsetto might seem a big risk.
Does anyone want to suggest that there is no difference between the beginning phrase Luciano sings at measure #10 and the phrase we hear at measure #27? If so, you need medical help or an upgrade to your hearing aid. If you think Luciano should have sung #27 the same way as #10, then you may be a Verdi or Wagner addict who needs to expand his/her taste in music.
I’m going to leave you with an assignment. Keep the music with my markings handy. Print it out if you like, and troll through You Tube for “Una furtive lagrima” sung by other singers. See if you can pinpoint where each singer sings in “CGC” and “IGC”. Certainly no other tenor will sing this aria the same way as Luciano. I believe there was no more perfect voice for “Nemorino” to be found anywhere, but his rendition of “Una furtiva lagrima” could have been more interesting interpretively. But, again, given the beauty of his voice, keeping his audience happy was more about delivering his sound to their ears than developing the character of Nemorino or sharing Nemorino’s emotions with them. This is not the case for the rest of us.
I have a lot to say about what the rest of us should do, and I’ll be back later to say it.
Read MoreFalsetto Fog
Today’s confusion surrounding “Falsetto” is only one good reason modern times should make room for questions about the future of Classical Music.
On my first day in Rovereto, a big strapping young tenor, Mr. Gao Si Chen, baptized me with enough falsetto for a whole season of French repertoire. Not that he seemed to have any idea what falsetto was. I took particular pleasure in meeting this challenge and dragged most of his singing out of falsetto. Mr. Chen has an interesting voice but, submerged as it was in “Falsetto”, who could tell? Mr. Carlo Vitali, one of my fellow jury members for Premio Ferrari, came to observe our progress in the master classes and noticed Mr. Chen’s results. Mr. Chen’s singing improved so much that Mr. Vitali convinced the full jury to invent a special prize just for this tenor.
After Rovereto, Falsetto held center stage in my thoughts, and in short order two E-goads appeared from the Internet to inspire this blog. The first one emerged from Face Book:
Caro Maestro, ieri ho discusso via facebook con Enrico Stinchelli della barcaccia, ieri nella trasmissione hanno fatto ascoltare diversi tenori nella cabaletta dell’aria vivi tu, tra i quali lei. Lui sostiene che lei usava il falsettone. Mi sono molto arrabbiato perchè non si possono dire stupidaggini così grosse in pubblico. Se lei usava il falsettone, allora non ho capito nulla di canto!!! Sbaglio??? La saluto con tanto affetto
My English translation:
Dear Maestro, yesterday I communicated on Facebook with Enrico Stinchelli of barcaccia, yesterday in the broadcast they let us hear various tenors in the last part of the aria vivi tu, among whom there was you. He (Stinchelli) maintains the idea that you used a large falsetto. I am very angry, because one should not say such incredibly stupid things in public. If you used a large falsetto, then I understand nothing of singing!!! Do I make a mistake??? I salute you with much affection
The guys at La Barcaccia are lots of fun, and love good singing, but they seem to be lost in some kind of Falsetto fog. My Face Book pal is correct to disagree with their suggestion that my singing in the pirate recording of ANNA BOLENA they aired on RAI 3 included an example of me using a “falsettone”. Whatever a “falsettone” might be, it was not what I produced. I sang a very high pitch in Chest Voice. There was no falsetto on display at all, but why not make the assertion? It makes for lively controversy, doesn’t it? It inspired my Face Book friend to write to me and I welcome all goads toward doing good things.
The next E-goad that impacted my virtual hind parts came by Email and I excerpt a bit of it here:
When I sing up, I feel quite well a resonance shift in the passaggio-area (so somewhere middle b-natural to g). But its not like a different register and there is no “break”, so thats fine.
Until half a year ago, I could never sing higher than bflat though. I would push and strain and my throat would close up or I would crack horribly which was always good for some amusement but nothing more :-). I thought that the remaining high notes would come with time and patience…
Then suddenly I discovered some sort of “click” around that high bflat/bnatural which brought me in what I thought was falsetto – so I never thought, this could be any acceptable sound. Someone then pointed out to me that this sounds just fine and nothing like falsetto because it still kept a metallic twang and even that from outside its not an audible change in “register”. But it always felt to ME like a different register. Its a bit like a scream of a baby but it is comfortable and I can “sing” up that way to super high d or higher without hurting myself (there is no blood coming out of my mouth :-).
Now, my questions:
1. Do you understand me and this sensation I feel? Do you remember feeling something similar when learning your fantastic technique?
2. You say that boys (and clearly I am a boy) stay in the same register (chest) all the time, so how should I explain this sensation?
I hope you find time to answer me! I know its hard to talk about it without hearing, so I could send a recording or something.
My tenor friend is on the right track. He needs to know that the trick of the “click” he has discovered is a simple thing to explain, but is a difficult maneuver to do. He is not switching from Chest Voice to Falsetto. He begins at his “click” to reverse the “resonance shift” (Dark Timbre application) he did in the “passaggio”. That is to say that the “scream of a baby” character of the sound he has “discovered” in the vocal mesosphere is not falsetto. It is Chest Voice. Had he not done the “resonance shift” (Dark Timbre application) in the “passaggio” (transition between troposphere and stratosphere), he would have discovered the inevitable “scream of a baby” on much lower notes. 19th Century composers expected Chest Voice function from us boys when they wrote f, ff or fff in their music. It didn’t matter whether their notes were written in the vocal troposphere, stratosphere or mesosphere.
I believe we could burn off the fog surrounding falsetto today in a minute if we would just get the facts straight. Garcia himself mixed the voices of boys and girls together when he first published his theories. No one likes to admit that they are wrong, and Garcia did not admit he had changed his opinion about falsetto when, in later editions of his Treatise, he changed his descriptions. We modern types have to untangle the web of conflicting texts, because Garcia did not straight forwardly admitted that he was wrong in his first assertion that girls’ and boys’ voices move from Chest to Falsetto on the same pitches. This idea of sex synchrony disappeared when he invented the laryngoscope. With his little mirror on a stick he could finally see the vocal chords operate, get a clear view of vocal function and complete his vocal theories.
His Laryngoscope pierced this Falsetto fog and changed his mind.
How fun is History!!!!!?
I hate Foggy knowledge and Falsetto fog is just one component of the greater fog surrounding the art and craft of singing. I happen to love real fog when found where it belongs, like Venice:
I’m glad I’m not the only one to like fog for fog’s sake.
Pierre Auguste Renoir liked fog in Venice, too.
Turning full circle back to the future of Classical Music, this link will give you a chance to hear some movers and shakers wonder about how the future will support Classical Music.
I will be back to talk about these movers and shakers again because Falsetto fog figures fundamentally in the Opera example played near the end of that show. I hope to be able to shine enough Sun light on this fog to burn it up. I’ll use mirrors if I have to.
Read MoreWhite Christmas Extended
Remember the Water Walk in White Christmas? That white ice is still mostly there. We just need a little snow to refresh the attractiveness of that walkable water, and our Frozen North would again look pristine. Some other northerners up here wish for Spring while I pray for decorative snow, but one wise citizen of these here hills proposed we should be grateful. While a fellow Plattsburghite and I were blocking an isle at Sam’s Club exchanging pleasantries that included opinions on the weather, my interlocutor proposed that we should be thankful for Global Warming. “Can you imagine how cold it would be without it?” Siberia might come to mind.
Frozen Strandberg
Just a few days ago we had sonic events that disturbed the peace and tranquility of the evening. These booms that brought a few of us curious northerners out into the dark with flashlight or oil lamp in hand were reported as cryo – something events,,, “seisms”,, blamed on moisture, some of which is visible as white stuff scattered about us, and freezing cold that insists on penetrating the soil. We had little mini earth quakes because the ground is freezing under our feet. I guess Global Warming, manmade as it is assumed be, has some self-help blessings most of us just never considered, like saving us Rock Eaters from the permafrost suffered by Siberia, but I’m wondering if the thaw will be accompanied by the same sort of unsettling seismic activity in Plattsburgh and in Toronto, Canada. If we do, I expect someone will be thanking or blaming Global Warming for it just like the freezing that brought it.
OK, I’m back from the edge of politics and ready to talk about the important things of life. The snow may still be with us, but our Christmas tree is down, and in storage, so we have more room in the…… Wait… I said important things, didn’t I? OK! OK!! Let’s regroup. How about a question? Like: What should follow “Lesson One.001”?
Dividing lessons with such minute decimals would seem ridiculous but for the problem of keeping within my own blog size limitation. The word count necessary to cover everything I want to say may be inestimable, but I count on my word processor to warn me when I’m going overboard in a blog. My wife, Debbie, is good at it too, but Microsoft Word just keeps adding up my words for me in the lower left corner of my screen as I type my thoughts. Rules, rules, rules. If I make them, like: 1000 words per blog, shouldn’t I follow them?
Label the rest of this blog “Lesson One.001-A” because it’s about the vowel “A”. So here goes. I’ve got five hundred and fifty one words to go. Wait, I just used eleven of them. Ooops there goes another seven… OK! I’ll get to the point.
The “A” vowel is the best vowel. It is the central station of vocal color. The full character/personality/beauty of any vocal instrument is best heard in that vowel. It is true for everyone and not just certain voices. When that vowel is just the best for the voice at hand then we can advance to the rest of them.
So what is the “best”? The best is always a hyphenated best: Personal-Best. Each instrument has a personality. Something really brought home to me when Bruno Price presented a violin blind tasting party after Soovin Kim played a whole bunch of Paganini
for LCCMF at the home of the Vermont Youth Orchestra in Burlington, VT. Mr. Price came packing a trunk load of violins. Jessica Lee and Nelson Lee played each of these instruments for Soovin’s Paganini audience. It was great to hear the differences among the violins and compare the results that two different expert players could get with these precious violins. I was totally blown away. Unlike humans, these instruments couldn’t be bothered to try to sound like the
one that the majority of the audience picked as having the best sound, the Strad. Singers, however, face a vocal world today that invites bad choices even at this “.001-A” early stage of training. Tenors will try, or be advised to try to emulate the “A” vowel of Pavarotti, for example, when to do so is to distort the instrument with which the tenor is gifted. Some of the non Strad violins I heard in Burlington might be “improved”, somehow, with chisel, sandpaper and varnish to bring them closer to the Strad, but such work would destroy the personality of each and every one of them. Among the lesser violins played for us was a southern Italian number that truly fascinated my ears. I won’t get into the why or how of it here, but, because that Neapolitan grabbed my mind, the whole affair refuses to leave the premises.
In the day, nothing has changed, violin makers did the best job they could to fulfill their ideal. The collection that we Paganini appreciators heard in Burlington gave evidence that mans’ hands are capable of wonderful things, but every craftsman producing a Strad, even if it were desired, is not Historicity. Those violins all sounded different, and refused to change character even under the influence of the pros playing them.
In the day, a lot has changed, voices were appreciated for the individual character that each displayed. No parallel here, right? I heard within the differences among those violins the best examples of what pedagogues are told by Garcia to discern in voices. The beauty of Pavarotti’s “A” vowel may have been our Strad of the day, but trying to copy it would be just as bad as dismantling those non-Strad violins, gratefully heard in Burlington, just to push their individual sounds toward the sound that the lone Strad had in the group.
28 words left.
An “A” of beauty that a vocal instrument can produce has a personality unique to itself. Promote it! Not Pavarotti, or Strad, but the beauty in vocal difference!
Read More
Lesson One.001
My mind’s eye view of Garcia’s lessons, which I mentioned in “Lesson One“, started out with visions of this great maestro telling new students about the famous exploits of his father, the glory of the singing of his sisters, the fun he must have had, surrounded by his family in the first Season of Italian Opera ever presented in New York City where he made his Operatic Debut as Figaro in the Barber of Seville, the trial by fire of his debut in Naples where he was unable to prove himself a professional of star quality, and the new, if short lived, freedom from music he discovered when he was able to present his bad reviews of that debut to his daddy. Any ordinary maestro di canto would fit nicely into these images, but, the better I knew the story of Garcia and his father, the more I saw him as a serious professional unlikely to engage in such superficial banter. I now have an idea how he would have sought to guide his newest students toward perfecting the beauty that he recognized in the voices of each of them.
In “Lesson One” I quote Garcia telling us that teachers must deal with many “faults” endemic to untrained voices, and one could be forgiven for misconstruing the negative spin Garcia gives to: “tremulous, nasal, guttural, veiled, harsh, schrill and the “lack of power, range, steadiness, elasticity, or mellowness.” It might seem obvious to some that Garcia was giving us a list of affects that the trained voice must never display, and if one were to fail to read Garcia’s second book, then those so convinced might never find a reason to doubt their conviction. It is in that second book that Garcia describes some of these “faults” as interpretive tools. Yes, they diminish the beauty of the singer’s voice, but they were essential to the interpretive artist of Garcia’s day.
In that second book Garcia gives advice for interpretation that relies on the recitation of words separated from melody, and with this advice he makes a full circle return to using some of the very affects he has told us we will discover in the untrained voice. First, he advises that these vocal “faults” should be eliminated, but then, he wants the singer to reintroduce them as expressive tools after the singer is able to successfully avoid them. When strong emotion is not wanted then the singer should avoid those several faults which may have tainted the singer’s voice at the start of training. But Garcia is most emphatic that the singer be free to put them back into the voice when needed on the stage. More than free to use them, the singer must use them when he wants to impart the correct emotional effects of various degrees of personal disaster or delight which one finds written into the greatest music and even some of the modest music a singer might be called upon to interpret.
So what does the above full circle have to do with Lesson One.001? It has to do with how I believe Garcia sought to “discover and develop, among all the qualities of tone which the student’s voice presents, that one which combines to the highest degree all the desirable conditions.”
My daydreams of Garcia’s first lessons are full of his advice intended to carve away the “faults” presented by the student’s voice, just like Michelangelo carved away marble at “fault” for hiding his David from his eyes. What did Garcia want to chip off the voice? His sketch of things to carve off is quoted above. But why do the listed “faults” haunt and obscure the “germ” of beauty in the voices of the singers that Garcia allowed to enter his studio? Where do the faults on his list come from? Vocal faults are all traceable: some to speech patterns, some to pathologies and some to insufficiencies. Garcia was careful to tell us the qualifications necessary in a student, and if he followed his own advice, pathologies and insufficiencies would not have crossed his studio’s threshold. The student’s speech pattern is certainly another matter. The work of purifying the vocal sound, eliminating offensive accretions on even the first vowel “A” makes me think of “My Fair Lady”. The highly entertaining frustration of the elocution master in this musical stands as one of the best examples of what a Student – Teacher relationship should not be. The process I believe Garcia used for instruction was collaborative, not Warlike. Unlike Professor Higgins of the musical, Garcia did not want to make those speech pattern “faults” disappear forever, and so would seek to have the student voluntarily give them up, not avoid them from fear of reprisal.
Garcia Jr. tells us to listen to all the tone/color qualities that the student’s voice presents and guide the singer to promote those positive qualities the voice already presents while guiding the singer away from those tone/color qualities that are detrimental to the “beauty of the voice”. That “beauty” is what Garcia Sr. claims to be the most powerful tool a singer has when, seeking to “command” the attention of an audience.
Garcia Jr. never gets closer to discussing the subject of personal color qualities than the quote in “Lesson One“. I wrote about the distance he maintained from this discussion in “Why Garcia” and “Factory Made”. He does not suggest the use of Clear Timbre or Dark Timbre, and neither does he say that Chest Voice, Falsetto or Head Voice are relevant issues in this voyage of discovery. His advice is that the natural/untrained voice displays all the “qualities of tone” that we are to seek to promote. They are specific and endemic to each voice, present because of the structure of each individual instrument, and, in the case of these qualities being beautiful, they must be nurtured with the greatest of care. Not covered with Dark or Clear timbres.
This lesson is about treating the student with great care. We must understand that the beautiful voice is a rare item, and deserving of the time and effort to purify the striking qualities that it alone possesses. No teacher can create such a voice. Any teacher can destroy it.
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