The Technique and The Method
Recently Debbie and I watched a Public Broadcasting remembrance of a fascinating Frenchman who made the USA his home and adopted nationality. The AMERICAN MASTERS program “Jacques Pépin: The Art of Craft” structured the story of his yet to be completed life into a beautiful biography. The truth of the “Old School” manner by which this unquenchably curios and ever ambitious achiever assailed life shined through in a manner that inspired Debbie to insist I make a blog about it.
This man’s significance to the world of food is already well established and I hope he will keep feeding posterity from his larder of knowledge and cornucopia of inspiration. I’m interested in him because I believe his life to be a great rerun, in the food world, of Manuel Garcia’s life in the opera world. He hasn’t attained to Manuel’s longevity, but he has certainly matched Manuel in the realm of universal respect in his industry.
There is no doubt about his convictions concerning the technical foundation for his “Art”, and so refreshing to read his humble words of estimation of his “Art Form” in the interview, “Blue Collar, White Hat”, in The Columbia Journal of American Studies. One of the parallels I see to Garcia’s time line; Pépin might never have written his books “La Technique” or “La Methode” without a disaster forcing a hard turn for his ascending star as it traveled through time with us. Pépin almost died in an auto accident. It forced him from behind the stove at his restaurant onto a path of advocacy for his “Art Form”. I would say the world of food is richer for this turn of events, even if Pépin had to suffer. He serves society in a much larger way now than would have been possible to him as a chef in even the most celebrated restaurant on earth.
Disaster struck the Garcia family when Manuel Sr. was robbed by bandits in Mexico. They took the fortune he had amassed in the New World from him before he could get it back home. 
What little money the bandits missed in their search of the Garcia entourage was about enough to pay for their passage back to Europe. The great tenor had to start from scratch to build a new nest egg. When the old man got back to Paris, he had little time to wait before his son recounted his disastrous debut in Naples, and announce his desire to begin building a life outside of music. In the fullness of time the elder Manuel’s voice began showing signs of age and the singer, still short of the nest egg lost, had to turn to teaching to make a livelihood and about this time the younger Manuel set his sights on supporting himself while traveling the world. His mother talked him out of it, and I thank God she did. Papa Garcia had already founded a school of singing in Paris and Garcia Jr. signed on to help his dad. Disasters; dad’s forced contribution to Mexico’s benefits for bandits program, young Manuel’s failure to launch as an Opera Star and papa’s voice surrendering to the pressures of Father Time, set the stage for Garcia’s stellar teaching career and his two wonderful books. Garcia’s “Ecole de García” part one and part two could have been called exactly the same titles Pépin used for his two books. Maybe Pépin had a better editor.
Garcia lived 101 years. I pray that Pépin, if he so desires to endure, may exceed Garcia’s record. Given the content of the interview to which I link above, I’m inspired to pray that he keeps talking, teaching and writing. Old School is really hard to find.
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Death of a Renaissance Man
Daniel Sumegi announced 10 April on Facebook, the passing of Randy Mickelson. I join Daniel in mourning the departure of Randy and count myself one of many who would rather have the world continue to include him among the living. I feared that what I might say about Randy from my point of view as an Opera insider and close appreciator of his innumerable interests and many talents would be insignificant in the face of his expansive existence upon the face of this Earth. So I asked an outsider to write a remembrance of Randy for me to help me do a better job. If you keep reading you will run into it.
I remember him as an overflowing vessel containing interests, knowledge, passions and endeavors that a phrase in Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” catches perfectly. It is said in Operatic context with great insincerity, but applied to Randy it fully forms in truth my estimation of the prince of a man that Randy Mickelson was:
“Prence! L’Altezza Vostrae e un pozzo di bontà. Più se ne cava, più ne resta a cavar.”
My terrible translation:
“My Prince! Your Highness is a wellspring of goodness. The more one lifts out the more there is left to extract.”
Randy Mickelson at the keyboard
My outsider friend’s impressions in her native language:
Ciao, Rocky mi ha invitato a scrivere un mio ricordo di Randy. Sono onorata per questo e lo faccio con immenso piacere. Ho incontrato Randy molte volte e ogni volta è stato estremamente divertente e interessante. Amavo i suoi racconti su Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Federica fon Stade, quegli episodi quotidiani che rendevano “umani” questi esseri che per me vivevano sull’Olimpo. La Sutherland che adorava fare i lavori di casa e che parlava di Rossini e di Donizetti con i guanti per lavare i piatti o controllando il forno con l’arrosto. La prima volta me lo avete fatto conoscere a Pesaro e ricordo che per due notti di fila siamo stati a parlare sulla terrazza del Clipper fino alle 6 della mattina, non aveva mai sonno e quando l’ho salutato per andare a letto ho avuto la sensazione che provasse un lieve fastidio. Non ho un ricordo di Randy diurno. Per me Rendy è sempre stato l’uomo della notte. lo potevo sentire parlare per ore e non mi stancavo mai di ascoltarlo raccontare quei dubbi musicali, quelle scoperte brillanti, quelle fantastiche intuizioni. Una volta mi raccontò tutto sul Crociato in Egitto, la riscoperta, gli incontri con la Queler, la parte di Adriano scritta praticamente per Rocky, per me era toccare il cielo con un dito.
Mi piaceva tanto quando raccontava la triste vicenda della sua villa palladiana, di cui non ricordo il nome, con il soffitto affrescato dai temi astrologici che soffriva infiltrazioni di acqua quando pioveva e che aveva bisogno di essere restaurata, ma la burocrazia italiana impediva ogni iniziativa. Parlava sempre con passione distaccata . L’ultima volta che l’ho visto è stato a Venezia, quella sera a cena dove ci siamo scolati 10 bottiglie di vino in 6 e che, forse a causa dei fumi dell’alcol, mi disse che aveva conosciuto poche persone non musicologhe o musiciste che ne sapessero quanto me e che per lui era un vero piacere conversare con me. Sono passati un mucchio di anni, ma ancora adesso, se ci penso sono orgogliosissima di quelle parole.
Silvia Mannucci
Again my terrible translation slightly improved by my wife Debbie:
Hi, Rocky you asked me to write a personal memory of Randy. I am honored by this and do it with grand pleasure. I ran into Randy many times and every time was extremely entertaining and interesting. I loved his remembrances of Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Federica Von Stade, in normal life situations that gave humanity to these creatures that I imagined as living on Olympus. Sutherland who loved doing house work and spoke of Rossini and Donizetti wearing rubber gloves for washing the dishes while caring for the roast in the oven.
You first introduced me to him in Pesaro and I remember that for two consecutive nights we spoke through the night until six in the morning on the terrace of the Hotel Clipper. I didn’t feel sleepy for a moment and when I took my leave of him to go to bed I had the impression that I had mistreated myself by only the slightest of deprivations. I have no diurnal memory of Randy. For me Randy was always a man of the night.
I could listen to him speak for hours and never weary of listening as he told of musical doubts, many brilliant discoveries and fantastic intuition. One time he told me all about “Crociato in Egitto”, the rediscovery of it, his encounters with Eve Queller, the role of Adriano written particularly well for a voice like Rocky’s… for me it was like touching the sky with a finger.
It pleased me to hear his sad story of his Palladio Villa, the name of which I cannot remember, with the astrologically thematic frescoed ceilings that suffered water infiltration when it rained, because the place needed restauration. But the Italian bureaucracy impeded every one of his initiatives. He spoke of this with grand passionate detachment.
The last time I saw him was in Venice, that evening at dinner when six of us drained ten bottles of wine, and maybe because of the alcohol fumes, he said to me that he had encountered only a few non-musicologists or non-musicians who had as much knowledge as I did, and that for him it was a real pleasure to converse with me. A pile of years have passed, but still today if I think of them, those words make me prouder than proud.
Silvia Mannucci
Nothing I could say from inside the artistic world could match the picture painted by Silvia, and I am so grateful to her for helping me honor Randy.
Rockwell Blake
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).
White Christmas
Our Christmas tree is up in our living room again. We exchanged gifts, and we celebrated. I pray everyone has found reasons to celebrate this Christmas season, especially if the Birth of Christ isn’t one of them. His birth has no equal among my list of reasons to celebrate this Christmas and, come to think of it, this is true of every other Christmas I have enjoyed since I signed up to follow Him. Among this long list of other things to celebrate that enlivened our 2013 celebration of Christ’s Birthday is the marking of two years of existence for this blog. I am so happy to have the struggle of putting this little pile of pages together.
Ice Bronzed back yard at dawn.
I believe the reason I have come this far is the Birthday Baby our Christmas celebrations are all about. He has shown me value in things that, without His guidance, would have had little value to me. His promises He keeps and I rely on them. I believe that if you are reading these pages, and find something useful or even just some entertaining things on them, your discoveries validate a small part of my enlistment with Christ. For His part, and it is a very small sliver of what He has promised, every moment of being at a loss to know what to do for a student or lacking something to type into my little computer for this blog, He comes to my rescue. He always comes to my rescue.
The words I keep adding to these “RockwellBlake.com” pages I think of as little blessings. My blessings, that is. You reading this blog I also count among my blessings. Thanks for coming. If you keep reading, then I have my confirmation that these pages are worth writing.
Celebrations are usually full of interesting tidbits of entertainment. This year we have the best twisted weather.
Global Warming!
No doubt about it. It’s a first for me. The snow that came down all pretty and powdery just a little while ago is now “bronzed” in ice on our roof and in our back yard. Oh yes, we cannot forget the trees. They were not left out of the coating program. For me it is another reminder of just how interesting creation is. When Christ was born, shoes were not for babies and too simple to deserve electroplating . Besides, electroplating didn’t get invented until the 19th Century and didn’t get used on shoes until the 20th Century, but what we have on our roof, backyard and trees sure makes me think that Christ’s Father can remind us in many ways of His Pride and Joy. After all, insurance companies are always talking about the Power of Christ’s Father with the words: “Acts of God”. Why not fulfill my dreams of a “White Christmas” by freezing one into an H2O “bronzed” snow sculpture?
Better than Bronze
If our temperatures stay low enough, the ice will keep, our Christmas season will be white for quite a while, and we could slide across the ice directly into the New Year.
Part of our traditional way to celebrate is to view some of our favorite movies that use Christmas as their central theme. “Holiday Inn” always inspired me to reach for the Kleenex in previous viewings, but, this time I found myself focusing on the singing so much that I was distracted from the emotional flow of the play. Bing Crosby and all his friends have lessons to teach, and I studied so hard that I did everything but take notes….. Tenors don’t take notes.
The Little Ausable River
On the other hand, “White Christmas” came through for me. There is nothing like sniffles and nose blowing to confirm that such a work of art has had the intended effect. Debbie and I, each Christmas time, dust off these old classics as a reminder of what once was seen as really valuable, even by Hollywood. We still have “It’s A Wonderful Life” and “Miracle on 34th Street” to visit again this year. I have my big box of Kleenex at the ready.
Up Close Ice at Dawn
Please accept my gratitude for coming to read what I have to say. Two years ago, I didn’t expect anyone to be interested. Wonders really never cease. My prayers are with you that you have blessings to celebrate this “Holiday Season”. Come back, please, and often so that your visits will add to the great number of blessings I have available to help with any attack of insomnia that I may suffer in the New Year coming. I pray that we all sleep well, when we want to, in 2014, and that we all find ourselves enjoying ever more blessings. Bing Crosby will remind me to count them next Christmas.
How to walk on water.
How to use Classical Music
I think it’s an idea who’s time has come. “Young Person Repellent.” Please click on the live link.
Maybe some of us could suggest our favorite recordings to the McDonalds Corporation. The last time I sat in one of their outlets, in Europe by the way, I would have loved to hear something with a tune. If I ever get to Australia, I’ll go looking for the Opera loving MacDonald’s outlet mentioned in The Telegraph article.
I am sad that there is a people deterrent quality attached to Classical music and Opera. It has been hard at work, of late, at the Box Office in the venues built for these musical styles, and it was only a matter of time that the effect would be recognized and used by the likes of McDonalds.
Perhaps we can expect water boarding to be replaced with exposure to full length Wagner Operas. I know I would give up all the secrets I have if I were faced with that threat.
Read MoreTrick and Treat Part 2
Shiver time is upon us. Temperatures are down to ice forming levels, local candidates are telling us what they want to do to us…… pardon me… for us, if they are elected on November 5th and Halloween is already in our rearview mirror. Scary things are still everywhere to be found if one just looks for them. It makes sense to me that people should shiver at what some of our local politicos say, given the arriving cold temperatures outside. It seems to me that many of them would not mourn to see some of us, as a result of taxation, shiver in our
Town Board of Plattsburgh New York
own homes… that is if we can even afford to keep our little huts. I hope a few of my fellow North Country Citizens will find the signs of these times shivery and get out to vote on 5 November… That’s tomorrow isn’t it? Being out in the cold is a long tradition in Clinton County, and tax auctions are especially shiver inspiring.
My favorite hut – I wear fur so I don’t shiver.
Shivering isn’t fun, but at least it’s not somnolence inspiring. After publication of my previous blog on the trick of talk, I received a note from a reader. In part he wrote:
In those brief minutes of run-throughs of Operas traditionally granted in German/Austria etc. houses, I would often ask a younger singer to not sing but try to recite the text and then sing it as you said. Unfortunately 90% of them were unresponsive and as a result they sang the “telephone book”. But those few exceptions who tried it went from student to artist in a heartbeat.
Rico Saccani via Email
Now, if you think of it, there is no way to imagine the recitation of names and numbers to be much more interesting or entertaining than traffic noise. Take it from me, even traffic noise can promote sleep. At least that was my experience when I spent long periods on Manhattan Island singing at Lincoln Center. Going to bed over Broadway was a special challenge at first, and then little by little the taxis, busses and trash trucks were just as good as the crickets of home for lulling me to sleep. A bedtime story read from the top of the “L” listings in the New York City White Pages would certainly have had the same effect.
Stark wrote some supporting words for my trick:
Despite the disagreements in the pedagogical literature, we cannot ignore the common theme that runs through so many works – namely, that there is something special, perhaps even ‘secret,’ involved in singing according to bel canto principles.
Stark, James (2003-03-28). Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy (Kindle Locations 346-348). University of Toronto Press. Kindle Edition.
Vocal author Edgar Herbert-Caesari maintained that the foundation of the old Italian school, from Caccini onward, is the ‘completely natural voice … that, without training, is able to articulate, enunciate, and sustain with perfect ease and freedom all vowels on all pitches in its particular compass’ (Herbert-Caesari 1936, 4). These views are unrealistic. Why one may ask, if the techniques of bel canto are so simple and direct, has great singing always been the art of the few and not of the many? Or, if Herbert-Caesari thought bel canto was just natural, untrained singing, why did he bother to write a book about vocal technique?
Stark, James (2003-03-28). Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy (Kindle Locations 361-369). University of Toronto Press. Kindle Edition.
James Stark tells us there is a bel canto “secret” running around in vocal literature. He further tells us that Edgar Herbert-Caesari did not capture or cage that runner in his theories. It is an interesting tactic that Stark employs to set up Herbert-Caesari as a crazy believer in “Natural Talent”. After all, why do we need voice teachers at all if the theories that Stark says Herbert-Caesari wrote down are true? (I know how to use the open question argument technique, even if I don’t like it much.) Voice Builders of the World should unite under the banner: “Hebert-Caesari – HERATIC” and advocate the burning of his books. That would be honest.
It is a joke, isn’t it?
Garcia had his say just a few years before the trio of Blake, Stark and Herbert-Caesari was born.
The true accent which is communicated to the voice when one speaks without preparation, is the base on which the singing expression is patterned. The chiaroscuro, the accents, the feeling all then take an eloquent and persuasive aspect. The imitation of the natural and instinctive movements should then be, for the student, the object of a very special study; but there is another means which will not serve less to initiate him into the secret of the emotions, and which we recommend to his zeal; here is this means; to isolate himself completely from the character which he is supposed to represent, to place himself face to face with that character in his imagination, and let him then act and sing. By reproducing faithfully the impressions which will have been suggested to him by that creation of fantasy, the artist will obtain much more striking effects than he would attain by beginning work straightway.
A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing Part 2 PAGE 140
As a footnote to the above text:
This advice is precisely that which Talma gave to a young man. This beginner was wearing himself out with vain efforts of declamation in the study of the role of Oreste; “You are deafening yourself: it is impossible for you to know what you are doing, because you do not know yet what you want to do; you have not determined in advance what effect you want to produce. Declaim your role without pronouncing a word.
Place your character before you, and then listen to him: judge his manner of acting and his delivery; finally, when you are satisfied with the performer [t’artiste] which your imagination portrays for you, it is then that you can imitate him and declaim aloud.” This precept of the most capable French tragic actor applies to every point in the art of singing. When the singer has learned an aria, if he wishes to render it with as much expression as he can impart to it and to embellish it with all the ornaments which the melody and the nature of the piece permit, he must concern himself with the conception before thinking of the performance. He must sing mentally, as it were, while his imagination places before him the character he will portray. When he has thus strongly conceived the dramatic situation, when he is well penetrated by the emotion traced by the composer, in short, when he has created for himself an ideal which is as perfect as possible, it is only then that he will put to work all his imitative faculties, that he will display all his means of expression and execution, in order to approach the pattern which his thought has offered to him as a model.
A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing Part 2 PAGE 140, 141 FOOTNOTE
As you can see in Garcia’s text, my trick is not new. The principle underpinning it is one of the “running secrets” Stark would like to capture. Herbert-Caesari may have inflated it into his own “Theory of Singing”, but Stark gives us no theory at all. It’s Garcia who gives us something to work with. See “Expression“
I simplify the Garcia advice down to the bare essentials. How you say what you say can live happily inside how you sing what you sing, and without a lot of magic mystery. The tools you use to make the spoken phonation and the sung phonation are the same tools in both cases. There is no magic here. What you hear you can mimic, and that includes mimicking yourself. These things rest on natural abilities, but they do not replace vocal technique. They can, however, confuse the ignorant….
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