HOT STUFF!!
The Book is open, but only just. I took a stab at updating one of my vanity pages a few days ago and decided to google Matthew Epstein for another innumerable time looking for a link to embed with his name. What I found is a Gold Mine.
Tim Page titled his lunch report “The Book of Matthew”. Tim’s scan of a very few pages in the book that is Matthew’s mind should have given him a better title, like: “The Title Page of the Book of Matthew”. That quibble aside, his article opens a small window on the arguments taking place in the inner circles of the Opera World.
Matthew looks great in the photo that Johannes Ifkovits took back in 2006. If the out of focus space behind Matthew in the photo is his Ansonia apartment, I fancy that at least one of the plants soaking up sun in the background to be a Blake donation to his decor. I love that sunny apartment, and I expect Matthew, a man of good taste, (He signed me up as an artist, didn’t he?) to hold onto it as long as his grip will allow. The “strong right arm” Tim quotes him putting on offer to artists should be matched on his left side, if his personal trainer is worth his/her salt. And, if he has been wiser than most tenors about his personal finances, then his rent will never be more than he can afford. A bit of tenor trivia… I remember Matthew telling me that his space at the Ansonia is a fraction of a larger apartment that belonged to Enrico Caruso.
Matthew’s health report that Tim includes in his “book” article is good news indeed. Once upon a time Matthew shared the news of his HIV positive report with Debbie and me at a restaurant on Manhattan. He told us that this news was fresh out of his doctor’s office which he had just visited that afternoon. He swore Debbie and me to secrecy, and we did our best to be supportive familial stand-ins and felt honored to be promoted to such intimate standing at table with him. It was only a few days later that his news was being offered to us again and again, always with the demand to keep it secret. No, Matthew didn’t forget and tell us again or again. Now that Opera News has made it public, I guess we can talk about it too.
There is a great big difference between personal and public information, and I respect the strictest interpretation of that division, but I wish Matthew would treat the world to a larger view of what he could call the public content of his “Book”. It would be wonderful if he cast even a little of what he knows and thinks into the communication universe in unfiltered form. The Tim Page article in Opera News is a nice teaser worth printing on the inside of a dust cover to a real book entitled “The Mind of Matthew” or on the landing page of a blog sight: http://www.MatthewEpstien.com or how about http://www.TheBookofMatthewEpstien.com.
Come on Matthew!! Tell us more! Forget Opera News. You’re too big for such small pages.
Matthew Epstein a couple of years ago.
Replacement Pedagogy
I’ve been chewing on a bit of Ha, Ha trivia I received in recent light conversation (Remember, I’m not so young, so “recent” is a relative term given my 63 years of hanging about). I have a friend, well plugged into the World of Opera, who described for me an unbelievable proposal made by a gNATS big wig. I’ll keep my source anonymous because being called a friend by a tenor can be harmful to one’s professional life in some circles. I think I will use the name “Jack” for this Opera Operative.
Jack attended a major gNATS/Singer Employer confab this century. It was also attended by a soprano I worked with back in the day. This soprano was a joy, because she had it all. Good voice, especially good personality and intelligent mind. Let’s use “Jill” to refer to her. I bet she is a card carrying gNATS member who may not like having her name dropped by a tenor taking pot shots at The National Association of Teachers of Singing.
The President of gNATS stood up and spoke…. Tenor moment…. It could have been the President Elect or the Past President, Vice President, Vice President, Vice President, Vice President, yah, there are four of them, or even the Secretary/Treasurer given my tenor memory, but it was someone BIG in the hierarchy. So let’s label this gNATS bigwig “Harry”.
Anyway, now that the players are all described, and named, the play can begin. Harry got up and essentially declared gNATS a consulting business ready to help the non-teachers in the crowd. It is logical to assume that a professional of high standing in gNATS may hold in low esteem the abilities of people who actually get their hands dirty putting together entertainments based on the employment of vocal talent. I believe the membership could support Harry believing that employers need a lot of help to discern good singers, and gNATS membership could applaud being offered as the staff of Harry’s consultancy. However what Harry offered elicited no approval from Jill.
Jack told me that Jill lost control of her jaw at the moment it became clear that Harry was declaring his faith in technology. Harry let all those non-teacher attendees know that gNATS was ready to point out future stars for the Arts Industry by processing submitted recordings with Voice Analysis Software. All those tiresome, leave the office, travel across the county or down to the auditorium, rent a hall if you don’t own one, organize pianists and spread the word about auditions could be, like, so yesterday. Harry was suggesting that Arts Organization Management stop wasting time, and let gNATS’s computers lead the way to the new Renata Tebaldi, George London, Maria Callas etc.. Jill’s jaw dropped. Jack did not mention applause.
We have seen an early version of the techno helper (Click Here) that Harry seems to regard as a mature technology. Just because they don’t use pen and paper anymore doesn’t really mean that the present “advanced” state of the technology is any better at replacing “Ears“. Silly is as silly does. I wish gNATS’s Consulting every success among the stuck on stupid, but what about the rest of us?
I believe that Jill’s jaw dropped with surprise because of the outright silliness of the proposal. It is one thing to play with computer toys and even create University departments to house them. It is another thing entirely to try to sell the idea that a computer could replace the discernment of casting directors in Opera houses.
If I were a gNATS member, and dependent on teaching voice as a means of paying the mortgage, the rent, for food on my table and keeping the tax man happy, I would feel very uncomfortable with a high official in my trade association suggesting a mechanical or electronic replacement for auditioners. By un-silly extension one need only travel a little to arrive at Harry telling Universities that the same techno- service could replace voice teachers. Last I heard, the standard work load of a Music School voice teacher was a one half hour lesson once a week for each student. If one can replace a few of those sessions with “Voice Lab” under the tutelage of a technician then the staff at the voice department could shrink a lot. Where will all those gNATS members, replaced by Computerized Voice Coaching, go to earn the money necessary to pay their dues? Oh! I forgot. Maybe teaching advanced courses in Vocal Analysis (oops, not at MIT,,,, yet).
By pushing the above silly logic a lot farther down the road, a future “Harry” might suggest that gNATS could populate Opera auditorium seats with the future tech voice terminals that our present “Harry” might expect to see available. They could be programed to applaud the singers who had received training from their sister terminals at major Universities. Given ticket sales trends around the world, there should be plenty of seats available by the time those Voice Appreciation Appliances become objects of admiration of future “Harrys” at gNATS.
I’ve waited a while since I heard about Harry promoting his Opera Star Recognition Software. I just wanted enough time to pass so that I could stop seeing RED when I thought about it, and for the real name of my insider friend to become hard to discover. No one should suffer for talking with a tenor, or even singing with one.
More links for believers:
http://www.nemesysco.com/technology-lvavoiceanalysis.html
http://www.nch.com.au/wavepad/fft.html?gclid=COGnud_p7rwCFdJ9OgodymsA7A
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….
Read MoreTrick and Treat
Parents are towing kids to cash registers all across America carrying flimsily made scary costumes, some with accessory makeup kits, in preparation for the big haul of chocolate that the little people so look forward to collecting every 31 October. With the way things are going nationally and locally, I can imagine there would be many parents seeking alternative costuming. Take, for example, the organic number displayed in the photos a proud Grandparent is allowing me to embed in this Blog.
By the way, behind those traditional inorganic costume preferring parents at the registers are people like us. You know: the home owners who can pay our land taxes and still have enough in the budget to afford Halloween candy. The Trick/Treat word paring that’s been bouncing around my mind lately has inspired a new thought into the mix of the many echoes in there that won’t go away. I teach a trick that has turned out to be a universal treat.
The treat is that it works. It works in many ways, not the least of which is the liberation of the voice from the tyranny of the thinking part of the brain. The idea of the trick is to put the ears to work, and the calculating part of the brain out of the way. 
I keep repeating a principle in my studio and on the Master Class road so much that I forget to mention it with the same insistence on the blog. Now I shouldn’t forget, because it underpins so much of my understanding of vocal matters and should challenge quite a few of my readers. You cannot think your way to excellent singing or even good singing. Do think “Tenor”. He doesn’t think, he sings. You know: “I sing therefore I am!!!..Uh!….. a tenor.” Oh! Just a minute… For the tenors: I’m plagiarizing a quote: “I think therefore I am”, which is a bastardization of, and plagiarizing the Bible for God’s self-definition: “I Am”. Let’s get past the looming argument over the meaning of “Truth”, and just remember chronology is important. Who wrote what first is all I care about here, because chronology is also an underpinning principal of the trick I want to talk about.
Trick: Recite the words of the song or aria you are seeking to interpret. (My apologies to those who say interpretation cannot be taught.)
The recitation I’m talking about is more than correct pronunciation. I’m talking about speaking the words with every ounce of emotional content you can give them. As if you are reading the words for a radio program. The listener needs to hear in your voice as you recite every bit of character and drama necessary to give the listener everything necessary for understanding and believing what you say and that you mean it. Listen closely to the sound of your voice, and then sing those words intending to drag every inflection of your spoken rendition into the melodic line.
Treat: You will sing those words with at least some of the expressiveness you attain in your recitation. If you are able to appreciate the result, you should be able to bring more and more of the emotional content of your recitation into the song or aria in question. You may also begin to have some cross pollination from your improved singing back into your declamation. 
Now I’ve got to warn you away from the inhibition consultant that might tell you to be careful not to disturb the composer’s music. If you go for the gold and do a great job of recitation, you will certainly have your own rhythm for the words, and if you allow (please do) that personal rhythm to distort the rhythmic structure of the composer’s melodic line, you will have created a unique interpretation, and probably gotten your pianist/vocal coach all upset.
I know that was the effect I had on some of my good friends at the keyboard. Not every pianist I ran into was a stickler for rhythmic purity, but the majority was. Please don’t let injecting a little language inspired jazziness into the note values be the end of the game. Listen carefully to yourself declaim the words. When you do a convincing job. The inflections in your voice are going to be very complicated and the variations are not going to be limited to rhythm. You will hear lots of variables related to volume and color. Volume differences you make among the words will be easier to inventory than the many color differences which your voice will put into each phrase and even each word.
My last bit of advice is to work the song or aria or recitative or duet or trio…….. Ok!!! I know I do run on a bit. Work one sentence at a time. Get each phrase of the words you say as close to your spoken expressiveness as you can. If you feel you are not as successful as you would like to be, work the text one word at a time until you get results. It is beyond difficult to describe with any accuracy or completeness the sonic result of a great recitation of a text. The ability of your brain to retain a memory of it is also beyond measure. 
Lately I have been listening to a lot of success taking place with the implementation of the above trick. One of the participants in this game is so good at the mimic process that he is deluged with requests to put various famous figures on display by mimicry just about any time he finds himself in friendly company. I’ve seen this happen even in the hallway of a public building. “All the World’s a stage.” Forgive the depressing message in Shakespeare’s play, but just imagine getting someone with a great singing voice to sing those words just as the actor declaims them in the clip. 
If Mr. Sandow’s nightmare for the future of classical music doesn’t happen, then my students have a shot at finding a home in Classical Music. If they follow the above trick, they will also stand out in the crowd that mostly seems to be reading the telephone book when singing.
There will be a Part 2.
I hope you will look forward to it.
If I can pull my eyes from the fall foliage, it will come.
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Professional
Life is too complicated for this tenor to keep things straight. I have been meandering through many muddy mental matters trying to work out how to clarify them all, and I am only becoming aware of the futility of my quest as the number of ideas competing for my attention becomes impossibly large. Even this tenor can now see that too much is just too much. I’ve got to put these thoughts in some sort of order, but even ordering them is beyond my ability….. So let’s forget order and try random access to my mind’s thought pool and put a few on the blog.
Wikipedia is one of my favorite catalysts, and I will blame it for today’s bit of clarity. I went there to get an idea of what the “High Minded” thought the words “Professional and Professionalism” mean.
What a fabulous monster I found. I have spent a lifetime using a word that now means the opposite of my understanding.
In my development as a singer, I was always aware of the bits of artistic genius that passed in front of me from my very advantageous position on the stage with some really wonderful singers. The artists from whom I stole the largest number of tools of the singing trade set a high bar for me to jump. I thought of the word “Professionalism” as being printed in large letters right in the middle of that bar. I did my best to organize what Renata Booth taught me and everything I lifted from the best of the professionals around me to bring my work on the stage as close to that (Professionalism) bar as I could, even if I might have failed, in my own eyes, to attain-to it. Click here to see the lowest point I can think of for setting that bar.
Wikipedia has dug a trench for that bar.
“qualified professionals are less creative and diverse in their opinions and habits than non-professionals,”
Modern Professional Creativity
I did a little criticism of this attitude of “mediocre is like so happening” in “Soup and Sandwich” and wish I were able to leave it alone with that single blog, but the cloud of witnesses against my point of view is too dense to let me walk away from the subject. As I kept my eye on Ann Midget after my blog “So Why Should Anyone Belt?”, I ran across her husband, Greg Sandow. I guess he could be labeled a professional consultant, even within the limits of the definition of “Professional” that the professional thinkers and writers at Wikipedia are keen on selling. I subscribed to Greg’s blog, and he recently kicked the hornet nest of thoughts that trouble my tenor brain with the gem:
“Better to aim low, I might think, and plan small, practical steps, and then be surprised when things take off. Better that than to start off expecting big things, and then fall on your face when they don’t happen quickly.”
http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2013/10/from-liza-figueroa-kravinsky-you-scratch-my-back.html
Perhaps we could call Greg a professional “inhibition consultant”.
I could live with the above advice if we were talking about a bicycle I may buy for nearly nothing at a garage sale, or walking out my front door intending to burn up a few calories jogging during an ice storm that “Climate Change” is supposed to eliminate for us Rock Eaters of the far North. It is a long way from the philosophy I followed when I first thought to become a “professional singer”, and I believe I shared that “Reach for the stars” attitude with my colleagues who became successful professionals. Just because a few inevitably disappointed individuals shared this “Devil may care” manner of pursuing the profession does not make INHIBITION a better policy for all aspirants to professional status. Especially when the majority of the disappointed from among my generation were actually following Mr. Sandow’s advice and had all the inhibition he might think they needed.
Wikipedia serves well to bring into focus the thinking of the chattering class, and Mr. Sandow’s profession would seem to make him a chattering charter member. His advice for professionals to go “low ball” in their expectations would seem to fit right in with Wikipedia’s “low ball” estimation of the creativity a “Professional” can be expected to possess. Both these opinions fit together very well with Karen Sell’s attitude that interpretation/“artistry” is by nature innate and un-teachable. (See “Soup and Sandwich”). Since professionals are supposed to lose the ability to be creative through the very education process Wikipedia asserts as necessary for attaining to “Professionalism”, and Karen Sell believes creativity is ultimately un-teachable it would seem logical that Mr. Sandow would advise low expectations for any effort a “Professional Artist” may make in “creating” a career. What is education for, anyway?
My last bash at this subject will be to reiterate my opinions contained in my blog “Barcelona and Friends”. The people with whom I collaborated in Barcelona, mostly from Mr. Sandow’s chattering class, seemed to agree with Mr. Sandow’s opinion that a “low aim” is better than a big disappointment. As we gathered to see and hear young people show their desire to be, preparation for and accomplishment of “Professional”, the largest vocal gifts, the biggest and riskiest bets, were eliminated early. The less gifted and more “Professional”, according to Wikipedia and effectively the least impressive, were promoted to the final. Those “Wikipedia Professional” artistic organizers voted their agreement with Mr. Sandow, and guaranteed my ultimate boredom in that magnificent theatre: Liçeu. Those Viñas participants who have the greatest likelihood to attain to my definition of “Professional Singer” were just too “iffy” in the eyes and ears of the supporters of the status quo. I wish those Wikipedia favored youngsters well, but I believe they are part of the problem that troubles even Mr. Sandow. Click here to see the first blog that I was happy to receive from him after I subscribed. There are no coincidences.
Crisis is what it’s about.
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