{"id":3370,"date":"2014-08-08T06:31:18","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T10:31:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rockwellblake.com\/blog\/?page_id=3370"},"modified":"2014-11-28T08:35:51","modified_gmt":"2014-11-28T12:35:51","slug":"legato","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/what-is-it-about\/glossary\/legato\/","title":{"rendered":"Legato"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legato<\/a><\/h1>\n

Notwithstanding the silly simplicity of the Wikipedia definition you can find by clicking the word above, it does serve as a good place to start.<\/p>\n

It serves up a good opportunity for me to oppose, one more time, the tendency of modern thinkers to build pine boxes for thoughts and ideas that came from the minds of long dead people, for the purpose of burying them next to the bones of the thinkers who thought them.\u00a0 Not that the Wikipedia writer suggests that Legato is no longer a living relevant idea, but that the style of singing, \u201cBel canto\u201d in which it is most essential has lost out to something else in the lives of voice teachers and singers alike.\u00a0 The term \u201cBel canto\u201d<\/a> for this band of volunteer Wikipedia editors would seem to find its best usage when, according to them, it is \u201cused to evoke a lost singing tradition\u201d.\u00a0 I\u2019m glad these volunteer moderns didn\u2019t try to wedge Legato into that \u201clost\u201d box.<\/p>\n

When we talk about good legato singing, we should always state the style in which the legato is to be used.\u00a0 There are very different mannerisms that characterize a good legato in each different style.\u00a0 Just because Wikipedia wants to put Bel canto six feet under doesn\u2019t mean that we should allow them to do so, or use their silly, singular, wrongheaded, bare bones definition for Legato.\u00a0 I can understand their desire for a definition relevant to Modern Times<\/a>, but, for serious vocal artists, this one is just plain useless.<\/p>\n

The modern Wikipedia definition of \u201cLegato\u201d would seem to call for a singer to flirt with being unintelligible.\u00a0 I think that teaching legato singing as a process with \u201cminimal interruption from consonants \u201c has already produced many singers who just can\u2019t be understood when they sing. \u00a0The war between Words and Music would seem to be over. Who won?\u00a0 Given the crisis<\/a>, I would say no one.<\/p>\n

Ok, what is legato?\u00a0 It is the following of any melodic line with carful maintenance of certain characteristics.\u00a0 Each style of music has its own set of standards and particular mannerisms.\u00a0 The most important characteristic to control is rhythmic accent.\u00a0 Technically, the best Bel Canto legato would have no discernable accents at all.\u00a0 What is left in the mind of a modern concerning this little statement is the bone headed Wikipedia idea that consonants should be minimized.\u00a0 Without the consonants fulfilling their bone like framework for those fleshy vowels, listeners are not going to understand the words the composer put to music, if they are well set, or even if the singer\u2019s interpretation is\/isn\u2019t consonant with the meaning of the words that the listener just can\u2019t discern.\u00a0\u00a0 Consonants are not accents, but if a student insists on turning \u201cT\u201ds, \u201cP\u201ds, \u201cB\u201ds and \u201cD\u201ds into personal melodic IED<\/a>s then one can understand how an individual teacher might want to eliminate these intrusive consonants rather than teach the student how to use them.\u00a0 Lazy is as lazy does.\u00a0 Wikipedia and most of the modern pedagogical literature I have encountered supports many such short cuts.\u00a0 So please join me in rebuilding the scaffolding of language (consonant use) and disassembling the scaffolding for lazy.<\/p>\n

Legato = No accents (Wikipedia = no consonants), functional stability (Wikipedia addresses this with: \u201cmaintaining the “line” across registers\u201d) and constant well equilibrated timbre<\/a> application.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia leaves timbre out.\u00a0 Almost all the modern pedagogical literature I\u2019ve read fails to mention it in any context whatsoever. So, Wikipedia ignoring it while defining \u201cLegato\u201d is no big deal.\u00a0 However, it is almost as important as keeping accents under control.<\/p>\n

I have to kick Wikipedia one more time.\u00a0 It uses a term, \u201cline\u201d, in quotes, just like that, and fails to define it. It implies a synonym quality such as Legato = Line, but it is not at all so.\u00a0 There is a line maintenance responsibility in most styles of music, and many of these styles are quite rambunctious and not legato at all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Legato Notwithstanding the silly simplicity of the Wikipedia definition you can find by clicking the word above, it does serve as a good place to start. It serves up a good opportunity for me to oppose, one more time, the tendency of modern thinkers to build pine boxes for thoughts and ideas that came from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1928,"menu_order":47,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-gallery.php","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3370","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P2kj1l-Sm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3371,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3370\/revisions\/3371"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}