{"id":1480,"date":"2012-03-31T06:09:23","date_gmt":"2012-03-31T11:09:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rockwellblake.com\/blog\/?p=1480"},"modified":"2014-11-27T19:10:48","modified_gmt":"2014-11-27T23:10:48","slug":"royal-registers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/31\/royal-registers\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Registers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I started out to write a blog about the \u201cpassaggio\u201d.\u00a0 You know that thing that boys get to play or fight with while doing classical music.\u00a0 While I was processing a pile of words about the \u201cMagic Passage\u201d my wife, Debbie, found the \u201cProceedings of the Royal Society of London Volume 7<\/a>\u201d in a Google search.\u00a0 Tenor that I am, I had no idea that these books (how many volumes are there anyway?) were even published.\u00a0 The fact that some of them lay waiting to be raided by anyone with a computer and internet is worth a party with fireworks\u2026sorry\u2026.for\u00a0 now,\u00a0 I\u2019ll have to do without the fireworks.\u00a0 I don\u2019t have a license to play with those things here in NYS.\u00a0 Anyway, Google\u2019s stash of old books is now very high on my list of the best free offers on the net.\u00a0 Garcia\u2019s \u201cObservations on the Human Voice\u201d is on page 399<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in the TRUTH about singing, read this little bit of Garcia from 1855.\u00a0 He paints a word picture of a magnificently complex system.\u00a0 Certainly the abilities of the human voice he describes in the first pages of his magnum opus (check out \u201cWhy Garcia?<\/a>\u201d) find some explanation in this very intricate and yet tiny structure.\u00a0 His presentation seems to torpedo the other theories of phonation that were still floating around at the time this was published.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think that his theory under the heading \u201cManner in which the sounds are formed<\/a>\u201d immediately silenced all other opinion, but it is the one that survived the test of time. It was Garcia\u2019s first paragraph under the heading: \u201cConjectures on the Formation of the different Registers\u201d on page 405<\/a>\u00a0that made me toss most of my pile of words about \u201cpassaggio\u201d out the back door of my blogging hut.\u00a0 For me, this text is the key to unlocking some \u201csecret\u201d things in Garcia\u2019s writings.\u00a0 It also answered questions I had from reading some biographical material about him.\u00a0 I\u2019m not saying that all my questions are answered.\u00a0 I\u2019m saying that my education is still ongoing and what I learn clears my vision.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the paragraph I referenced above the words \u201cthe cause of the different tones called registers, must be sought for in the muscles which set these ligaments in motion<\/em>\u201d are the key to everything that follows in this blog. Under the last heading in his \u201cObservations\u201d, \u201cOf the Qualities of the Voice.<\/a>\u201d Garcia reiterates his assertion that the quality of glottal closure gives rise to either brilliant or veiled sounds.\u00a0 Wait\u2026..\u00a0 I thought Garcia said something about finding the causal agent for the registers within the structures that form the glottis.\u00a0 I want more from Garcia.\u00a0 I want him to tell me what the registers really are.\u00a0 Does he?<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his \u201cHints\u201d<\/a>\u00a0we find Garcia prevaricating while I want a straight answer.\u00a0 In his response to the question \u201cWhat is a register?\u201d does Garcia explain what a \u201cmechanism\u201d is?\u00a0 No he does not.\u00a0 Neither does he explain what \u201canother mechanism\u201d might be.\u00a0 It is at this point the instruction \u201cuse your brain\u201d becomes extremely important.\u00a0 Garcia is credited with this instruction by his biographer.\u00a0 Check out the end of \u201cMind over Matter<\/a>\u201d.\u00a0 I get the implication here.\u00a0 Garcia really does know something, but he is not sharing it with us.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before Debbie dropped the \u201cProceedings of the Royal Society\u201d on my laptop, I cherished as my very favorite Garcia challenge something I found in his \u201cHints\u201d. The Q and A discussion that leads to the text I am about to type out for you starts under the heading \u201c4. SOUND (RESONANCE).\u201d on page 6<\/a>.\u00a0 The key text is on the next page. After discussing his theory of phonation Garcia poses the question \u201cHas this observation any importance?\u201d <\/a>and decorates it with a margin note: \u201cSecret of Tone-Colour\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

What Garcia says here is a much more inclusive statement than that margin note would imply:\u00a0 \u201cindeed initiates him (the singer) into all the secrets of voice-production.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Hold on there.\u00a0 What is the list of theories the singer must explore to attain initiation into \u201cALL<\/em>\u201d \u201cSECRETS<\/em>\u201d concerning \u201cVOICE-PRODUCTION<\/em>\u201d?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Glottal Closure<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. Timbres<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. Breath<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Now that we know the list, what are the secrets?\u00a0 Garcia knew what he was talking about.\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t he make a full disclosure of everything I want him to explain?\u00a0 I have my own ideas about that but I\u2019m going to go Garcia on you and keep them in the realm of my \u201cSecrets\u201d for future blogs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Now let\u2019s get to some of the words I didn\u2019t throw out the back door.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Garcia didn\u2019t seem to bother about \u201cpassaggio\u201d and happy I am he didn\u2019t.\u00a0 I\u2019ve been saying for years that it doesn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 That word describes only a few notes on the musical scale.\u00a0 Although I never found Garcia using this term, he does give advice about those few notes in \u201cHints on Singing\u201d at page 39<\/a>. However, on page 14<\/a> of the same book we find Garcia warning that certain expertise must be developed before the advice on page 39<\/a>\u00a0should be attempted.\u00a0 Garcia is even more cautionary in his Treatise and because the book is anything but free I quote it here:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0“We will not concern ourselves at first with the messa\u00a0di voce, which we believe needs to be treated only in one of the advanced chapters of this first part.\u00a0 To spin out the tones [messa\u00a0di voce] is to refine [polir] them, to give them their final polish [vernis]. In order to succeed in it, it is necessary to master the action of the lungs and that of the pharynx.\u00a0 The study of the messa di voce, if one indulged in it at the beginning, would succeed only in fatiguing the student without teaching him anything. The ability to spin out tones should in a way be the result of all the other studies; to be able to spin out tones well is to be a singer.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    It is on page 133 of part one of Paschke\u2019s translation of Garcia\u2019s big book <\/a>that we find the \u201cadvanced chapter<\/em>\u201d ii. Drawn out tones (messa\u00a0di voce, spianata di voce)<\/em> to which he alludes in the above quote.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to wimp out for now and not type it into this blog.\u00a0 Forgive me for putting it off, but that chapter will be the basis for more than a few blogs to come.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    The following appears on page 48:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0There is a small variation in wording that Paschke includes in the Appendix that has large implication:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a> <\/strong><\/p>\n

    Does anyone detect the inconsistencies in these extracts?\u00a0 Am I complaining?\u00a0 Do I want to say that Garcia must be confused about register and timbre because I see overlapping labels for what would seem to be one and the same thing?\u00a0 Not at all.\u00a0 I am sure Garcia was well aware of the risk that someone like me could nit-pick his text to death over his tendency to use the words \u201cchest register\u201d and \u201cclear timbre\u201d interchangeably.\u00a0 That would be if someone like me wanted to claim he was really an ignorant dummy whose memory is deserving of extinction.\u00a0 This is not true of me, but I have read dismissive writings that reveal the existence of living individuals who seem to wish Garcia would just be forgotten.\u00a0 So far, the literary output that I have read from such resentful pedagogical practitioners has yet to focus on this risky inconstancy.\u00a0 I\u2019m not hoping someone will take up the challenge and use my observations as a club with which to beat Garcia about the head.\u00a0 I\u2019m just saying that the risk has always been there.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    So what is my point?\u00a0 First, the \u201cpassaggio\u201d doesn\u2019t exist.\u00a0 The above quote from page 48 was enough for me to understand a long time ago that Garcia was telling us a lot about what a listener expected to hear from a tenor.\u00a0 In the first paragraph he explains that the listener did not want to hear the juvenile clear thin tones that we tenors are all capable of producing on and above the notes delineated by the label \u201cpassaggio\u201d.\u00a0 He tells us that we should always sing these notes with an application of \u201cSombre Timbre\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 In the second paragraph he instructs us to sing all the notes under discussion in the \u201cfalsetto\u201d register.\u00a0 Is this confusion or a hint about \u201cpassaggio\u201d?\u00a0 Neither.\u00a0 It is an invitation to take into account everything he wrote and understand the implications.\u00a0 At least, for this tenor, register and \u201ctimbre\u201d began to crystallize\u00a0as two words describing one function.\u00a0 When I got hold of the \u201cProceedings\u201d I began to understand that it was more complicated, but at least not MAGIC. When you add the extract from the Paschke\u00a0Appendix to this mix you are faced with Garcia placing men and women in the same harness.\u00a0 We are all under the restriction to avoid \u201cclear timbre\u201d on the same notes that are discussed on Page 48.\u00a0 The chronology is definitely important.\u00a0 He had not invented the laryngoscope\u00a0yet and had not presented his \u201cObservations\u201d in the \u201cProceedings\u201d.\u00a0 It is in this deleted text appearing in the Appendix of Garcia’s Magnum Opus <\/a>that I get the full picture.\u00a0 I understand now that before 1854 Garcia was leading his reader to infer that \u201cClear Timbre\u201d = \u201cchest register\u201d and that \u201cSombre Timbre\u201d\u00a0equals \u201cfalsetto register\u201d.\u00a0 This is not confusion, but a clarification.\u00a0 These magic words: \u201cLow Voice\u201d, \u201cChest Voice\u201d, \u201cChest Register\u201d, \u201cFalsetto Voice\u201d, \u201cMiddle Voice\u201d, \u201cHigh Voice\u201d, \u201cHead Voice\u201d and \u201cPassaggio\u201d are all just labels for note ranges in which different functional abilities of the human voice come into play. Garcia was quite careful to describe for us these functional abilities as precisely as he could.\u00a0 He completed this list of functional attributes of the vocal organs with the aid of his little mirror.\u00a0 His \u201cObservations on the Human Voice<\/a>.\u201d tells me to forget all that \u201cSombre\/Clear Timbre\u201d stuff and to now look to the vocal chords, and the observed abilities of those little ligaments for the productive cause of the registers.\u00a0 My inference is now: Chest Voice = complete glottal closure = the brilliant sound that is foundational to \u201cClear Timbre\u201d and Falsetto\/Middle\/Head Voice = incomplete glottal closure = veiled sounds that can be used to complement or reinforce \u201cSombre Timbre<\/a>\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Do the registers exist?\u00a0 Yes they do exist as words in our vocabulary that we can use to discuss note ranges.\u00a0 They do not exist as inviolate Holy Ground that must be entered through the narrow gates of Register Events.\u00a0 The dressing up of our voices,\u00a0ladies and laddies, with the sonic character expected from our voices in any of the registers is only really dependent on taste.\u00a0Garcia set his sights on answering the\u00a0question:\u00a0“What\u00a0do we use to\u00a0get it done?”<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Go back up to the two text variations on what to do about the note range: <\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\"\"<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    You will see that Garcia bases his arguments on taste.\u00a0 No one wants to hear a grown person sound like a \u201c<\/a>choir boy<\/span>\u201d\u2026.\u00a0<\/span> Wait, that is no longer true.\u00a0 Let\u2019s just say Garcia didn\u2019t want to hear such a sound come out of the mouth of a mature individual.\u00a0 Before he laid eyes on the glottis, Garcia was happy to mix girls and boys together in his advice about \u201cClear Timbre\u201d, but when he was able to see the better picture of the vocal function it became difficult to keep them together.\u00a0 He came to see that for boys \u201cSombre Timbre\u201d was the only necessary component with which to dress up the male voice in order to avoid the sound of a choir boy.\u00a0 Complete Glottal Closure and Incomplete Glottal Closure is independently applicable to the sound according to the male artist\u2019s choice.\u00a0 For the girls this is not perfectly the case.\u00a0 The pre 1854 advice mixing the sexes together had to be thrown out, because Garcia saw that, for the ladies, Incomplete Glottal Closure was the indispensable tool to use to avoid that unacceptable childlike sound.\u00a0 I’m sure he moved the discussion of the above note range out of timbre territory in his first edition into the register\u00a0region of his later editions because he knew that this conclusion changed the argument from timbre use to register placement which really gives away this \u201cTimbre\u00a0equals Register\u201d thing.\u00a0 I believe it is one of the truths he wanted to keep under his label \u201cSECRETS\u201d.\u00a0 <\/a>We singers are challenged<\/span> by Garcia to uncover \u201cALL\u201d such \u201cSECRETS\u201d by mastering messa di voce.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Who wants to take the challenge?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I started out to write a blog about the \u201cpassaggio\u201d.\u00a0 You know that thing that boys get to play or fight with while doing classical music.\u00a0 While I was processing a pile of words about the \u201cMagic Passage\u201d my wife, Debbie, found the \u201cProceedings of the Royal Society of London Volume 7\u201d in a Google […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1585,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,53,51,50],"tags":[80,62,67,309,79,78,63],"class_list":["post-1480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-garcia","category-singing","category-teaching","tag-be-a-singer","tag-da-capo-press","tag-donald-v-paschke","tag-garcia","tag-glottal-closure","tag-messa-di-voce","tag-voice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/Royal-Registers.jpg?fit=900%2C600&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2kj1l-nS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"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=1480"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3587,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1480\/revisions\/3587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}