{"id":1864,"date":"2012-06-08T00:01:11","date_gmt":"2012-06-08T05:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rockwellblake.com\/blog\/?p=1864"},"modified":"2017-04-01T13:16:20","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T17:16:20","slug":"the-easier-messa-di-voce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rockwellblake.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/08\/the-easier-messa-di-voce\/","title":{"rendered":"The Easier \u201cMessa di Voce\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

I guess I should get back to the challenge with which I ended Royal Registers<\/a>. I call the \u201cMessa Di Voce\u201d (M.D.V) the Final Frontier of color management in classical singing. Renata<\/a>\u00a0made me explore it. I would love to have recordings of my lessons in which I was told to start the crescendo portion of the exercise by walking away from her piano and at the moment I knew I was at the halfway point to turn around and walk back to her piano in order to put my hands on the cover of her much loved\u00a0little grand at the softest part of the decrescendo. Having such a recording would make me happy for many reasons, one of which is that I haven\u2019t found a good \u201cYou Tube\u201d of M.D.V\u00a0that I can stick into this blog.<\/p>\n

Renata had many ways to get what she wanted from me, and I wish I had a recording of them all because I sure could use them today.\u00a0What I remember of the\u00a0inventive challenges that got me motivated, I use today on my students. “Messa\u00a0Di Voce” is among\u00a0my Renata memories.\u00a0Her\u00a0M.D.V.\u00a0excercise taught me a lot, and I didn\u2019t appreciate the greater portion until years after Red (Renata) died. I thought it was all about the length of time I could stretch out that infernally slow crescendo followed by the equally torturous diminuendo. I took the challenge and believed the game was, if she would have let me, to paint a marker on her living room floor at the point of my U-turn that first day of doing this crazy thing. Every lesson following, I would have placed a new marker at the more distant point from her piano that I was supposed to achieve with the result of practice. I was encouraged with almost every attempt, and proud to say that my lines of demarcation first reached the limits of her living room, then the dining room and finally penetrated deep into kitchen territory. I was disappointed that I never got to open the door of her kitchen and walk out onto her driveway or enter her garage or just walk off her premises to visit the Corner Store to purchase a Mars Bar while blaring at the cashier at full vocal throttle. It was a nice dream but we all have limits.<\/p>\n

I used to think that Renata\u2019s walking \u201cMessa di Voce\u201d thing had given me the best breath control I could have possibly developed, period. But with this exercise, Renata had, in fact, packed my pockets\u00a0FULL of tools. Many years later I stuck labels on them. I got the stickers from Garcia.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe need to master all the colors of the voice has caused us to improvise\u00a0the following exercise; we consider it one of the most useful which our experience has suggested to us. On a single note and with a single breath, pass gradually through all the timbres from the most clear to the most sombre, and then with another breath pass from the sombre timbre\u00a0to the clear timbre.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I plant my flag deeply in the process of this Garcia invention. I call this the halfway point on the way to discovering the secrets of vowel adjustment and the use of colors. Is it an easy process that we can just as easily forget about? After all it isn\u2019t \u201cMessa Di Voce\u201d. It does sound like a different game all together doesn\u2019t it? Let me tell you a story.<\/p>\n

Quite a few years ago I found myself in a city where a famous singer was giving a Master Class. I will not give you a name or any other definitive information because that famous singer is still walking the face of the Earth. Anyway, one day I passed by the room in which these master classes were being held and found a class in session. I quietly entered and sat in an empty seat in the last row. No one but the famous singer knew I had come in. After a while, that famous singer decided to ask the members of the class if there were any questions that those present might want to ask of the other \u201cmature\u201d singer that seemed to be hiding at the back of the classroom. I was invited to come to the front and stand before the class to field any questions that the class might have. Almost at once, Garcia became the subject of discussion. I wish I had a tape of those proceedings, but I did not have my recorder with me. Tenors are as tenors do. Things got really interesting when clear and dark timber became the subject of discussion, and I spoke of the exercise Garcia documented in the above quote. The result was inevitable. I had to demonstrate that exercise. This is the point at which the question\/answer session screeched to a halt. My colleague said to me: \u201cI\u2019ve had a career of \u201c##\u201d years and never knew anything about the things you are discussing.\u201d My impolitic response was: \u201cHaving a career does not require this knowledge.\u201d I think the class was dismissed at this point. At any rate, I learned to avoid similar circumstances, but from this experience I have the answer to the question I asked in the previous paragraph: No, the above exercise is not easy, and yes, it can be dispensed with, but at the cost of knowledge undiscovered.<\/p>\n

The student should need no more encouragement to try Garcia\u2019s exercise than Garcia\u2019s own words. It is in Royal Registers<\/a>\u00a0that I quote him challenging us to master \u201cMessa Di Voce\u201d and we will get halfway there by learning to do his exercise invention\u00a0I quote in the earlier portion of this blog.<\/p>\n

Is setting out to \u201cmaster all the colors of the voice\u201d and study \u201cMessa Di Voce\u201d an idle project? If you say yes, but you are vulnerable to persuasion, keep reading. I can\u2019t guarantee that you will change your mind, but even tenors have been known to do it, and yes, some tenors do have minds.<\/p>\n

As compared to \u201cMessa Di Voce\u201d there are some missing components to the above exercise which make it easier to do than M.D.V. The easiest to point out is volume. \u201cMessa di Voce\u201d requires a meticulously controlled crescendo and diminuendo. The above Garcia invention makes no reference to a change of volume. What he doesn\u2019t tell us to change, we don\u2019t have to change and we actually must not change. One vowel, one note\/pitch, one volume, one breath and one other unchanging vocal attribute. What is it?<\/p>\n

Hint:<\/p>\n

It is the one that Garcia came to better understand with his little mirrors.<\/p>\n

It is \u201cGlottal Closure\u201d. Garcia, with his un-\u201cMessa Di Voce\u201d color exercise trains our ears to hear all the possible and even the impossibly ridiculous color differences we can make with our instruments. Some might say that it is a precursor to \u201cExtended Vocal Technique\u201d. I know I\u2019ll have to write about this three word modernity at some point, and here I offer an introduction. Garcia and I would say his little exercise is intended to extend the color range of each vowel beyond the limits of the taste and the traditions as well as the requirements of the written music of the period of Garcia\u2019s life. Today we have new stuff written by composers who chafe at any restriction handed down by tradition on their creative talent, but Garcia even covers\u00a0the requirements of these upstarts. A singer just has to follow\u00a0Garcia’s teachings and the \u201cModern Composer\u201d will get whatever he wants. Wagner wanted Garcia to teach the singers that were debuting his music. Why should we think that Garcia would be insufficient for training the singers who will put themselves at the service of composers living with us today?<\/p>\n

He titled his book \u201cA Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing<\/a>\u201d. He edited his book to include his discoveries that postdate his original edition. That made his title retain its\u2019 validity. It is a \u201cComplete Treatise\u201d of what we need to know. Garcia put it all together<\/a> in 1855 and lived for another half Century dispensing the wisdom of his first half Century of life on Earth. I don\u2019t plan to have that long to promote this wisdom, but will do so for as long as I can. I have yet to discover anything that modern research has to add to Garcia\u2019s wisdom that improves or extends our understanding or the function of the human voice.<\/p>\n

Even though I still don’t have any examples of M.D.V I am comfortable\u00a0with, I\u00a0do have an interesting link on You Tube \u201cMessa di voce: Horne, Pavarotti, Sutherland, Bonynge\u201d that a friend, Jon Chatlos, forwarded to me. What a quartet!!! Richard Bonynge interviewing a trio of the best of the best, and what happens? Richard says:<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cGive us a beautiful messa\u00a0di voce. In other words, a messa\u00a0di voce starts piano an\u2019 a big crescendo and a big decrescendo.\u201d \u201cAnd so many singers can do the first half but they can\u2019t do the second half\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Fun isn’t it?\u00a0 No one actually does a full M.D.V but they do a Half M.D.V.\u00a0 \u00a0My wife tells me that I should embed one of the You Tube videos of me. That\u2019s because she loves me. There are some videos of my work on You Tube that I really like, but I don\u2019t want to make this blog about me. However I am always willing to make my Debbie happy. For you tenors out there, that\u2019s because I love her.<\/p>\n

I did propose a Reverse \u201cMessa Di Voce\u201d to decorate the end of my aria in \u201cL\u2019Occasione Fa Il Ladro<\/a>\u201d when first I sang it in Lausanne, Switzerland.\u00a0 I was blessed to have my favorite conductor ever, Bruno Campanella<\/a>, there to guide us through the Opera. At our first rehearsal I asked him if I could insert the M.D.V.\u00a0\u201cembellishment\u201d at the end of the aria. He said: \u201cLet me see it in context of the staging.\u201d\u00a0So I demonstrated how it would work in Ponnelle\u2019s<\/a> staging and I was happy to receive a blessing from Bruno after he recovered from his bout of laughter.<\/p>\n

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I loved working with that man smiling at you in the photo!! The rest is history. Some of that history has been posted to You Tube.<\/p>\n

The following video is for Debbie, and serves as an example of the sort of thing Garcia is talking about with “Messa Di Voce”.<\/p>\n