Various Posts

Sometimes I wonder if the people involved in running the professional organizations think about the good of the profession over the long haul. It has only recently occurred to me that they do not. They don’t know how.

Thirty years ago I did a presentation at a meeting of The New York Singing Teachers’ Association in which I said that voice science was going to become very important in the profession and that all singing teachers would need to learn basic voice science to be relevant in the 21st Century. Many of the older teachers in the room simply laughed at me, seeing me as being young and foolish. The other people who were closer in age to me were skeptical. Several said they hated voice science and would rather avoid it even if it were useful.

I also said that the profession was going to be forced to deal with music theater and other styles back when there was still only classical training at a college level. I said that it was going to be impossible to ignore our own styles of CCM because economics would be such that the schools would have to address them in order to keep their halls full.

Along the way, people made fun of my studies of voice science and the time I spent with voice scientists, especially since I wasn’t teaching primarily classical students. I didn’t care.

Now I preach about functional training. I say that the profession is going to have to grapple with the fact that voice training is about physical training and that not understanding how we make sound in various styles is going to make teachers look like dinosaurs. These days I say that we are finally going to accept that training has not to do with repertoire before it has to do with coordination of the physical process of making a sung sound. “Caro Mio Ben” and “An Die Musik” not withstanding as great songs, we don’t need foreign language art songs to teach you how to sing “Out Tonight” from Rent.

I don’t believe that in 100 years we are going to be teaching “classical” voice at colleges. I don’t believe that we will be seeing jazz students learning Italian art songs to “prove” they can sing correctly. I do believe that we will be seeing teachers of singing who teach correct function applied to various styles of singing and that they will know how to adjust for each individual student, singer or situation based on solid objective information.

I won’t live to see this (unless I come back in another body that wants to sing……..not sure about that) but I know we aren’t going to go backwards. If, for making these statements, and taking the actions that I have over the decades, that means I am to still be a punching bag of the frustrated, the foolish, the unknowing, the disconnected, the disenfranchised, and the disgruntled, so be it. I’m not the only one who has taken blows. Robert Edwin has been beaten up just like me, and other colleagues as well. We know what we know.

Commercial Theater, at least in the big cities of the USA, operates like a business because it is one. The idea that art should be done because it’s art does exist but only those who are either extremely rich or altruistic can support art that loses money. The rest of the world is looking for art that makes money. That doesn’t mean it is less artistic. That was always true, it probably will always be true, at least as long as we live in a capitalist society. The artists who care about the quality of their work but achieve  success often have the greatest influence, sometimes not just over their own work but in the world at large. Many creative people, artists all, have used their success to help the world politically or in a humanitarian manner.

Arguing about whether or not belting is harmful is like arguing about whether or not MacDonald’s double cheeseburgers are harmful. It is like arguing about whether or not you should be able to drink a 32 once Coke because it’s there and cheap or maybe just the same amount of water. What seems obvious to the people who work in the music business is that people belt. They have always belted. Many of them do just fine belting. They don’t sing art songs to stay healthy. The idea that they should do so would strike them as being laughable, even if the head of some voice department at some big university argued otherwise.

The discussions which are for the good of the profession are much bigger than that. They are about where we need to go now and in the future as a group. No one is asking questions that are large enough to steer the ship through uncharted waters……except a few “outside the box” folks.

If you had a magic wand, and could do something that would ultimately be for the good of the profession, what would it be? Why? What would happen if you got your wish? I have already asked and answered that question for myself. Now it’s your turn.

“Open it up in the back, dear. Spread the bones in the back of your head.”

“Spin the tone down from the top. Don’t grip your jaw.”

“Let the sound release into your eyebrows more. Lift it into the forehead.”

“Support the tone from the groin. Go down in order to go up.”

“Keep the laryxn down.”

“Stop swallowing the tone.”

“Place the center of the pitch into the tone before you sing it.”

“Don’t drag so much weight into the top.”

“Activate the diaphragm on the inhalation.”

“Open the tone into the cranium as you go higher.”

“Sing as if the sound were wider than your cheekbones.”

“Don’t let the support go at any time. Be sure to keep the same amount of support on the soft high notes.”

“Keep the tone forward but stay out of your nose.”

“Make the tone brighter but don’t make it harsh.”

“Sound sadder.”
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How do you do any of these things? What can they possibly mean in terms of execution?
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Translated, they more or less boil down to:

Allow yourself to smile broadly and easily as you inhale, and let your face stay that way while you sing.

Come in as softly as you can on that note and let both your jaw and your tongue relax as much as possible when you enter.

Think of a happy feeling that lets your face muscles move up and out, and keeping that feeling, sing as comfortably as you can while maintaining it.

Use your lower abs more vigorously as you continue to hold the note and go higher. Let the jaw hang freely.

Think of a soft, cooing tone, relax your jaw and tongue, come in gently and allow yourself to sing gently on these low pitches. Think of being really relaxed and comfortable in your throat and mouth.

Let your tongue relax forward and out, smile, take some pressure off your throat, and exhale gently while you sing. Try to make the sound “nasty” without pushing anything.

Listen to the note before you come in and relax as you start the tone easily.

Take all pressure off your throat, allow the tongue to move, change your face, leave your mouth open only a moderate amount and back off as you go higher.

Allow your belly muscles to move out and forward as you inhale.

Keep your vowel sound as simple and undistorted as possible, allow the tongue, all the way to the back of the throat, to sit comfortably so everything feels easy.

Smile while you sing that vowel.

Keep your ribs stable during the exhalation and go up as softly as you can while staying comfortable.

Allow yourself to sing in a nasty sound but without squeezing in your throat or pushing for volume.

Keep the sound clear and smile a little bit while you sing. Keep your throat comfortable while you sing. Avoid squeezing anything.

Think of something that makes you feel sad. Sing, thinking about how you feel.
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If I were the terminology police, I would give out tickets to any teacher who uses the first phrases (in quotes) in a lesson.

We live in a profession that makes up words every day. Each teacher creates his or her own vocabulary. The words make sense to that teacher and (hopefully) to his or her students but not to another soul. We allow people to teach using jargon that makes no sense to the outside world. We do not have any punishment for those who charge a great deal of money and don’t really know what happens when something is wrong with a vocal sound. They can’t explain things accurately even when they do know because they do not have objective vocabularity to do so.

People who watch anything as fans have lots of opinions. Football, hockey, fashion design, architecture, movies, TV, theater, music, singing. If you find a fan, you will find an opinion, sometimes several opinions, sometimes very strong opinions.

If you have done the activity that you are watching, you might surmise how easy or difficult it is to do, but if you have only “dabbled” at it, you might underestimate the amount of energy it takes to be a master. By definition, a master is someone who has complete control over an activity. It can be assumed that the mastery was achieved through a great deal of effort, dedication, perserverence, study, trial and error and courage.

Opera fans are known to be very avid in their tastes.  It’s quite easy for one of them to say that Callas didn’t have a very pretty voice or that Sutherland couldn’t be understood. A fan of old rock, could say that the Beatles were no big deal and that the Stones were overrated. Anyone who has a favorite designer, composer, or movie star, can easily find fault with others that are not to their liking. In America, we have careers based on finding things to criticize. A critic, professionally, is expected by definition to criticize. We don’t call them “unbiased evaluators” do we?

People who aren’t very good at something don’t always know that. It is not unusual for someone to formulate an opinion of his ability based entirely on what he, and only he, thinks. I had a student who thought of herself as being quite skilled and expressive both as a pianist and as a vocalist but the experts with whom she worked (me for voice training and others for performance  training) found her to be exactly the opposite. When the topic was approached as gently and respectfully as possible by the consultants (separately), the student simply brushed off the comments and paid no attention. Eventually, she stopped her studies, something her instructors did not lament, never addressing any of what the people she had consulted had tried to broach. She either assumed they were all wrong, that they weren’t really experts after all and never considered in any way that there was something in those messages that she really needed to hear and acknowledge. Unfortunately, she teaches in both disciplines and I can only cringe to think how her lack of awareness affects her own students.

All of us see through our own lens. It is colored by past experiences, emotional patterns, psychological attitudes and intellectual understanding. Most people don’t know or recognize their own prejudices. It takes a very open person to see the biggest picture.

If someone is a great singer and you are only so-so, if someone is a successful artist and you have not been able to gain recognition, if someone is a spokesperson for a new organization and you are holding up a banner for the institutions that are old and fading, you could find yourself becoming an armchair critic, and perhaps even one who is very strongly opinionated. If someone comes up with an idea that you wish you had thought of first, or if someone gets acknowledgment for accomplishing something that you had hoped to accomplish but didn’t, it might make you quite angry, envious, jealous and vengeful. It would depend on what kind of character you had and how objectively you viewed your accomplishments in light of those by others.

Remember, no one is an island. No one accomplishes things alone. That it takes a village is true. The bigger the village, the faster and better the transformation. One is a very lonely number, indeed. If you are critical of someone or something, and you are alone or nearly alone, that criticism says more about you than what you criticize.

We live in a time when all things are in a state of flux. Some people can see the brave new world and some people are frightened by it. Some people see the unity of life and some people see only themselves and their own opinions. Some people understand that all of us are frail and human, and some people think they are invincible and perfect. Some people will give another person a break, or a lot of breaks, and others will turn their back from the outset.

The proverb he who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones is a good one. If you are an armchair critic, be careful who you criticize and why. Be careful of what you say. Your house is more see-through than you know.

Those of you who follow this blog regularly understand that I see voice as an aspect of spirituality. You know that I see the totality of being human as being connected to having a voice, being heard in your world, having your opinion count, speaking out and speaking up for your point of view, and raising your voice in all manner of human expression.

I value human sound, animal sound, natural sound. I value the sound of birds, cats, dogs, cayotes, sheep, whales, ocean waves, trees swaying in the breeze, thunder booms, and hard rainfall. I value crying, laughing, shouting and whispering. I value giggles, baby gurgles, hilarious laughter and the sound of little children playing. In fact, I appreciate sound as a true blessing of being alive.

If you have normal hearing you are the same as most other human beings. If you have a normal larynx, that is also true. Nearly everyone has two ears and a larynx with two vocal folds. If we are sound makers, coming in with a breath or a cry and going out with a rattle and a sigh, we are part of humanity. In this, everything and everyone is the same. Universally, if we are alive, sound accompanies us throughout our life journey.

It is also true, however, that each voice is as unique as a fingerprint. Each voice has its own acoustic fingerprint of formant frequencies. Each sound spectrum is ours and ours alone. You might sound something like another person but the machinery that analyzes voices will tell you that the small differences are there, even between identical twins. Forensic science can help identify the voice of one individual from another in order to help solve a case. In this, everything is different, everyone is different.

It is also true that all music is music. And, in fact, if you are familiar with the works of people like John Cage and some of his contemporaries, the line between that which is music and that which is not can be very arbitrary and blurred. Cage once did an entire concert that had no sound at all. To him, all sound and all silence was music.

So, where are the boundaries?

The boundaries are where we set them. Different people have different ideas but within each style there is some kind of consensus or there wouldn’t be a recognizable style. I know jazz when I hear it and I don’t confuse it with metal rock. I know a country singer when I hear one but I can distinguish her from someone singing gospel or blues. I can certainly hear the difference between a pop diva and a traditional Broadway star. I know what roots or folk music sounds like and I know that it isn’t the same as a song by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein.

Yes, of course, there is all kinds of overlap and many of today’s styles do not fit snugly into just one style. There are so many influences on music today, and things change so rapidly, that a style remaining unchanged is nearly impossible. Still, there are recognizable if subtle characteristics that need to be present or the style just “doesn’t sound right” to those who are experts in it. There isn’t anything worse than an opera singer doing a rock song in her “opera voice”.

Why it is that so many people who deal with singing cannot take this in, I don’t know. But they are out there. Unfortunately.

These three terms, “legit”, “belt”, and “mix” are used as normal parlance on Broadway and on the West End in London. They were terms created by the marketplace. If you audition for a Broadway show, you must understand these terms and the sounds they represent. If you do not, you won’t get a job.

If you think that singing all music in your “classical sound” is appropriate, you are living in a world that has nothing to do with the music business. Most of the people on Broadway, in jazz, in R&B, in gospel, in country or folk music do not know or care about “vocal technique” and many of them never have a single lesson in their entire lives until and unless they have a vocal problem. This has been true since the early 1900s. You can go back to the early movie musicals and find Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, both classically trained singers, and compare them to Joe E. Brown, Al Jolson, and the young Ethel Merman. If you hear all of their sounds as being “the same”, you need to get someone with educated ears to help you listen.

If you do not know that classical music has its roots in Europe in either the church or in the halls of the aristocrary and royalty, you should. If you do not know that most of the music indigenous to the USA (separate from the music of the original native Americans, who have their own musical traditions) then you should. The origins of the two overarching genres are totally different.

The reasons that all styles in CCM are grouped together is because of their common roots in the average person, not in the sophisticated, the educated, and the elite. In fact, Cole Porter was probably one of the first people of “upper class” status who had a significant and lasting impact on theater music and he was heavily influenced by the many immigrant composers whose families came here in the great influx of the late 1800s and early 1900s. Composers like Gershwin and Berlin had their compositional roots in the music of eastern Europe and that music was influenced by other cultures going back for generations.

The idea that all singing should be regarded as being the same is not only not grounded in the real world, it is detrimental to those who would train singers to get a job in any CCM style. Contrary to the idea that all musical training at a college level is part of a “liberal arts education” making the student a more well rounded human being, functional training has no such goals. In an applied degree program, if you are not training students to get jobs, what are you doing? Making them better at appreciating music? If you bring in casting agents and directors from Broadway and you do showcases for your graduates and you are not doing voice training geared at having a viable career, what are you doing? The confusion isn’t in the music business, because, truly, when you stand up to audition no one cares where you went to school, or even IF you went to school, they care how you sing the song. If you don’t know how to do what is expected in the audition, you won’t get the job. Period. If you are singing for a jazz combo and you can’t easily sit in and jam, you won’t be asked back up. If you are making a demo of country music and you don’t know how country music sounds, and you sing in your best English pronunciation, you won’t get a record deal.

The list of young singers who came to me to learn “CCM styles” after graduating from a college where they could not belt or belt/mix is very long. Why should this be so?

If any of this had to do with exclusively with one person, one approach, one philosophy, one kind of
training, that would be so revolutionary it would attract attention world over. Seriously, it would be nothing less than a miracle. The music is so diverse and it is necessary to know so much about each style to do it comfortably and authentically, that it would take lifetimes to be equally good at everything.

I admit to having absolutely no patience for the arguments of those who are “classically trained” who think they know more than the people doing the hiring.

Is Ella Fitzgerald less of an artist than Bryn Terfel? Is Tony Bennett less of an artist than Thomas Hampson? Is Bernadette Peters less of an artist than Natalie Dessay? Is country music less of an art form than a recital? Is gospel music less of an art form than opera? Is rock and roll less of an art form than oratorio?

Are those who sing jazz, pop, rock, folk, gospel, country and rap lesser artists than vocalists who sing opera, oratorio, art song, operetta, orchestral solos, or chamber music?

Who gets to decide that they are lesser, if they are? Who gets to define what is an artist and what is artistic? Who says this music is better than that? This artist is more of an artist than that one?

I dare you to answer these questions.

But people do answer them, sometimes definitively.  Sadly they invest great passion in their arguments. The question is, why?

This argument is a waste of time. Is a sunset better than a sunrise? Is the Atlantic better than the Pacific? Is skiiing better than ice skating?

The people in this world who have made life more interesting, more vital, more exciting, more inspiration, more fun, more MORE, are all artists. Master furniture makers, special chefs, fantastic craftspeople……all kinds of people are creative, courageous artists. Is Grandma Moses less valuable than a present moment painter? Is Billy Joel less valuable to society than Murry Perahia? No. Over and over, the answer is no.

I don’t want to have anything to do with a world that says Elvis was cheap entertainment pandering to the masses and Luciano Pavarotti was an artist because he sang opera. Luciano sang with all kinds of people. He was no classical music snob. Elvis was amazing. Luciano was also amazing. Placido Domingo recorded with John Denver. Both of them are amazing. You cannot possibly compare them.

The idea that being “commercial” is somehow a put down is exceptionally narrow minded and reflects a parochial point of view about both art and life. The world decides who it wants to put in its various “halls of fame”, not academicians, not educators, not critics, not writers and certainly not single individuals. Recognizing what the world has defined is a sign of broad awareness of things as they are, not as how any particular individual thinks they should be. There is a big difference.

Contemporary — goes all the way back to the beginning of the 20th century. Stravinsky was born in the 19th century but he died in the 70s. Copland was born in 1900 and died in the 90s. Both of these men are still thought of as contemporary composers, because we contrast them with composers born (and working) in the 18th, 17th and 16th centuries. In fact, modern music, going back to the 50s, is still very much a part of the present moment contemporary scene, alongside compositions being written at this very moment. A rigid definition of this word makes no sense, either. It is meant only to say that the music we hear now that is commercially based (but absolutely artistic) is not from the 19th century or earlier.

Contemporary Commercial Music: music theater (old and new), jazz, rock, pop, gospel, R&B, country, rap, alternative, and all the derivitives in between, perhaps also including world music ain’t classical folks. It is important, significant, deserving, worthy, important, valuable, and should be respected for the art that it is by everyone. There is no such thing as music that is “more artistic”.

It seems that classically trained tenors and female belters have a lot in common vocally. Many people recognize the similarity of production.

If we discuss function and can agree that the classical tenor is taking some version of his “chest register” or “chest voice” up above the break/passaggio, we could also agree that the female belter does the same thing. Of course, if you don’t “believe” in registers, or all you know about singing is based only on “breath support” and “placement” or “formant tuning” and “resonance strategies,” that discussion could be very difficult.

If, however, you listen to the sound as sound, it is unmistakable that the “edge”, the “ring” or the “carrying power” of both tenors and belters, male and female, is found similarly in both groups.

Generally, the male larynx is larger than that of a female and the vocal folds are thicker and longer. Often the neck is larger or longer as well. That’s the main reason their typical range is about an octave lower than the female. You could have a small framed man (Sonny Bono) singing with a low voiced female (Cher) in the same octave. Her voice was actually lower than his.

The intensity factor is a combination of volume and acoustic efficiency. Somehow or other the vocal tract has to get either smaller or tighter or both, in order to amplify the “highs” where the ring can be found (2800 – 3200 Hz). How that happens, indirectly of course, is up to the individual singer but when it happens it only works if the singer is managing that behavior with as little physical effort in the throat as possible.

It’s interesting to me that many of the men who teach belting are classical tenors and think they understand belting because of that one fact. As a tenor, the bigger the instrument the more “belty” it will sound. If you have a spinto or dramatic tenor, he could come close to belting just by changing his vowels to be more “spread” or “bright”. If he is singing without “holding the larynx down” (that won’t work!) and has decent high notes above A440, he could sound OK enough, especially in a Broadway context.

If, however, you have as a student a light lyric soprano who wants to belt in a rock band and has never developed her “chest register” or speaking voice quality, and has a sweet, pretty instrument, having a hefty tenor for a teacher could be very problematic. This situation is ripe for causing the student to push, get tired and generally misconstrue what she hears as example from her teacher and unless he is very experienced and knowledgable, she could end up as a terrible belter or having severe vocal problems. (And she will probably get blamed for this if it happens.)

Another bumpy situation would be for the same tenor to have a lyric baritone of a young age also seeking to belt, perhaps while also singing classically in a college situation. The gradation of tension on the instrument between a young baritone and a more mature tenor can be significant but the flexibility of the young vocalist’s instrument might allow him to push into the higher notes, again trying to imitate his teacher. A skilled and experienced teacher who can belt or not, as needed, would be the best guide.

What happens with a female who is a good belter but is also comfortable in a classical sound when she has to teach a classically-oriented young tenor, again, perhaps in a college situation. The vocal function might be very similar in the female teacher’s belt, but learning to hear the sound from outside as a student, as a young man, could be quite difficult to do. Students don’t learn to sort out overall sound quality from vocal function for quite some time. They tend to imitate the sound of the teacher (which is why I insist that teachers need to sing decently in order to be good role models) for quite some time.

I think the easiest set up for teaching is voice to voice, at least in beginners. In other words, a lyric coloratura is probably best taught by another lyric coloratura. I think a singer who wants to learn to belt is best taught by someone who has also learned to belt. I think someone with a “big” voice is best off teaching someone else with a “big” voice, preferably within the same SATB category. Of course, this is not always possible and even if it does occur there is no guarantee that good results will emerge based on these factors alone.

AND

The emotional character of belting has to be considered if it is to be a valid musical expression for the singer. We have lost the context of belting due to the stylistic influences in the marketplace.

We associate chest register at a loud volume with authority, power, strength, and passion. It can also be associated with anger, with masculinity, with forcefulness and with pain. We associate head register with all opposite qualities: submission, gentleness, delicacy, and intimacy. We associate it with comfort, purity, sweetness and clarity and with femininity and being soothed. A drill sergeant’s voice barks out marching orders in a loud chesty “hup, two, three, four”. If he did that in a voice like Tiny Tim or Marilyn Monroe, we would laugh. The reverse is true: If Marilyn Monroe shimmied up to a guy and purred out, “hello, big fellow,” in her best drill sergeant rasp and we would also laugh.

Whenever we hear a belt sound it should be associated with excitement, passion, exuberance, declaration, passion, intensity, and expansiveness. If you can’t tell what the emotion in the sound is, and it is loud for loud’s sake, the usefulness of the belt sound is left unharnessed, and the singer has to work twice as hard to be authentic while performing. Music that is written to utilize belting as an emotional expression of something that makes sense works better and is easier to sing and to hear. Finding the sound as function first and then hooking it up to music that suits it is a package. In order to do what’s best for both the music and the singer, all this needs to be in the toolbox.

Things change. Resisting change is futile. You can’t keep something static for very long, as sooner or later entropy sets in. Even the sun is going to die one day in the distant future.

Nevertheless, human beings seems to like the comfort of the known and the constant. We speak admirably about loyalty and dedication and consistency and continuity. We like to know that what was will still be, particularly if we like it.

The rebellious souls of the world have ever chaffed against the status quo, seeking to shake things up and create something that has never been. The traditionalists maintain the through line to the past, keeping things from falling apart, blowing up and (heaven forbid) disappearing altogether.

There are a few folks who respect the past and honor the new at the same time. I would say John Williams is one of those people. His is not considered a “serious” composer by the likes of Mr. Gilbert of the NY Phil or Mr. Dudamel of the LA Phil, and I doubt these organizations give concerts of his works. He does, however, write in a style that is instantly recognizable as his own and sounds pretty “classical”(at least to me). Just because the music has traditional melodic and harmonic roots doesn’t mean there isn’t anything about it that’s new or good. It’s expressive, it’s memorable and it appeals to a broad audience. Most current classical composers would give their eye teeth to have those things said about their work, but since they don’t write for a broad audience, they write for the elite and their peers, those comments are few and far between.

You can find artists like this in dance, in theater, and in fine arts. Thomas Kinkade is someone who was enormously successful. His paintings are also denigrated by the “art world” but lots of people bought them, paying a good deal of money for the originals. He laughed all the way to the bank. There are others in this niche.

It has always been so that some artists and some artistic work was aimed at educated people with sophisticated tastes, many of whom were also wealthy. Not all of the people who supported the arts over the centuries were or are educated about the arts specifically. In fact many of them made money in other endeavors, and for some of them, having “fine art” or supporting “the performing arts” was a way to show their peers that they had “good taste”. Is it a bad thing when someone who would not know good from bad from the proverbial hole in the ground buys a painting or commissions an opera just to show that he or she is “sophisticated”? The artists probably wouldn’t say so.

We live in a time of great change. Those who hold to the “old ways” are terrified of the enormous changes that are taking place all over the world. Things as they were for most of the last several centuries have been slowly changing but the pace is greatly accelerated now, if for no other reason than the planet has now about 7 billion inhabitants. Many people deny the changes that are quite apparent. Perhaps it makes them feel safer. Others would hasten the changes because they believe that things will be better once the period of transformation is over.

We have had classical music for decades that is hard to listen to and hard to perform. It resists staying in the mind, it resists fitting into a box, it resists all sorts of things. The audience for classical music continues to shrink world wide and artist managements are at a loss as to how to increase audiences and revenues. They encourage new artists to come in and give things a shift in perspective, thinking that this is the magic answer, but it has rarely been successful.

The boundaries between what’s new and what’s old are transitory. The boundaries between what is appealing to a mass audience and what appeals only to a small group of very elite afficionados is also quite wobbly. The shifts taking place are both good and not so good. It’s a tough time all the way around.

You can’t nail down what will arise out of the death of the old and the birth of the new, and going through the transition is usually not pleasant. It is inevitable, however, and resisting it only makes it more disconcerting.

The new production of “Maria Stuarda” currently at the Met has been heralded this week as a model of Bel Canto style and singing and is very successful for all involved. It allows new artists to sing in a very old model but with present moment adaptations. A nice blend of old and new. The NY Times had this to say:

“Directed by David McVicar, this production takes a traditional approach, but with some vivid colors and stark imagery to lend a contemporary touch to the period sets and costumes by John Macfarlane.” 

We could find, however, productions in which the opera’s time frame has been changed, the location has been changed, the attitudes of the main characters have been changed and the costumes reflect those changes. The music might be the same, but nothing else of the old remains. Sometimes these productions succeed and sometimes they are awful. You can’t decide without going to see for yourself.

This is true of Broadway productions. Sometimes they are faithfully revived, sometimes there are changes, even big changes. Sometimes that works and sometimes is it a disaster (like the recent revival of “On A Clear Day” which was changed a lot and failed, a lot).

I believe that singing should have its roots in the past and its trunk in the present and its branches in the future. I believe that all styles of singing should be respected and honored for what they were at their beginnings even if they have changed and evolved over time. I believe that traditions should be studied and understood before someone decides that change for change’s sake is a good thing. I believe you don’t really have the right to break with a past you don’t even know existed.

Food for thought, folks. Food for thought.

What, exactly, is a big voice? Is it just one that’s loud? Is it loud and unusual in some way? Is it “hefty”? What’s that? How do you know if a voice is big?

Today, especially in opera, there is a predominance of “big” voices in the USA like never before. I don’t mean to say that other kinds of voices that are not considered big don’t show up in major houses, but the more the voice is substantial, the more likely it is that it will be noticed.

Even the lightest voices, generally called lyric coloratura sopranos (a slightly erroneous description since any voice can do “coloratura” passages) aren’t so light as they once were. Since Dame Joan Sutherland arrived on the stages of the world 50 years ago with a voice that was both very big and very high, that category hasn’t ever been the same. Even the woman who dominate that category now, like Diana Damrau, Elizabeth Futral and Natalie Dessay, bear little vocal resemblance to Lili Pons, Mado Robin or Mady Mesplé.

There are myriad reasons why this trend might have emerged. Certainly, the size of the Met, opened in the mid-60s, is a factor, as is the idea that conductors let 80+ piece orchestras play at full volume and force a single human voice to compete with the musical instruments to fill a 4,000 seat house. Certainly the fact that we are into our fourth and fifth generations of people who grew up hearing loud amplified rock music as a norm has bearing on this situation. Repertoire has contributed its influences to expectations and categorizations, too. Some pieces ask for powerful, intense communication which doesn’t lend itself to soft, gentle production.

There are all sorts of theories about voice “size” (EX, S, M, L, XL, Plus?). Big voices take longer to develop, big voices are difficult to train, big voices are born rather than made, big voices are most commonly found in big people. We don’t really know if these things are always true, never true or true once in a while. We don’t know why some voices can be very loud more easily than others and we don’t really know for sure if a voice can develop “bigness” through training alone. Voices can be “too heavy” (another thing that is nearly impossible to define) which causes problems.

None of this applies in a straight forward manner, at least as far as I have encountered, to CCM voices. We don’t think of CCM singers this way, but we could. Surely, a voice that can belt away singing gospel songs at full tilt for hours at a time, filling a big church easily, even without amplification, is a big voice. Ethel Merman’s voice was not only brassy, it was very loud, and easily so. Would you consider Bruce Springsteen or Tina Turner big voices? They don’t seem to suffer from their rough, noisy singing and shouty delivery. Would you put Tom Jones, the 70s vocalist from Wales, there? I would. Kate Smith absolutely had a big voice. What about Susan Boyle?

It’s odd that the two worlds, CCM and classical, use such different descriptors for vocalists. As I frequently say, we all have only one larynx and two vocal folds, one throat and a mouth. The divergence reflects the vast difference between these two environments and the people who inhabit them.

In classical singing it isn’t a complement to be told, “You’re voice is quite small.” Several spectacular vocalists have not been “able” to have an operatic career because the general consensus by the powers that be was that they had voices that were too small to fill an opera house…..Elly Ameling, Dietrich Fischer-Diskau, Arlene Auger, Robert White (the tenor). I’ve never heard anyone in CCM say that X singer failed because his voice was “too small” to sing jazz or folk music. It CCM styles, does anyone really care about what size your voice is or do they just care how you sing?

This is another one of those curious “oddities” about singing that you only encounter when you are in the field for a while. It is one of many many things that you only learn about through exposure, as it is rarely written about in a serious manner, although many years ago I heard an excellent lecture about it by the late Craig Timberlake. Craig was a true scholar and pedagogue, someone who was both an excellent opera singer and concert artist and a music theater performer. He was faculty chair at Columbia for many years. He explained that the idea of “bigness” in a voice was strictly a 20th century construct. I never forgot that lecture.

If you are a vocalist who wants to sing CCM in any of its many styles, be grateful that you will not be judged by this somewhat arbitrary evaluation of your voice as if it were a pair of shoes or a coat that was the wrong size to be of any use. Be appreciative of the fact that you can sing and have a career with whatever kind of voice you have. It’s a much better situation for your overall mental health!