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Singing Schumann

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 19:31:07 +0100

More years ago than I care to mention I began an exploration of the song cycles of Robert Schumann with my long-time friend and collaborative pianist George Mann. We've been able to perform Dichterliebe a number of times, Liederkreis Op. 39 several times and Myrten two or three times. Yesterday we finally got around to adding Frauenliebe und -Leben to the list. George remains as always, but over these many years I've developed a standard wobble for my age. Even in spite of my deficiency, the power of this music is such that we were able give a moving performance to a group of fellow musicians.

In Richard Miller's book Singing Schumann, he makes the point that this is not Late Romantic music and must be sung without some of the Late Romantic excesses that are so much fun for singers. I think he's right, even though as George says, Schumann is probably the most over-the-top of the Romantics. To do a good job you just have to sing what is on the page, but you have to sing all of it, particularly the words. If you get to do so in the company of so talented and sensitive an artist as George, it is a very great joy. I am a very fortunate singer.

To Blog, To Facebook, and To Teach Children

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 15:04:41 +0100

I was ashamed to see how long it had been between my last two blogs. I've been enjoying creating and using the Studio's Facebook page, and blogging has kind of taken a back seat. Anyway I've had a recent reversal in my thinking about teaching voice to children. A mom who was raised with the Royal School of Music Achievement program was not satisfied with the training another teacher was giving her daughter. I had just become aware of RSM/Carnegie Hall program because NATS has recently formed an alliance with them. It's one of the sessions I plan to attend in Orlando next week at the national conference.

I agreed to teach the little girl, who is only seven, and I'm finding her a very satisfying student. She is talented and very bright, and her former teacher had already taught her to sing with the over resonated sound that is common in children who sing musical theater. Using that training as a base has allowed this very young singer to start making some remarkable sounds without any hint of stress or strain in the voice. I'm delighted, and I'm looking forward to teaching other singers who are younger than I would formerly have considered.

Don Giovanni vs. The Flowering Tree

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 14:50:13 +0100

I’ve seen two operas in the past few weeks, and both were beautifully performed, Mozart’s Don Giovanni by the Atlanta Opera and John Adam’s The Flowering Tree by the Atlanta Symphony. One was an utterly satisfying experience, and the other quite a bit less so. Yeah, well, it was Mozart wasn’t it? Well, yes, it was, but John Adams is a very fine composer who has written some operatic works that look as if they will stay in the repertoire – a pretty major feat without having to be Mozart.

I’m not really interested in comparing the composers. Mozart is Mozart, and the music for The Flowering Tree was beautiful. The thing that has kept me thinking about the two experiences was the differences in the concept of what opera is supposed to do. In Don Giovanni there is a complex story that can be read on many levels, as it has been over its more than two centuries. There is also a librettist with a very humane perspective and a sense of humor about the human condition. There are musical descriptions of the characters in the opera that deepen our understanding of the characters – some of it is ironic, some even melodramatic. It is opera about human beings and their various reactions to evil.

In The Flowering Tree it seemed to me that while the Indian folk tale offered some interesting characters who react to events that are caused by tragic circumstances or thoughtless behavior or awe towards powerful people, it did not humanize the characters in the way Da Ponte’s libretto did. In Don Giovanni people of all conditions in life have humanity; in The Flowering Tree I thought it seemed less so. The mother disappeared after apologizing for beating her daughters in mistaken anger over their behavior. She seems more like a caricature than a person of real humanity like Leporello, Masetto, or Zerlina.

The prince, who by turns is a spoiled brat, a sleepwalking depressive, and the person who knows how to solve the problem, reminds one of poor Don Ottavio, the weakest character in Don Giovanni. Even so he does not show any growth as a person. He recognizes his beloved Kumudha and brings her back to her human form, and we hope they live happily ever after. His sister, whose thoughtlessness precipitates the separation of the two lovers, acts to reunite them, but she doesn’t go out to look for the lost Kumudha; it is her maids who bring her the information upon which she acts. Again, we hope that now that she is Queen of another city, that she has some adult ideas, but we don’t know that from the opera. Things seem to happen pretty randomly in this story. Maybe I just don’t get it; it was a long time before I clued in to Swan Lake.

Don Giovanni offers characters who actively oppose evil. Perhaps their level of commitment to this opposition varies from one to another as does the level of their fascination with evil, presented in the very attractive form of the Don, but all of them eventually oppose him. Leporello is the least and last, and Donna Elvira is the most direct and the longest in opposition. She may actually be the heroine of the story even though she often is presented as a ludicrous character. When one is watching a really good performance of Don Giovanni, one is free to contemplate the motives and actions of a group of interesting people. I really think that enlightening us about ourselves and the world in which we live is an excellent thing for opera to do.

It may be that if I study The Flowering Tree as much as I have Don Giovanni, I will find that the use of such mighty forces as it requires leads to as much thought provoking drama. Right now, I don’t think so. I thought that it had some nice music, but it seemed to exist more to create a large work for orchestra, chorus, and soloists than for any dramatic reason. It seems to me that keeping opera on a human scale is a better use of large musical forces than the Wagnerian ideas of philosophical discourse in music. It may be that the idea of transformation in The Flowering Tree is what attracted John Adams to the story. There is lots of transformation. I don’t know the score well enough to know if he was taking the idea into the orchestra and working things out in a Wagnerian manner.

The orchestra was clearly the star of the show, which is nice for the ASO, but it leaves question about why a singer would want to learn the roles. Eric Owens, Jessica Rivera, and Russell Thomas are all wonderful singers who did great jobs in what they were given to sing – particularly Jessica Rivera, who did have the best music. Sometimes singers are criticized for wanting to show what they can do rather than paying attention to the drama. It seems that this opera resulted from a composer who wanted to show what he could do with music for an opera without thinking about the story the way he did in Dr. Atomic and Nixon in China.

I’m not sure that The Flowering Tree is an opera in which human character is examined, described, or expressed in music. Perhaps that is why I see such a lack in the whole work. The Atlanta Opera’s The Golden Ticket, based on the famous children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory suffered from a similar lack of story and characterization. There was lots of nice music there, too, but not much in the way of interesting human characters. I guess I’ll just have to like Don Giovanni better.

Atlanta Lyric's Millie

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 13:06:27 +0100

Last week my husband and I trekked to Marietta to see Thoroughly Modern Millie at the Strand Theater where the Atlanta Lyric was producing the show. I have a lot of fondness for the Lyric, having been around at the founding of the Southeastern Savoyards, and I thought that in most areas they did a fine job with Millie.

Everyone in the show was in great form to do justice to a really fun show. I was so happy to see Andy Dahn, whom I remember as a Shorter student at the NATS State Student Auditions. The dancing was particularly brilliant, and the staging and sets made a teeny-tiny stage look very impressive and full without being crowded.

Far and away the best singing in the show was heard from the spectacular Marsha Dupree as Muzzy. Hers is a real voice, and I hope we'll get to hear her again with the Lyric. There were other good voices in the show, but most of them were drowned out by a way-too-loud orchestra. Since no conductor or players were visible, I guess the orchestra was recorded, which makes volume issues even more ridiculous. During the whole first act singing and dialog were buried under too much orchestra. In the second act the tech staff coped with the problem by turning the mics on the performers up, rather than the band down, and that made for some physically uncomfortable sound levels.

All in all it was a good show, and having Marsha Dupree onstage is a step in the direction that I'd like to see many musical theater productions go. So few young singers have even heard good models of real voices that have not been "produced" in the studio, that it's no wonder they have such limited vocal aspirations.

Todd Skrabanek's Incredible Concert

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 15:50:05 +0100

Saturday night we headed over to Glenn Memorial on the Emory campus to hear one of Atlanta's best pianists. Todd Skrabanek does not do recitals very often because he's so busy accompanying the ASO Chorus, Glenn Memorial choirs, and lucky students from Agnes Scott and Reinhardt. Todd is never one to let five notes do when fifty may be played, and all four of the works on his concert were stunningly brilliant.

My favorite was the Bach Partita No. 4 in D, BWV 828. Not only were all the notes there, but all the lines were clear and distinct, each dance had its own character, and the aria was achingly beautiful. Next to this piece Todd placed the Cesar Franck Prelude, Chorale and Fugue which is not a favorite piece of mine since I find Franck's Wagnerian take on Bach a bit limited in thought and a bit grandiose in flavor. Its placement next to the Partita, though, brought out the things that Franck did understand about Bach. Watching Todd play the piece, especially the cross hands Chorale when the left hand plays the bass and the melody about three octaves apart, was an experience in itself. Okay, I even liked the Franck!

Next on the program was a piece by one of Todd's former professors at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Todd said he'd had the score for about twenty-five years before getting around to learning it, and I'm so glad I was there to hear the results. Andrew Rudin's Museum Pieces is a twelve-tone work that can be played musically and beautifully. In some places it has a Bartok flavor that I liked very much. I will be looking for a recording of this piece, and if there's not a commercial one available, I will be nagging Todd for a concert recording. It was very special.

Todd ended with the Chopin Scherzo No. 4 in E, op. 54, which was another brilliant piece, and when we wouldn't stop clapping he encored with one of the Chopin etudes, C# Major, I think he said. It was a virtuoso ending to a fabulous evening.

When to Start Singing Lessons

Sun, 07 Aug 2011 21:15:25 +0100

Recently I was asked a question that comes up every few months about when a child should start taking voice lessons. In this case the child is six-years-old, loves to sing, and stays pretty much in tune. Her mom wondered if her child should have voice lessons. I did not have the opportunity to hear the child, but I would hesitate to suggest lessons for a child that young. Even though today children start voice lessons much earlier than the 16 years that used to be the standard, I really think that 12 is about as young as I would want to teach even a very talented child.

What I recommend to parents is that they look for a good children's choir, either one in a church or other religious institution that has a good music program or an independant choir like Atlanta's Young Singers of Callanwolde. In such a choir musical training and languages will be presented along with vocal training that is sensitive to the ages of children. Achievement is usually recognized by promotion to more skilled levels within the program, and best of all children are allowed to have a wider view of the singing world. If there really is no such opportunity for children in your community, you might talk to a voice teacher.

Children of elementary school age should be singing in school, but with the priorities that are current in too many public schools, most children are not given the opportunity to learn about music in culture or to have any kind of vocal training. It is not surprising that children grow up without having vocal models other than what they see on television. It is impossible for children to understand that when they see kids singing on tv that there are battalions of technicians who are as much responsible for the product as the singing child.

There are also a number of programs to let children have musical experiences, sometimes with their parents as in the Suzuki strings and piano programs. Kindermusik is very good for young children and their parents, and many college offer Orff and Kodaly music programs. Sometimes community children are invited to participate to help the college students learn how to teach these music education programs. Kodaly is all about learning music by singing, and Orff developes children's ability to improvise and learn about music with voice and instruments. I wish that programs like these were in every elementary school in the country.

So to answer the question, I think that your child is an individual who should have voice lessons when s/he is ready. I can always tell when a student comes to audition for me if s/he has participated in an excellent children's choir. It shows in their love of music and singing, in their skills, and in their understanding of how to make a song something that people will want to hear.

Alcina at Brevard

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 01:55:12 +0100

It's been probably 25 years since the last time I visited Brevard. Inge was still teaching there in the summers, and I was young and foolish enough to slide down Sliding Rock. I'm not sure that I ever saw an opera there, and when I realized that they were doing Alcina, getting myself there was more about seeing a Handel opera that I've never seen than really having high expectations. Well, no matter how high my expectations might have been, they would have been justified by the production we saw. If the performance we saw were not the last of this production, I'd say, like Bill Bryson about Durham Cathedral, "Go, go now! Take my car!!"

At first we were worried. The show was being done in the small black box theater on the college campus. There were six chairs and two electronic keyboards for the orchestra. The opera director came out to tell us that the conductor was also the director, which rarely is a good thing. Then the cast came out to do tai chi exercises before the opera, and they were all dressed like characters in a Japanese anime.

All these things turned out to be really excellent ideas. Canadian Patrick Hansen did a fabulous job of conducting from one of the keyboards, and the direction was brilliant. Keyboards when set for harpsichord actually are kind of nice in that they don't have the tuning issues that the real instruments have. Occasionally Hansen would set his keyboard to sound like a theorbo, which it did convincingly enough to make me look around for the theorbo player. The other keyboard was also set for harpsichord to play in the orchestral parts; Hansen played the recitatives. With a string quartet and two oboes, the score did not suffer a bit, and the sound was quite full enough both for the room and for the young voices. I heard exactly three wrong notes in the entire nearly 3 hours of playing. Bravo to them all!

The direction took advantage of the stylized look of Japanese theater without trying to be authentically Japanese. Using the fantastic look for a fantasy opera made great sense. The set was simple relying mostly on three fabric panels, twenty paper moon lanterns, and a slanted trapezoidal platform in the center to allow for variation of the levels onstage. Very effective lighting was designed by Joe Hodge. Because the room is small, sometimes the action was happening within a yard of the audience or the oboists' backs. The opera requires that trees and animals be changed back into people at the end of the show, and Hansen envisioned the trees as several very fit young men wearing hakama, body paint and twigs from trees on their fingers. Using these "trees" opened up possibilities for stylish movement to fill up some of the non-singing moments.

The singing was magnificent from the two sopranos, Melinda Whittington as Alcina and Emily Brand as Morgana, and very good from the two mezzos, Christina English as Ruggiero and Grace Newberry as Bradamante. Melinda Whittington is a name to remember. Her voice had the size, the quality, the legato, the flexibility, and the passionate intensity that the role requires. Emily Brand's coloratura was stunning though the quality of the voice was not quite as glamorous. Elise Jabrow and Garry McLinn both did very good work, though McLinn sounded a bit sung out on his high notes.

The entire production was a wonderful addition to my collection of baroque operas that I've heard or sung. The one that I sang back in the late 70's was Orfeo, and that was a tale of woe for another blog. Let me just say that the orchestra parts and vocal scores did not match. Woe and sorrow indeed! The other Handel opera that I've seen was Rodelinda at the Met with Renee Fleming. Oh yes, that was the other good one. Two out of three is not bad, so I'll keep on taking opportunities to hear every one that I can get to.

One more thing I want to learn about this production is what edition they used. On the stands it looked like an academic product that may not have been published. Yes, I peeked. I thought it was very tight and extremely dramatic, so I hope it goes on to many future performances.

NATS in Charlotte

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 14:35:22 +0100

I've been attending the NATS Summer Workshop on musical theater voice in Charlotte, and it was well worth the time and the money. The sessions were excellent especially the auditions workshop by Terrence Goodwin, which offered a lot a specific information about auditioning in New York. I don't think New Yorkers realize how mysterious the process is to those of us out in the rest of the world.

The highlight, though, was the Craig Carnelia master class. The techie people made him wear a body mic, so we did not have to rise up in a body to get him to be audible -- possibly by talking to us via the mic rather than to the others onstage with him. Gr-r-r! because we REALLY wanted to hear what he was saying. He is incredibly articulate and thoughtful, and he knows his business. My project when I get home is to find out all I can about his shows and his music.

The four students in the class were all from Elon University and students of Catherine McNeela, who did a session the next day on how she trains them. They all know what they are doing, and they sang well even though they were pretty nervous. Carnelia applied acting class techniques to these students to get them out of "performance" mode, in which they were glib and cute, and into acting, where they were real. One poor young fellow did not realize that he was supposed to be angry singing his song, and wicked Carnelia really punched his buttons to make him mad, but he was so much better on the return to his song. The fascinating thing was that vocal issues, like flatting, disappeared when they did as he wanted them to do, so, no, I don't think this is a technique for beginning singers. I think you have to be able to sing before you can try to act the song.

Normally I skip panel discussions, especially at the beginnings of workshops because generally they are bios (which I've read in the program) and descriptions of what they will do in their sessions (which I've read in the program). I did come to this one, and although they did do those things, NATS president Don Simonson had thought up questions the answers to which I wanted to hear. Whoopee!

Now, since I paid my money to attend the workshop, and you reading this did not, I will not relay here everything they said there, except for the answers to one of Don's questions: What is the quickest "deal breaker" when you hear a singer in an audition or a class? In other words, what will make you say no to a person whom you're considering for a chance to work with you or to learn from you? Here's the list

1. Being an ass - and this includes being an ass in the hall outside the audition room. The monitor out there is someone who works for the person for whom you are auditioning, and the monitor will tell his/her boss how you behaved in the hall. Think of the first episode of Suits.
2. Inflexibility
3. Rudeness
4.  Craig Carnelia had a list: putting your stuff all over my audition room, bad song choice, not enjoying other people's work, out of tune singing, poor personal hygene (he actually said smelliness)
5.  Bad attitude when you walk in, which includes not projecting a professional level of confidence
6.  Inability to make a choice
7   Know it all attitude
8.  Unwillingness to try something
9.  Arrogance

So it was a good workshop. As far as technical things go, I'm pretty confident that what I'm doing is in line with what the powers that be want in an audition, which is, of course, the reason that I come to these workshops. I was able to get a lot of information about repertoire, which I so need. The most incredible resource is coming out right now, www.thebeltbook.com developed by Ann Evans of Seattle. She expects to have the whole thing up in about four more weeks, but what's up now is terrific. It is such a wonderful database of songs and information about songs. There are good people out there doing major good deeds!

My Other Voice Teacher

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 17:18:12 +0100

When I entered the DMA program at the University of Georgia, I was in my mid-40's. We middle aged students are just terrible in grad school; we are not afraid of anyone, not even the professors! I went to UGA determined that the voice teacher with whom I would study would be my friend Dr. Gregory Broughton. I had sung with Dr. Broughton and heard him sing, and I was certain that he was the teacher for me. I was so right! Incidentally, for anyone choosing a voice teacher, do everything you can to hear your candidates sing, or their students, then meet him or her. Not every voice teacher is right for every student. Sometimes I send students to other teachers myself, if I feel that the fit is not right.

So eventualy Greg and I were starting a semester together. We talked about repertoire that I had done. A lot of my repertoire was in German and Italian, and I admitted that French was my weakest language. So Greg says, "Good, we'll start with an all-French recital!" Yeah, well, my French got a lot better, and it was a fun recital to learn because nearly everything on it was 20th century music: Poulenc, Satie, Duparc, Hahn, Charpentier, and Debussy. I lucked out further when Dr. Glenda Goss presented a seminar on the symbolist poets used in song settings, and most of them were part of this recital. That class was a highlight of my time at UGA.

People walking down the hall where Greg's office is would stop to look in the window because they wanted to see what on earth was going on. We were loud, and we laughted a lot (also loudly) during my lessons because we do not speak the same vocal language at all. It sounded like those couple's therapy sessions where one of us would say to the other, "What I think I hear you saying is. . ." We had to translate our two vocal languages to understand each other, but it was fine because we were both after the same vocal ideal.

It is wonderful to study voice when you are in mid-career, particularly with a new voice teacher who speaks a different language. You have to re-evaluate your own thinking, and you have that blessed outside ear making sure that you really are doing what you thought you were doing.

The Poulenc Le Travail du Peintre was really a little low for me, but it was a good thing to do not only because the poetry is about the painters who were Poulenc's contemporaries in Paris -- and that was fascinating to research -- but also because I'd done so much coloratura work over the years that I had rather neglected my lower voice. Greg got me not only back in shape but into parts of my voice that I had not used so much. I loved working on Verdi's D'amor sull'ali rosee and feeling the spinto part of my voice really grounded and strong.

The next recital had no French whatsoever on it. Instead I learned Dvorak's Moon Song from Russalka in Czech. Luckily Greg had gone to school with Dr. Timothy Cheek, who was in process of writing his so valuable Singing in Czech and who coached my diction by telephone from Texas. Along with that was Rossini's La Regata Veneziana (one of the all-time-most-fun song cycles), Tommy Joe Anderson's Visions, and five of the Songs for Leontyne by Lee Hoiby. It was a nice balance of lyric coloratura and spinto warmth.

Eventually I completed all the requirements and graduated with my terminal degree. I was glad to be finished with driving to Athens, especially since at that time I was teaching at Brenau in Gainesville, and the Atlanta-Gainesville-Athens triangle trip was getting really old. I was not glad to be leaving the excellent people with whom I had the chance to study, like Dr. Goss, of course, but especially Dr. Lewis Nielsen, now gone off to Oberlin, who finally gave me to understand that there are real artistic reasons for why things happen harmonically. Bless him for showing me how terrible my earlier theory training was, and bless my wonderful committee chair, Dr. Mary Legler, who mentored me through the 400 pages of my spectrograph paper, and most of all bless my dear friend and voice teacher Dr. Gregory Broughton.

Concerning "The Dome"

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:28:01 +0100

Back in the 1980’s when I first heard Richard Miller speak, he was talking about the misconceptions so many people had about vocal function that were caused by the figurative language that many teachers used when talking about the voice. Mr. Miller compared the common terminology to the anatomical reality with a great deal of humor, and those of us listening to him laughed until we cried. Those lectures became a series of articles in the 1994 volume of the Journal of Singing.

At that time most teachers talked to their students about how the experience of singing felt to them in the teachers’ own bodies. Since no two people feel everything exactly the same way, it is hard to communicate with clarity, and the creative language could get pretty flighty. Mr. Miller went to great lengths to describe in physical terms exactly what was actually happening during various vocal events. The comparisons with the commonly used descriptions were often really very funny. The idea that many choral singers have that their diaphragms are located in their abdomens comes from this kind of non-specific language.

One concept that Mr. Miller (he actually was Dr. Miller, but he preferred “Mr.”) dwelt on at some length was the idea that the soft palate should be pulled strongly upward as singers try to reach high notes. It was a very commonly held idea, and the imagery was that of a spacious dome formed at the top of the throat by the raising of the soft palate. I can understand why singers and teachers would speak of such a thing, because we are so intently aware of our singing mechanisms that we can feel a small motion as if it were a large one. A quarter-inch upward movement of the larynx can make one feel as if the larynx were up between one’s ears.

My own experience with trying to raise the soft palate to sing high notes came when I was singing Traurigkeit from Mozart’s Die Entfürung aus dem Serail. In that difficult aria Constanze has several phrases that begin on the second B-flat above middle C, and I was struggling with them. Inge had me purposely relax the soft palate and think of lowering it (who knows if I actually did lower it) before singing the high B-flat, and it worked like a charm – for me and later for my students. Not only was I able to nail the pitch perfectly every time, but the entire aria became much less tiring to sing. That experience has made me prefer the relaxed soft palate in most cases. I certainly don’t think of it as the one true technique, but I prefer it generally.

Observation of two famous sopranos of the 1970’s and 80’s further supported my view that a relaxed technique is generally better than a tense one for the soft palate. From what my teacher told me about being in the esteemed teacher Estelle Liebling’s studio, I believe that Liebling taught “the dome”, and I also believe that it was that technique, at least in part, that caused Inge’s mother Dorothée Manski to pull Inge out of the Liebling studio.

Mdm. Liebling’s famous American student was Beverly Sills, and those of us who followed Miss Sills’ career saw that toward the end she had to stretch her mouth open to such an unattractive width that stage direction had to work out ways for her to cover her mouth in operas. You can see her do it, with great dramatic success, in her many videos. I think that she was trying to create the dome with muscles that had been stretched so much over the years that they needed extraordinary stretching to accomplish in late middle age what had been easy in her 20’s. By contrast Joan Sutherland found her high notes without such maneuvers, and Miss Sutherland’s career lasted several years longer because of what I believe to be a more relaxed approach to high notes.

I think that Mr. Miller was right in saying “Tell them how it works, and let them have their own sensations.” I believe that Inge Lundeen was right about the relaxed soft palate, and that is how I teach my own students today.