Vibrato

Perhaps my perspective on this subject is different from other people’s because when I was young we owned a turntable that played 33 rpm, 45 rpm and 78 rpm records.  I thought this was cool and tried playing records at the wrong speeds.  The most revealing experiment came when playing 45s at 33 rpm.  We had quite a few of these.

At 45 rpm every singer sounded mostly the same as the others.  At 33 rpm all had slow, very annoying vibratos except Patti Page—Tennessee Waltz—who it seems had no vibrato.  At the slower speed she sounded like a normal baritone.  I concluded from this experiment that singers all have vibratos, with certain exceptions, and that a well-produced vibrato wasn’t actually heard by the listener.  If you’re hearing it, something is wrong.  These were not opera singers.

It turned out when I arrived at vocal pedagogy school that there existed a whole book on this subject which I cannot find on Amazon.  There is a different one if you're interested.  Scientific instruments were applied to a large repertoire of opera recordings and the results displayed on graphs.  These are called sonograms.  The unavoidable conclusion was that all famous opera singers have a vibrato, that it is present all of the time on virtually every note they sing, even when they are sliding or moving from one pitch to another.  The human brain integrates this into a single note.  The vast majority of people do not hear this pitch fluctuation.  This vibrato is about a half step wide and very regular in its pulse.  You don’t have to wonder—you can see it on the chart.  

Here is an article from 1929:   By adding the component of modern technology they verified this conclusion at 95% of all opera singer notes.  The public likes a vibrato.  “It can not be just happenstance that vibratos are not only admitted, but required, in opera.”

To sound like a trill the vibrato needs to extend to about a whole step when the brain no longer integrates it into a single pitch.  Trills must be carefully and painstakingly taught because it is not natural.

Things can go wrong with this process.  A vibrato can be too slow which translates into a wobble.  It can also be too fast or irregular.  You will not get famous in opera if there is something wrong with your vibrato.

People seem to imagine that what they are hearing is what they are getting.  It isn't.

In my time in pedagogy school I observed quite a number of famous voice teachers at IU, and I don't remember any of them referring directly to vibrato.  I think an adult singer naturally develops a vibrato without being taught it.  They are taught to support the breath from low in the abdomen, and perhaps this is the feature of a skilled singer that creates the natural, even vibrato.

In the past I said:

In case you didn't know, the average opera singer has a vibrato that causes the pitch to waver for about a half step, or the distance between c and c# if you don't know what a half step is.  It wavers half of this pitch above and the other half below the intended pitch.  Listeners generally imagine the pitch to be somewhere in the middle of the wavering sound.  It is only your imagination that makes this a precise pitch.  So making comments about the singer being sharp for the whole aria may only indicate that your ear is interpreting the vibrato sharp.  Is she sharp?  Yes.  Is the exact same note also flat?  Yes.  Some singers push energy to the upper part of the vibrato or the lower part.  Pitch wavering is the same but energy is unbalanced.  Maybe your ear hears this as sharp or flat.  They aren't giving up their vibratos.  10/8/17

P.S.  Here is an excellent illustration.

The term tremolo can also refer to an ornament that is unrelated to vibrato.

Just saying

In case you didn't know, the average opera singer has a vibrato that causes the pitch to waver for about a half step, or the distance between c and c# if you don't know what a half step is.  It waves half of this pitch above and the other half below the intended pitch.  Listeners generally imagine the pitch to be somewhere in the middle of the wavering sound.  It is only your imagination that makes this a precise pitch.  So making comments about the singer being sharp for the whole aria may only indicate that your ear is interpreting the vibrato sharp.  Is she sharp?  Yes.  Is the exact same note also flat?  Yes.  Some singers push energy to the upper part of the vibrato or the lower part.  Pitch wavering is the same but energy is unbalanced.  Maybe your ear hears this as sharp or flat.  They aren't giving up their vibratos.

A vibrato becomes a wobble when the speed of wavering slows down.  If the vibrato becomes too wide in pitch, the mental integration can disintegrate and the note can actually sound like two notes.

Zwischenfach

Having completed my discussion of operatic singer types, I have begun to wonder if there is anything I left out.  Coloratura bass, not unknown in the Baroque era, is one.  Baroque coloratura was applied indiscriminately to virtually everything.

And there is this mysterious German term:  Zwischenfach.  It translates "between category."  This is hard to describe.  People write dissertations on this.  I notice in the German language version of Wikipedia that it has no entry of its own but comes up in entries for both individual male and female singers.

In German there is a very detailed and specific set of categories, and then everything is squeezed into it.  Anything that crosses into two categories is a Zwischenfach.  Two examples are Kundry in Parsifal and Venus in Tannhäuser.  These roles are basically mezzos with high extensions.   It's possible that the category bass-baritone is itself a Zwischenfach.

I'm going to tell my opinion now.  It is nice to imagine that things fall into tidy discreet categories the way they do in the German Fach system.  In reality they don't.  I like, for instance, to claim that Maria Callas is a mezzo, and this is the explanation for her preeminence in the role of Norma.  You see, Norma is also a mezzo.  She destroyed her voice by pushing it too high with too much weight.  I said.  But perhaps she was just a Zwischenfach.

Life is not tidy.  Some composers may have been aware of these categories.  Verdi seems to have started out with only a vague idea of what was physically possible for a singer, but then developed into a wise and very skillful composer for different types of voices.  Wagner seems simply not to have cared.  He composed whatever he wanted, and left it to management to find someone suitable.  His dramatic tenor was phenomenal.  Pity subsequent generations who try to follow in his footsteps.

From the point of view of the individual singer it is most important to understand the weight of the voice required for a role and how ones own voice might manage it.  You cannot make your voice heavier than it is.

It's ok if you ignore Zwischenfach.

Countertenor

I am ready to finish this off.

This is here to help you learn about the countertenor. It's intended to educate listeners rather than singers.

A countertenor is natural male voice that sings falsetto to allow him to sing music that was originally written for a woman or a castrato (a man castrated in childhood to retain his high voice, something that went on in the 17th and 18the centuries).  In opera their use allows male roles to be sung by male singers, a feature that means nothing to me but seems to matter to others.  Most countertenors are actually baritones. The voice range for a countertenor usually is the equivalent to a mezzo-soprano or contralto, but can include sopranos.

These are examples of roles written for the countertenor voice:   Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream (Britten), Annas in Jesus Christ Superstar (Lloyd Webber), Akhnaten in Akhnaten (Glass), Trinculo in The Tempest (Adès), etc.  Please notice that all these examples are modern, three out of four are British, and none of them are written by Italians.

This is David Daniels singing "I know a Bank" from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Tenor

This is here to help you learn about the different types of operatic tenors. It's intended to educate listeners rather than singers.

The tenor is the highest natural male voice. Above that is the countertenor which uses an entirely different method of producing a sound.  An operatic tenor might need a high C and might not, but he would seldom need to go above high C.  They aren't known for their low notes.  The sub-categories for tenor are generally listed:

Mozart tenor
Leggiero tenor
Lyric tenor
Spinto tenor
Dramatic tenor
Heldentenor

If there are more categories, we are ignoring them.  I am now going to describe the sub-categories, but please be aware that the same singer may show up in different sub-categories.  A role may also cross into more than one category.  I have tried in selecting these examples to make sure that the singer is actually of the suggested sub-category.

Mozart tenor

A Mozart tenor is known for the beauty of his relatively light tone and for the perfection of his legato.  Examples of Mozart tenor roles are  Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, Ferrando in Così fan tutte, Tamino in The Magic Flute, etc.  The first film is Fritz Wunderlich singing "Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön" from Die Zauberflöte.




Wunderlich is for some people the quintessential tenor. They will complain bitterly whenever someone doesn't sound like him. He is perfect for what he is singing here.

Baritones and Basses

Of my chapters on different types of voices this one was actually the hardest for me.  I hope I got it right.

This is here to help you learn about the different types of operatic baritones and basses. It's intended to educate listeners rather than singers.

The bass is the lowest natural male voice.  His voice might extend up to F above middle C and down to low C depending on Fach.  The sub-categories for baritone and bass are many, some very specialized, that a full discussion may prove impossible.  This is proving to be difficult, a learning experience also for me.  We will start with this set and see how far we get.

Lyric baritone
Dramatic baritone
Lyric Bass-baritone
Dramatic Bass-baritone
Bass

If there are more categories, we are ignoring them.  I am now going to describe the sub-categories, but please be aware that the same singer may show up in different sub-categories.  A role may also cross into more than one category.  I have tried in selecting these examples to make sure that the singer is actually of the suggested sub-category.

Lyric baritone

This is a pleasant low sound, basically the voice of the average male.  Sample roles are Papageno in The Magic Flute (Mozart), Marcello in La bohème (Puccini), Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni (Mozart), Figaro in The Barber of Seville (Rossini), etc.  Here is Simon Keenleyside singing "Der Vogelfänger bin ich ja" from The Magic Flute.

Dramatic baritone

Sometimes this Fach includes a sub-sub-category called Verdi baritone.  For me the Verdi baritone defines the dramatic baritone and does not require a Fach of its own.  This voice needs a full tone for its entire range and that special Verdi intensity.  Sample roles are Rigoletto in Rigoletto (Verdi), Scarpia in Tosca (Puccini), Simon Boccanegra in Simon Boccanegra (Verdi), Escamillo in Carmen (Bizet), Conte di Luna in Il trovatore (Verdi), etc.  Dmitri Hvorostovsky sings "Il balen" from Il Trovatore.



I'm calling him a dramatic baritone.  He is for me the greatest of operatic idols:  Leonard Warren singing "Cortigiani" from Rigoletto.

Lyric Bass-baritone

What is a bass-baritone?  He is a baritone with a really full, rich low register.  He might be lower than a baritone or he might not.  It's the sound that matters.  Examples of lyric bass-baritones are:  Méphistophélès in Faust (Gounod), Leporello in Don Giovanni (Mozart), Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart), Philip II in Don Carlos (Verdi), Escamillo in Carmen (Bizet), Porgy in Porgy and Bess (Gershwin), The 4 Villains in Les contes d'Hoffmann (Offenbach), etc.

René Pape sings "Le veau d'or" from Faust.



This is Ferruccio Furlanetto singing "Ella giammai m'amo" from Don Carlo.

Dramatic Bass-baritone

I think this is a category invented by Wagner.  He wanted a bass sound with the Dutchman in Der fliegende Holländer, Wotan/Der Wanderer in the Ring Cycle and Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg while generally ignoring the upward boundaries of the Fach.

This example is like nothing else in the world.  It is a young (35?) Hans Hotter singing "Die Frist ist um" from the Flying Dutchman. 

Bass

A bass needs to have full resonance on very low notes.  The Fach may extend to below the bass clef staff.  Examples of roles are The Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo (Verdi), Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte (Mozart), Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier (R. Strauss), Il Commendatore in Don Giovanni (Mozart), Hunding in Die Walküre (Wagner), etc.

Here is a wonderful example of a baritone and a bass singing in the same scene.  The older man is Rigoletto, a baritone, and the younger man is Sparafucile, an assassin who sings bass, including a nice low F at the end. Željko Lučić (Rigoletto) and Štefan Kocán (Sparafucile).



This is Charon from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo sung by Paul Gérimon.

Buffo Bass

There is a whole category for men who sing only comic roles called buffo bass or basso buffo.  This is a long tradition starting in Italy.  They are always basses but not usually very distinguished.  Here is a favorite.

 

Some roles for this voice are Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola (Rossini), Leporello in Don Giovanni (Mozart), Dottor Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti), Rocco in Fidelio (Beethoven), etc.

See here for countertenors, here for sopranos, here for tenors, and here for mezzos and contraltos.

Mezzo-soprano and Contralto Chapter

This is here to help you learn about the different types of operatic mezzo-sopranos and contraltos. It's intended to educate listeners rather than singers.

Lower voiced women in opera are usually mezzo-sopranos, but occasionally one hears a true contralto, the lowest female Fach.  Today I know of only two contraltos:  Ewa Podleś and Meredith Arwady.  Mezzos and contraltos will need notes well below middle C, and a mezzo should have a high B flat at least.  I'm not sure there is a sharp line separating mezzo-soprano from contralto, but I will try.  Here is a list of the sub-categories for mezzo-sopranos and contraltos.

Coloratura mezzo
Lyric mezzo
Dramatic mezzo
Coloratura contralto
Lyric contralto
Dramatic contralto

I am now going to describe the sub-categories, but please be aware that the same singer may show up in different sub-categories.  A role may also cross into more than one category.  I have tried in selecting these examples to make sure that the singer is actually of the suggested sub-category.

Coloratura Mezzo

The coloratura mezzo is primarily a phenomenon of the Baroque and bel canto.  Sometimes the male hero is in this Fach, but most of our examples are female roles.  Angelina in La Cenerentola (Rossini), Romeo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Bellini), Costanza in Griselda (Vivaldi) [Wikipedia lists Griselda as a coloratura mezzo when she is barely a singing role at all.  Costanza has all the good singing.], Rosina in The Barber of Seville (Rossini), etc.  This example is Cecilia Bartoli singing "Non piu mesta" from La Cenerentola.



And only La Bartoli runs to the top of the cake.

Soprano

I'm sort of writing a book, and this is one of the chapters. It's intended as introductory but let me know if it is too hard.

The highest vocal Fach is the soprano.  Opera singers refer to their voice category as their Fach, the German term for category.  Vocabulary has crept in from Germany such as Sitzprobe, which translates to sitting rehearsal and means an unstaged rehearsal with orchestra.

A soprano must have a good high C.  After that they are broken down into categories:

Soubrette
Lyric Soprano
Coloratura Soprano
Spinto Soprano
Dramatic Soprano

I am now going to describe the sub-categories, but please be aware that the same singer may show up in different sub-categories.  I have tried in selecting these examples to make sure that the singer is actually of the suggested sub-category.

Soubrette

The term soubrette actually describes more than just the voice.  She has a light, high voice and plays young women.  Examples of soubrette roles are Zerlina in Don Giovanni (Mozart), Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier (R. Strauss), Lisette in La Rondine (Puccini), Sophie in Werther (Massenet), etc.  The women shown below embody all aspects of their Fach.  First is Kathleen Battle singing "Batti, batti, o bel Masetto" from Don Giovanni.

Time for a Tirade

On Sunday I went to an audition of students from local colleges.  The first 5 were undergraduate singers.  It was enough to cause one to despair for the state of voice teaching.

I agree with Stuart Skelton (see comment here) that undergraduates don't want to get involved in the really heavy repertoire.  (That's not exactly what he said.  I'm interpreting.)  I have praised the Merola program here for emphasizing the lighter lyric operas in their training.

However, there are a couple of things that students can learn at any age and any voice classification.

Anyone can learn breath support.  Undergraduates can learn to carry the breath across the phrase and keep the pressure low in the body.  These lessons will be valuable no matter what happens to the voice later in life.  Good breath support lets the natural sound of the voice come out.

Anyone can learn to produce a proper legato.  Let me repeat that.  EVERYONE can learn to produce a proper legato.  Jeeze, you guys.  What do you do in your lessons--and by you I mean all of you--no one gets off here--if the subject of how to produce a proper legato never comes up?

The elements of a good legato are...

• The vowels all resonate in a similar space.  This involves keeping the teeth a similar distance apart, emphasizing the forward formant, thinking about how the vowels are produced at all....  I said this was going to be a tirade.  I'm just trying to put out ideas.  Don't do what I say.  Make up your own method.  Believe it or not, this all enhances diction rather than interfering with it.
• The singer learns to keep the energy of the phrase going across the change from one note to another and during the consonants.  Think of singing as being like a musical saw.  The notes and the words change but the tone keeps going.  This will eventually eliminate leaking air.

These are the building blocks of everything else.  Until you have a proper legato, there is no point in trying to develop the elements of phrasing discussed elsewhere.  Each--breath support and legato--emphasizes and enhances the other.

Quit trying to make your students into something.  Teach them breath support and legato and wait to hear what comes out.  Teachers often screw up students' entire lives by thinking they should begin with classification.  I recommend the Cecilia Bartoli method--put off classification until the student is over 40.  (Now that she's in her 40's she finally admits that she's probably a high lyric mezzo.)  The very young should sing as much variety as possible.  For the young classification is just choosing what they sound best singing.

I am speaking as a person whose classification was screwed up.  I was actually told never to sing Mozart.  How insane is that?

Tirade over.

What Makes a Great Soprano

O look.  They're doing it for sopranos, too.  This one is narrated by the great Kiri Te Kanawa.



Kiri Te Kanawa
Diana Damrau
Kirsten Flagstad
Anna Netrebko
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf
Joan Sutherland
Kiri Te Kanawa

Pronouncing R

Norman Lebrecht has gotten himself involved in a discussion of how to pronounce "R."  (Here for French, here for German.)  This sounds like the sort of silly stuff I write about.  My fanaticism is the pronunciation of the unpronounced neutral vowel in French.  If it isn't pronounced, how are you supposed to tell how to pronounce it?

When native speakers speak both French and German, they often use a uvular or gutturalized R (back of the throat) instead of a rolled or flipped R (tip of the tongue).  When I lived in Germany, my Spanish friend  would laugh that she could do a guttural R only on the word "Brod."  Then she would demonstrate.  I couldn't do it on any word at all, so I was very impressed with this.  My uvula refuses to do anything but just hang there.  The fanatical German speech coaches fussed with a lot of things about my German but never once brought up how I pronounced R.  Perhaps they simply assume that foreigners have no hope of achieving this.  Or perhaps the uvular R isn't considered correct in opera singing.



I like to use certain models for these things. In French I think of Edith Piaf as the supreme model.  Watching this again I can see her tongue rolling those R's.  I am surprised by this.
 

For my money Régine Crespin and Edith Piaf are rolling with the tip of the tongue.  This is what singers are taught.  And you will please notice that neither one of these women use the silly super-rounded neutral vowel you are constantly hearing from coached non-French singers.



And Fritz Wunderlich is definitely using his tongue.



Christa Ludwig rolls with her tongue.  The idea here is that you do nothing with your pronunciation that interferes with your tone because tone is king.

When the man in Brussels asks for a uvular R, he is trying for a theatrical effect.  He wants Carmen to sound common.  Here is a link to comments from the singer on this situation.

Curiously, if you go back a few posts to the film of Victoria de los Angeles, the word "chagrin" sounds the most likely to be guttural of anything I've found.

The only singer I am absolutely certain consistently uses a uvular R when singing is Gisela May.



At one point in the song she even sings it with her mouth wide open.  No tongue.  She was one of Brecht's favorites.  We prefer to approach these subjects using the empirical method.

Messa di Voce

[This is an edited chapter from my mysterious never to be seen again book, the one that explains the purposes and methods for practicing the messa di voce. The person to whom it refers shall remain mysterious. It could be anyone.]

We still haven't sung any repertoire and will not again today. My biggest concern about you is for the general care and maintenance of your voice. My goal is not to give you a standard technique, but to find ways to keep your voice balanced and healthy, the diverse parts connected, and to find unity in the variety of your work.

Today I will teach you the messa di voce, the most classical of all vocal exercises. In its almost absurd simplicity is an enormous variety of benefits, and I wish to give them to you. I'm a big believer in the messa di voce (placing of the voice). Garcia and a lot of other famous teachers recommended it, and I recommend it to you. I used to practice it when all was going to hell in the middle, and sometimes when it wasn't.

Garcia is Manuel Garcia the younger, the brother of the famous mezzo-sopranos.... "Maria Malibran and Pauline Viardot," you interrupt. Yes. And the most famous voice teacher of the nineteenth century. His father, also Manuel Garcia, was the tenor for whom Rossini wrote the role of Otello, which means he must have been a pretty damned amazing tenor.

Singing is an athletic activity performed by a tiny muscle in the throat. All of the respiratory mechanism is used to control and shape the sound, but this tiny muscle is crucial. I am reminded of stories about decathletes--the people who compete in the decathlon. They always explain that in order to be good in a big variety of events, their performance in individual events usually suffers. Bulking up for the shot put interferes with developing the right fitness for sprints. Sprinting develops the legs in a slightly different way than long distance running, which in turn is different from the broad jump.

Some uses of the voice interfere with others. Too much emphasis in one area can prevent others from developing. For example, too much emphasis on chest tones can make high notes more difficult. The messa di voce tries to even out the extremes of use, to balance and unify the parts. It is useful to counteract your tendency to prefer certain "hot" zones in your voice, pitches or colors which sound particularly nice and you would like to sell to the listener. In performance you may sell your voice to your heart's content, but not in the messa di voce. Here we place the same value on every pitch and every degree of loudness. It can also tell you what is working well and what is not.

The messa di voce consists of a long crescendo (pp to ff) followed by a long diminuendo (ff to pp) on a single note. It's pretty boring, but worth it. An experienced singer like you should be able to crescendo for a moderate 8 count and diminuendo for another 8. You can do it faster if that seems too slow. If you have a very high tolerance for boredom, you can do this for a few minutes (4 or 5) at a time, covering your whole voice. Don't overdo it.

My suggested tempo is very slow. Many writers on singing recommend it, but I don't remember anyone suggesting such a slow tempo for the messa di voce. I think doing it slowly helps focus awareness on the transitions and off of the extremes.

I want to make sure you learn the messa di voce properly, and remind you that throughout the exercise, you must keep your head still. A little tilting may be allowed, but no backward or forward movement. This is very important. It would counteract the benefit of the exercise to perform it improperly. I would watch carefully to see that you did it right. I would ask you to observe yourself in the mirror, both now and when you are practicing it later.

We will begin in the middle of the voice on a G or A. Extend the pitch gradually down and up, though it is less important to practice the messa di voce at the extremes of range. On high notes you would be doing it to practice controlling the diminuendo and to bring more weight into your high notes. Any vowel is OK. It is more important where you position the vowel than which vowel you pick. Place it forward but not too far forward so you can expand and open it as you crescendo. Begin the vowel in a closed position and move to an open position on the ff, going back to closed position.

"What does it mean, 'open position' and 'closed position?'" you ask. "I don't understand this."

Closed position in a vowel means a narrow, highly focused sound, while open position is wider and less focused. Notice I do not say unfocused. Unfocused is not good. When I am talking about different sounds, I will talk about them in relationship to vowels. A very tight "ee" is closed and a looser "ih" is very open. These are two extremes of the same basic sound. If I am going through the material too quickly, please stop me.

On pitches near the break, you begin in head and crescendo smoothly into chest and back into head. Between the two is mixed registration. Some people mix naturally, but the rest of us have to practice it.

After listening to you and listening to myself when I was about your age, I notice that our two very different voices share certain qualities. We both use a lot of mixing in the middle, and our most beautiful sounds come from this mixed tone. This beautiful mixed sound is delicate and fragile and hard to make loud. When you're doing it right, you show a lot of skill in controlling the mixing. Other times you don't even try to mix and just skip directly from head to chest and back again, usually to achieve a technical effect. At your best, you are more successful at blending your registers than I was.

You must take care to keep your head and neck still during this exercise. The jaw can move. To get the desired benefit, the main activity must be in the larynx and pharynx. Your head must not go forward when you shift into chest or back when you go into head.

The diminuendo must be executed without allowing the tone to become breathy. Intensify the vowel and concentrate on moving it to the closed position. This is especially important on the "ah" vowel which you must be sure to practice. You may limit the crescendo to forte if you want, especially at first. In any event never crescendo louder than feels comfortable or can be fully supported. If you keep doing it, you should be able to extend the dynamic range gradually.

The messa di voce has a number of uses. In addition to helping to smooth the transition from chest to head, it is also an exercise to control the transition from light to heavy singing. Both transitions must be executed smoothly, with no apparent shift. Some pitches will be much more difficult than others, but those are the ones we will emphasize. We will tune the vowels to make it easier, allowing them to move slightly with the crescendo. If you become tense while practicing this, stop and try again tomorrow.

The messa di voce is very boring and requires concentration on technique alone to be effective. It has no musical content and must be practiced this way. Its purpose is to develop coordination of the vocal cords themselves, to develop and facilitate exactly those things, which are hardest for a heavy voice. The instructions should be followed exactly.

The messa di voce connects the extremes together and trains the voice to be familiar not merely with the extremes of loud and soft, chest and head, light and heavy, but with all the levels in between. You use crescendo and diminuendo in performance to bring variety and contrast, but in the messa di voce the objective is sameness and evenness, which means that it must be performed methodically in as boring a manner as possible. Think of it as a meditation, the messa di voce meditation.

The messa di voce is intended only for experienced singers, and beginners should stay away from it. It's not a drill. Repetitions aren't the point. The benefit lies in discovering how to do it correctly, and once mastery is achieved, it can be done less often for review. Practice it occasionally during your warm-up to make sure it's still working properly. If there are problems, return to systematic study.

[This has to be the longest and most boring explanation of how to do a vocal exercise ever written, the obvious result of extreme fanaticism.

For a short demonstration of how to perform the messa di voce chick here. You are not required to repeat it three times or add the huge flourish of fast notes at the end. Fiendish grin is also not necessary, but if it works for you, why not?]

Here is something in an interview with Vesselina Kasarova where she discusses the messa di voce, though she doesn't call it that.  Her description is similar to this.  I also advise her to sing Octavian as though it were Mozart.

Yawn

I am still enjoying browsing through English, French, German and Italian Techniques of Singing by Richard Miller. He doesn't talk about the Russian school because that isn't part of his experience, a perfectly valid reason.

I was preparing to argue about constantly citing Manuel Garcia II about the lowered larynx--he was against--because, well, wasn't he a bit early for that? Isn't lowered larynx more a feature of late Verdi, verismo and Wagner? How could he...? Then it turns out he lived for 101 years, until 1906. On my side of the argument is that his treatises date from the 1840s, before singing with a lowered larynx became so popular. When I even think about singing, my throat opens and my larynx goes DOWN. Because that's how I was taught. I was probably taught in the Italian technique. When I go to Italy, I hear lowered larynx all over the place. No one says that's what they're doing, but nevertheless it is.

Here in Sacramento we have two prominent voice teachers. One teaches all her students to sing with a lowered larynx, and the other likes the larynx raised. No one just lets it float around in the throat. Sigh. Mr. Miller pretends that that's what everyone does. Mind you, absolutely no one overtly discusses larynx position. It's always inferred by other instructions. In my training it was called a "low yawn." Yawning makes the larynx go down.

Yawn. I meant that talking about technique is boring and sleep inducing. Actually it's rather fascinating, and what makes it fascinating is that there is no apparent correlation between what voice teachers say and what they want you to do.  They just suddenly say, "That's it!"

I like the book. Who would have guessed that the English were trying to eliminate upper partials? Or that Placido Domingo would probably have remained a baritone if he had studied in France? I guess you have to have been through the wringer of being forced to read technique books to even know what he's talking about.

Anna talks technique

In the November issue of Opera News Oussama Zahr interviews Anna Netrebko and mentions hearing Mirella Freni in her voice:

Netrebko's eyes light up. "Mirella. Thank you. I always heard this, since I started studying. And you know what, listening to her helps me a lot, because I think her technique is amazing for what she's doing.

"She always sang," says Netrebko of the Italian soprano. And, here, Netrebko reveals her partiality for singers with flowing, generous voices, unlike a different breed of singer she sees today, marked by lots of covered tone without forward placement in order to manipulate dynamics easily. "This dynamic control, usually, it's not going from the breath. Beautiful for the audience, dangerous for the singer," she explains. "I will not tell you the name of the singer," she explains. "I will not tell you the name of the singer--very good soprano, beautiful voice, one of the most beautiful--and I attend a couple of her performances in different roles. And I was like, why the fuck are you singing half mezza voce? Who needs that? Open your mouth, give me your voice--on the breath, supported, pointed, and that's it. But lots of people think this is the musicality. I think it's bullshit. You can show a couple of the notes, okay, you have piano, thank you. After that, give me singing, give me the voice."

Part of the blame for this kind of singing, Netrebko thinks, belongs to coaches and conductors. "Lots of coaches, and God forgive me, conductors, they are the worst. The worst. And actually one of the best conductors are working very bad to the singer. 'Cause they're sitting at the piano and saying, 'Do this phrase, shhh, shhh, no, no, no! Even softer, even softer!' And after that he is going to the orchestra like bwaah,"--and she makes the sound of a deafening brass section--they show you how it has to be soft."

Singing in the Twentieth Century

Styles of singing split into two branches in the twentieth century.

The heavy style of Wagner and Puccini continued throughout the century, tapering off only toward the end. Evidence of this can be found in the concerts hosted by the Richard Tucker Music Foundation which always feature heavy singers. (Curiously, this is this evening and features James Valenti as the 2010 Richard Tucker Award Winner. From San Francisco Leah Crocetto is a grant recipient. She is by far the heaviest woman’s voice among the Adler Fellows.)

Then came Expressionism and Arnold Schoenberg. Here is a bit from Erwartung (1909).



There is a lot of shouting in this short example. Schoenberg is sort of the anti-Wagner. Where Wagner is a sea of tonality with almost constant modulating, Schoenberg carefully avoids establishing a key, and therefore cannot modulate away from it. Wagner is still about singing. His roots are firmly in the operatic world. In Schoenberg we have returned to the world of the monodists. The singing is there solely to support the drama. This is the attitude of all the modernists.

This is a nice bit from Lulu (1979 version) "O Freiheit."


The goal for the singer is to get out of it alive. It may be important to know that Anna Netrebko's manager won't let her sing Lulu, though she would like to.

Modernism requires a narrow piercing sound rather than a large round one. Because established singers are reluctant to perform this repertoire, it can provide an opportunity for young singers. Marilyn Horne made her San Francisco Opera debut as Marie in Wozzeck.

With heavy Wagner/verismo singing the danger lies in over-singing, in pushing the voice to produce beyond its natural capacity. The danger in modern singing lies in never really establishing a proper legato. I must say Marilyn produced the most legato Marie I've ever heard. It is possible to sing Berg and not destroy yourself.

Here is a personal favorite from Nixon in China (1987) "I am the wife of Mao Zedong."



How can you not love this?  Kathleen Kim who sang in Tales of Hoffmann is doing it on this season's simulcast.

It is important to know that there is no particular style associated with modern music.  Stravinsky for one deeply resented even the suggestion that there was more in the music than was written on the page.  Any singer will tell you there is always much much more.

Mail Bag

Q. …a technical question…found myself wondering the other night at SF Opera, and who better to advise me, than yourself…
…it's about vibrato in classical music--classical vocal music--more particularly, in grand opera.
Are singers, especially sopranos, taught to use vibrato on every note (well, every note that's long enough)?  Does vibrato use vary with the era, or year, or style of the music?
…thanks for any insight,

A.  I just posted a blog entry about this recently.  I think most people have a vibrato and I have absolutely no recollection of anyone teaching it.  It's a natural part of the voice. 

In the old days there were turntables that did both 45 and 33 rpm, so if you had a 45 you could slow it down and actually hear the vibrato or lack thereof.  Patty Page was the only one with no vibrato.

In general you are stuck with the vibrato you have.  If it's too fast or too slow or perish the thought too wide, you might be sunk.

There are choir schools that train singers not to have vibrato.  I am aware of training it away but not of training to have it.  Heavy singing affects the vibrato, generally in a negative way.  But this effect is not voluntary. 

In general, you have the vibrato you have, but taste in vibrato might change from one era to another.  I would guess it was lightening right now.

This is strictly an educated guess, but I think it's the muscles that hold the larynx in place that oscillate and create the vibrato.  I'd have to look it up and my books are in boxes.  For once Wikipedia is no help.  They are talking about instrumental vibrato which is entirely voluntary.

 Q Follow up.  Once again, my question was based in trying to understand performance differences between jazz (and pop) music and opera. It has seemed to me lately that opera singers--particularly sopranos--have been laying in vibrato on every single note, and it often sounds mechanical. in jazz--both for singers and for horn players, guitarists & bass players--especially on ballads, the musician will start a note steady, then add vibrato, and take it off again, to warm it up or shape the line. Kim Nalley is a master of this; you hear it a lot in Jane Monheit's singing, and Diane Reeves's, etc., etc. so if jazzers use this as a tool, for emotional impact, why wouldn't opera-ers? a mystery for our time.

A.  Historically instrumentalists didn't use vibrato.  A Vivaldi singer would have had a natural vibrato.   A Vivaldi violinist would not.

Maybe some famous violinist like Paganini started using it.  I'd have to research that, and as you know, I just wing this stuff.

The second reason a Vivaldi violinist would not have used vibrato is because his musicians, and perhaps also his singers, were children.  I think one of the reasons children singing sound so different from adults is because children have no vibrato.  You need adults for that.

Instrumentalists are imitating singers.  Singers are imitating God.

So by the time of jazz in the early 20th century I think it developed with the style for the instrumentalists and subsequently the singers to be aware of and manipulate their vibrato.  In jazz musicians and singers hang out together in a way that they just don't do in classical.

I should add this to my "Things you can do" list:  you can manipulate your vibrato, take it out, put it back, make it bigger, make it smaller, etc.

But see, then you are getting into stylistic issues.  Manipulating the vibrato, except for the trill thing, is not part of the style of classical singing.

Singing Verdi, Part II

I have decided to rewrite my earlier entry on singing Verdi.  Enough time has passed that I can no longer remember what I wrote before, but do remember that I have reconsidered.

For purposes of this article Nabucco 1842, Ernani 1844, Attila 1846, Macbeth 1847, Louisa Miller 1849, Rigoletto 1851, La Traviata 1853 and Il Trovatore also 1853 will be considered together as a group, and the remaining later operas as another group.  Nabucco was his first big success.  

Verdi shows an enormous amount of continuity with Donizetti who died in 1848.  There is the bass drum, for instance.  I like this paragraph from Wikipedia:  “Verdi's predecessors who influenced his music were Rossini, Bellini, Giacomo_Meyerbeer and, most notably, Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. With the exception of Otello and Aida, he was free of Wagner's influence. Although respectful of Gounod, Verdi was careful not to learn anything from the Frenchman whom many of Verdi's contemporaries regarded as the greatest living composer.”  The lack of Wagnerian influence is the reason we are discussing Verdi’s early operas.  And certainly one hears nothing of Gounod.  If one did, Verdi would surely have dropped out of our awareness, too.  With the exception of Meyerbeer, the principle proponent of Grand Opera, all of these influences are Italian.

Until he was quite old and composed Falstaff Verdi wrote no comedies.  The closest to Donizetti, I suppose, are Rigoletto and La Traviata where the seriousness of the stories still leave a degree of lightness in the coloratura.  One still hears bel canto, or at least the awareness of bel canto.  In Verdi there is a need for rhythmic drive in the still often very flowery coloratura.

But Verdi intended a more intense drama than anything attempted by Donizetti.  Certainly Verdi’s tenors are noticeably heavier than anything in Donizetti.  [Sentence written with no actual knowledge of "anything in Donizetti"]  Sometimes he overshot.  Manrico in Il Trovatore borders on the impossible.  

I decided to rewrite this because of the fact that the two Verdi screamer roles, Abigaille in Nabucco and Lady Macbeth from Macbeth, are both from this early period.  I call them screamer roles because that is what one generally hears.  Sopranos who make their fame on Lady Macbeth generally rapidly develop a wobble.  Callas did it a few times and gave it up.  Leontyne Price, probably the greatest Verdi soprano, refused to sing it at all.  And most established sopranos avoid Abigaille like the plague.

Maria Guleghina sings both roles very well.  She seems to have specialized of late in screamer roles and is the exception that proves the rule.  She waited until maturity to try this.

The undesirability of this seems to have occurred to Verdi, since operas of his later period never cross into the realm of complete impossibility.  He settles into the spinto heaviness across the board.  The heavy Verdi mezzo begins with Il Trovatore, the transition to mature Verdi, and reappears in Aida, Don Carlo and the Requiem.  He begins to feel secure in his handling of voices and settled in his style.  I suppose you could still destroy your voice in these roles, but I think it would be your own fault.

Weight in the voice for Italian repertoire in all voice categories reaches its peak in Verdi.  The verismo composers wrote in a different style, but the vocal requirements are not heavier.

For sopranos the model for Donizetti opera seria is Caballe.  For Verdi it’s Price.

I have decided to change the example to Maria Guleghina singing something from Macbeth. The part is simply insane. A decade later she still does not have a wobble and still sings this role. That alone is amazing.

Trill

In a review of Sacrificium in Opera News by Stephen Francis Vasta I read "One might point out that metered 'shakes,' and the faster bits of trills, sound more like flutters on a single tone, rather than two distinct notes."

Now I admit I can't tell if this is a simple statement of fact rather than a criticism. Nevertheless I feel obligated to explain.

When a pianist or a violinist plays a trill it's two different notes. When I write one for my midi player, it's two different notes. There are these insane arguments over whether the triller should start on the upper or the lower note which I will not pretend interests me. I know on my midi player it made no difference.

This has nothing to do with singing. All opera singing is a flutter. This is called vibrato, and consists of a consistent fluctuation in pitch generally about a half tone wide. Patty Page had absolutely no vibrato [play a 45 record at 33 speed]. Violinists imitate this by wiggling their wrists. The brain hears this as a pulsing single note. One achieves a trill by widening the vibrato until the brain no longer integrates the flutter into one note. A trill is a fast very wide vibrato. A wobble is a very slow, wide vibrato.

Or yes. So?

Don't tell Cecilia she's supposed to sing two separate notes, or she might start trying to do it.

Conducting Bel Canto

This is how you do it. Now try to picture him giving her a cutoff. The mind boggles. La Traviata is about as close to bel canto as Verdi gets.

My friends complain that they don't know what a cutoff is. Around 2:01-02 he is giving one to the orchestra with his left hand.  It means stop singing or playing.

I want to answer my own question. He would not consider giving her a cutoff because she is paying not the slightest attention to him. Nor should she.

This post is an afterthought to the post about Leonard Slatkin conducting Angela Gheorghiu found here.

Appreciation

I came to Rossini late in life. I had seen Barbiere and Cenerentola, of course, and even The Italian Girl in Algiers, but they made no great impression. It seemed like singing just to show off, something that has never moved me.

I was most impressed when Caballé and Horne came to San Francisco to present Semiramide. Only the absurd costumes blunted the full effect.

Then came the passionate explosion of Bartoli's Rossini Heroines. My enthusiasm knew no bounds. She was 26 and had already recorded two Rossini albums. What sets this album apart is the stylistic perfection and maturity in one so young. I wondered how to account for this, and found the answer in the book Divas and Scholars. The album represents the joining of two musical minds: Cecilia Bartoli and Philip Gossett.

His influence can also be heard in Joyce DiDonato's recent Colbran album. I know that he also advises Juan Diego Florez.

Now this glorious Armida traces its stylistic sophistication back to him. All who would be Rossini singers make the pilgrimage to Chicago. Or perhaps to Rome, since he teaches there, too.

These singers, young and more established, come to the music with such incredible self-confidence. They come to the music with their individual personalities not only intact but enhanced and established through the individuality of their ornamentation. Each is true to himself and to Rossini.

I am starting to wonder what more wonderful thing could happen than the revival of interest in Rossini, especially serious Rossini. There can never be too much Rossini.

Dr. Gossett's life in music is an extraordinary one and certainly extends beyond notes on the page to living music. I want to express my gratitude.