Unpopular Opinions

[zamyrabyrd]

I would be interested in opinions from trained singers.
But I think for performances in comparably large churches, theaters etc. something like the classically "supported" style of singing had to be developed, otherwise voices would not carry sufficiently. Another demand is reasonable precise and stable intonation for comparably complex polyphony in Western music since the high/late MA. All these demands make it plausible that the singing style has to differ from a mother softly singing a lullaby or a bunch of drunks raucously bellowing a song around a campfire. But the two latter are "natural situations", so we tend to find the classical style "unnatural". Another reason is that since the arrival of the microphone, a singer can "naturally" sing softly with an untrained voice and most people unter 70 probably grew up getting used mostly to popular singers crooning into a microphone (as well as their usually untrained mothers or other children in school singing) so they find the classical style unnatural.

This may seem shocking but I do not like the sound of many opera singers, at least not according to the current concept of what opera singing should be. It's true that some voices are more suited for the stage than others. Think of Leontyne Price, Leyla Gencer, Luciano Pavarotti - their voices are naturally big. But I do believe the means of production are essentially the same for all. What happens with lighter voices, they are cranked up to the maximum volume and even more to sing in big halls or in heavy roles. But as a teacher of mine said, it is like turning up the volume dial of a radio, after a certain point, it becomes noise.

I believe that singing with the natural vibrato of a voice (and there are optimal calibrations per second for each type) is the best policy. When that happens, it is like Zen, the voice floats on air. This is the most pleasing and satisfying sound one can make, feel or listen to. Singing white tones as for Medieval or Renaissance music is a technique of sorts but who really said that people actually sang that way back then? Who heard it anyway? Cornelius Reid, a writer on singing, doesn't believe so.

I really despise Three Tenors or Il Volo for the above reason, forcing the voice past a certain pleasant volume but also because their vibrational profiles clash. Acoustics is so important to consider in any musical venture. Composers really need to consider this aspect. Some have it instinctually, others should really sit down and learn what sounds good with what.

ZB

[nodogen]

So many sopranos (for example) sound almost like wales to me

That'll be an eisteddfod. 😉

[nodogen]

This may seem shocking but I do not like the sound of many opera singers, at least not according to the current concept of what opera singing should be. It's true that some voices are more suited for the stage than others. Think of Leontyne Price, Leyla Gencer, Luciano Pavarotti - their voices are naturally big. But I do believe the means of production are essentially the same for all. What happens with lighter voices, they are cranked up to the maximum volume and even more to sing in big halls or in heavy roles. But as a teacher of mine said, it is like turning up the volume dial of a radio, after a certain point, it becomes noise.

I believe that singing with the natural vibrato of a voice (and there are optimal calibrations per second for each type) is the best policy. When that happens, it is like Zen, the voice floats on air. This is the most pleasing and satisfying sound one can make, feel or listen to. Singing white tones as for Medieval or Renaissance music is a technique of sorts but who really said that people actually sang that way back then? Who heard it anyway? Cornelius Reid, a writer on singing, doesn't believe so.

I really despise Three Tenors or Il Volo for the above reason, forcing the voice past a certain pleasant volume but also because their vibrational profiles clash. Acoustics is so important to consider in any musical venture. Composers really need to consider this aspect. Some have it instinctually, others should really sit down and learn what sounds good with what.

ZB

I agree with you.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. ☺️

[Mandryka]

I've said in quite a few threads already but classical vocal music (except from choral stuff, which is usually way denser) tends to be on my bad side. I don't find the typical "classically trained" (aka castrated) soprano, tenor, alto, bass etc to be very compelling, I tend to feel it ruins great songs/lieder.

There are exceptions (quite a few) but this is my stance. 

What do you think of Peter Pears singing Dowland's In Darkness Let me Dwell, at 19'10'' here?

https://www.youtube.com/v/N5-g4oVrTz4

Here's an unpopular opinion which I share: Peter Pears, the bleating goat, was a great great singer -- because he had a magical way with words.

[Mandryka]

And here's another unpopular voice in the same composer, Alfred Deller, but for the same reasons as Pears I think he's a great singer. One of the comments on youtube says (in french) " sa lecture fusionelle du texte" -- and fusionelle is right.

I guess my view is Prima le parole!

https://www.youtube.com/v/r_aR3cOUYm8

[prémont]

And here's another unpopular voice in the same composer, Alfred Deller, but for the same reasons as Pears I think he's a great singer. One of the comments on youtube says (in french) " sa lecture fusionelle du texte" -- and fusionelle is right.

I guess my view is Prima le parole!

https://www.youtube.com/v/r_aR3cOUYm8

Pears was a brilliant and expressive evangelist for Klemperer and Münchinger in the SMP. I am more ambivalent concerning Deller, even if his old recording of Purcell's Music for a while is outstanding and his contribution to Bach's Wiederstehe doch der Sünde was one of the first Bach recordings I ever heard and instrumental to hook me on Bach (along with Münchinger's Brandenburgs and Walchas WTC).

[nodogen]

There is no such thing as trained classical singers vs popular ones: one can go from one to the other.  Florent Pagny a french pop singer with a beautiful and powerful voice has done opera arias.  Inversely so many opera singers have done popular music that I want to say please no more.  There are specifics to classical singing, but the one thing you absolutely need is a powerful voice because you need to fill a big opera hall or a church (Jo post).  Amplified voices in the realm of classical music gives poor to awful results.
So Celine Dion, Florent Pagny have done classical because they have the vocal means to do so.  A thin voice a la Justin Bieber would not make it.

In theory one can go from one to the other, in practice a few do but I think the majority don't. And if it is not "successful" (such as your opera singers doing pop) one might see why swapping is difficult or not recommended.

I imagine some popular singers have had training enough to attempt classical, but perhaps these are more likely to be "pop performers" rather than something else. So maybe Celine Dion can, but Bob Dylan? Donald Fagen? James Hetfield? Van Morrison? Billy Gibbons? I suspect not. Perhaps that is why the usual epithet in popular music is "vocalist" rather than "singer." At least it is in the popular music that I have some knowledge of, which is basically rock.

I think fundamentally they are attempting two different things. In classical music, the singer is just another "instrument" utilised by a composer. In popular (certainly rock) the vocalist's role is as an individual (in style and lyrics) such that a vocalist leaving a band is a major change and issue. Easy to think of examples of this: Roger Waters leaving Pink Floyd, Dave Lee Roth leaving Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne leaving Black Sabbath etc etc.

[Madiel]

Perhaps that is why the usual epithet in popular music is "vocalist" rather than "singer." At least it is in the popular music that I have some knowledge of, which is basically rock.

In my experience the credit you're looking for is "vocals". Which is probably preferred to something like "singings".

And this credit is used by... wait for it... "singer-songwriters".

[Mandryka]

Pears was a brilliant and expressive evangelist for Klemperer and Münchinger in the SMP. I am more ambivalent concerning Deller, even if his old recording of Purcell's Music for a while is outstanding and his contribution to Bach's Wiederstehe doch der Sünde was one of the first Bach recordings I ever heard and instrumental to hook me on Bach (along with Münchinger's Brandenburgs and Walchas WTC).

I think Alfred Deller went through a period quite early in his career when he was making some some outstanding music, but the later recordings are for me not as satisfying. Actually similarly with Pears.

[zamyrabyrd]

I agree with you.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. ☺️

I think that verismo in opera 100 years ago had much to do with the shift of attention from bel canto to characterizations and acting. Marko Rothmuller gives some reasons why the tradition of beautiful singing was gradually downgraded in favor of other requirements for a singer during the span of his career:

http://www.bruceduffie.com/rothmuller.html

BD:    You've been involved with young singers for a long time.  Are the young singers today prepared in the same way, or differently than they were thirty, forty, fifty years ago?

MR:    Not only here, but in general, the whole attitude is a different one, partly because the requirements are different.  What we call bel canto repertory, when that is done, it is not done the same way as before.  Even at my generation, we used to try to sing it as beautifully as possible, and many of the parts where not so important as acting parts.  I'm not talking of Rigoletto or Scarpia, but the beauty and the technical evenness was very important, and everything else was considered inferior.   At least to my knowledge, only a few artists are of that kind today.

BD:    Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

MR:    Oh, it's very bad for two reasons.  It's bad whenever a work is performed which was written for bel canto — with beautiful singing — and also that the contemporary singers often have to sing parts which are not written for beautiful singing, and don't require the technique which was worked especially in Italy for about four to six hundred years.  There are vocal requirements which are a different kind, therefore the voices are often ruined too soon.

BD:    At what point in compositional time did we lose the idea of beautiful singing?

MR:    I would say this was mainly after the Second World War.  Even with the Richard Strauss works, and Hindemith, and Wozzeck, one was still expected, wherever possible, to sing a beautiful vocal line, a musical line, and have a wonderful phrasing, and so on.  Now this is not so, even when I listen to the top singers.  I know the whole repertoire, and not only my parts.  You can notice how often these people bring it, and if you bring it more often than good phrasing would require, it's inferior in this regard.

I actually studied with him for a year when he was on sabbatical. In his 70's, he still had a very good tone and excellent technique.

[nodogen]

In my experience the credit you're looking for is "vocals". Which is probably preferred to something like "singings".

And this credit is used by... wait for it... "singer-songwriters".

My suggestion of the fact that "vocalist" is used is that "singing" is not exactly what they do in all cases (probably by their own admission).

As to the term "singer-songwriter" - often the vocalist may not even be involved in the songwriting, so that epithet would simply be incorrect.

[Mandryka]

Singing white tones as for Medieval or Renaissance music is a technique of sorts but who really said that people actually sang that way back then? Who heard it anyway? Cornelius Reid, a writer on singing, doesn't believe so.

When you've got a singer who uses generalised vibrato through the tone, the tones are always wobbling. If it's generalised it's always out of tune! I guess that's not a great problem where you've got one singer possibly supported by instruments. But if you've got a few people singing polyphonic music together, and they're all making wobbly tones and so all singing off the note at the same time  -- well you can imagine the confusion. Better to limit vibrato to just a small part of the note, or to sing white tones generally and just use tremolo for expressive reasons, like an ornament.

[Madiel]

My suggestion of the fact that "vocalist" is used is that "singing" is not exactly what they do in all cases (probably by their own admission).

As to the term "singer-songwriter" - often the vocalist may not even be involved in the songwriting, so that epithet would simply be incorrect.

Sigh. I didn't say ONLY used by. Way to miss the point, which is that it's not true that pop music doesn't talk about singers.

And the other point was that I don't agree that vocalist is the common term. Vocals is more common than vocalist. And vocals is frequently paired with singer.  But that sailed right past you as well.

[nodogen]

Sigh. I didn't say ONLY used by. Way to miss the point, which is that it's not true that pop music doesn't talk about singers.

And the other point was that I don't agree that vocalist is the common term. Vocals is more common than vocalist. And vocals is frequently paired with singer.  But that sailed right past you as well.

Sigh. Nothing sailed past me. I'm simply disagreeing, based on listening to rock music and buying albums for over 40 years. Are you always this arsey?

[Jo498]

We have plenty of descriptions but obviously no sound recordings, so all bets are up on how singers sounded before the late 19th century.
The "white" almost vibratoless singing for early music could be a pure late 20th century artifact (so that not to sound like "opera" (i.e. late 19th century opera sung in mid 20th century style by all means). But there are some Early music groups that sound quite different (e.g. Peres) although of course they don't sound like Wagner or verismo big voice opera singers either.

I don't know about the technical details but I have been told be people who studied both classical and jazz/musical singing that some techniques are clearly different as far as the tone production goes.
I tend to agree with what someone said above that many popular singers disappoint if they try classical pieces and often the reason seems deficient technique. Joan Baez' uncontrolled vibrato might be impressive in adding emotion to some passages in folk ballads (I am very fond of most of what she did before ca. 1970) but the Bachiana Brasileira on one album is an almost complete failure for me, because she does not sound like in control and overall it sounds bad. I also got rid of one "Classical Barbra" (Streisand) very quickly. There are probably lots of cases for opera singers sounding overblown and ill at ease in popular music and some successful cases as well.
In any case "natural" tends to become a meaningless attribute because most professional singing regardless of genre requires studying such techniques and differs from untrained singing.

[zamyrabyrd]

When you've got a singer who uses generalised vibrato through the tone, the tones are always wobbling. If it's generalised it's always out of tune! I guess that's not a great problem where you've got one singer possibly supported by instruments. But if you've got a few people singing polyphonic music together, and they're all making wobbly tones and so all singing off the note at the same time  -- well you can imagine the confusion. Better to limit vibrato to just a small part of the note, or to sing white tones generally and just use tremolo for expressive reasons, like an ornament.

A free, unobstructed singing tone has vibrato like that of a good string player. Done properly, the oscillations are so small that no one would really detect them. The unpleasant variety is when the pitch is too wide and the oscillations are too slow, called a "wobble". This can happen with unsupported, heavy and/or low voices. The other extreme when the pulses are too fast, it is called a "tremolo", like buzzing mosquitoes.

[zamyrabyrd]

I don't know about the technical details but I have been told be people who studied both classical and jazz/musical singing that some techniques are clearly different as far as the tone production goes.
I tend to agree with what someone said above that many popular singers disappoint if they try classical pieces and often the reason seems deficient technique. Joan Baez' uncontrolled vibrato might be impressive in adding emotion to some passages in folk ballads (I am very fond of most of what she did before ca. 1970) but the Bachiana Brasileira on one album is an almost complete failure for me, because she does not sound like in control and overall it sounds bad. I also got rid of one "Classical Barbra" (Streisand) very quickly. There are probably lots of cases for opera singers sounding overblown and ill at ease in popular music and some successful cases as well.
In any case "natural" tends to become a meaningless attribute because most professional singing regardless of genre requires studying such techniques and differs from untrained singing.

Joan Baez is a good example because indeed, she did not cross over into Bachianas very easily and Classical Barbra may as well be popera. When asked about the difference between popular singing and classical, because it does come up in the studio, I say that popular singing is closer to speech. In classical singing a lot of adjustments are made so that speech patterns do not interfere with a legato line.

One of the techniques is darkening the vowels on high note and brightening them on lower ones, homogenizing the vowels but interfering with their communication value. Popular music for the most part is in the range of speech and communicating text is more important than making beautiful tones. Broadway "belting" is something else but done a lot in pop music, that is, bringing up the "chest voice" into the middle range in order to darken the sound but also keeping a chesty sort of quality, not breaking the line for expressive purposes. In classical singing, going into the chest voice is a change of color crossing the lower passaggio, but used expertly as Maria Callas did, adds another dimension to a performance. 

[Spineur]

There are many distinctions that should be made in this discussion.  The arias operas of the 18th century demand a much slighter vibrato, more discretion and distinction in the singing.  Here an example from Grétry  'L'amant Jaloux' the aria "Tandis que tout sommeille"
First a performance exactly in the 18 th century style.  All is done with distinctinction and
https://www.youtube.com/v/taqlNE2cvkQ
An now Roberto Alagna who transform this tender lullaby in a heroic 19 century aria
https://www.youtube.com/v/5Z09rdD2J0I
Pretty bad, I would say.

Even in the 19th century operatic repertoire, there are all sort of roles.  The heroic ones (Massenet, Le Cid), the macho ones (Othello), the wimpy boys (Cherubin, Rossini).  To each role, its voice.  Mario del Monaco who had a legendary powerful voice was great in Othello, but lacked nuance in many other roles.  Another issue, even more important to me is the quality of the diction.  A singer with a bad diction had no future in the first part of the 20th century.  Today because so many english people do no know any foreign languages, there is a tolerance toward totally unrecognizable mumbled words.

[prémont]

I think Alfred Deller went through a period quite early in his career when he was making some some outstanding music, but the later recordings are for me not as satisfying. Actually similarly with Pears.

Completely agreed as to Deller. But in his later days Pears was still a good singing actor, even if his voice was declining.

[zamyrabyrd]

There are many distinctions that should be made in this discussion.  The arias operas of the 18th century demand a much slighter vibrato, more discretion and distinction in the singing.  Here an example from Grétry  'L'amant Jaloux' the aria "Tandis que tout sommeille"

Well, if that is not a vibrato of a held note in the first version at 1:15 and 2:29, I don't know what is. I think the singer just let the tone go, but probably could have controlled it better. Alagna brings the Heldentenor into this aria, but of course, completely inappropriate. He does a funny falsetto on the last G, "charmante", which after all, is not that high for a tenor. Here the note at 2:28 is vibrating completely undisciplined.

Even in the 19th century operatic repertoire, there are all sort of roles.  The heroic ones (Massenet, Le Cid), the macho ones (Othello), the wimpy boys (Cherubin, Rossini).  To each role, its voice.  Mario del Monaco who had a legendary powerful voice was great in Othello, but lacked nuance in many other roles.

Oh, absolutely! There is a lengthy article about singing in Grove's Dictionary treating of this subject which has largely been forgotten. Character types and the voices that fit them were very important in 18th century opera indeed.

Another issue, even more important to me is the quality of the diction.  A singer with a bad diction had no future in the first part of the 20th century.  Today because so many english people do no know any foreign languages, there is a tolerance toward totally unrecognizable mumbled words.

You can read what Marko Rothmuller had to say about singing in the first half of the 20th century. They were still mixing up languages even after WWII.

http://www.bruceduffie.com/rothmuller.html

BD:    Do you feel that opera works well in translation?

MR:    Absolutely, if the translation is good.  It is always important that the audience understands it, and above all that the singer understands it.  Immediately after the War, we had Aïda in Vienna in Italian.  That was the only opera they did in the original.  Since about 1960 they do most operas in the original, but before that everything was done in the language of the country.  So first of all, the Radames had such bad pronunciation that it was impossible, and of course he didn't understand one word he was singing.  He could emphasize the wrong word very easily. 

On the other hand, I had the experience when I sang it in one language and a guest sang it in another, that can be also very awkward.  I remember a funny instance in Butterfly.  There was a guest, Dusolina Giannini, and she sang in Italian.  So at one point I asked what day is today, and she asked if I had an orange because the translation didn't go at the same time.  [Both laugh] 

In London we had Tosca in English.  At that time, they did everything in English.  Only during the June Festival Wagner was done in German, but now they do everything in the original.  We had once a guest Tosca who sang in Italian, so I sang all our scenes in Italian because Scarpia is very much with Tosca.  Whenever we were together I sang with her in Italian so as not to say something and then have her answer something different.  I thought it was better that way.


As for diction, I actually think it has gotten better and singers do learn many languages these days, even native English speakers. I do detect, however when listening to recordings of Mary Garden, Debussy's Melisande, a strong English or even Scottish accent.  It was pointed out even back then.