Desctructive voice teacher: a tenor's vocal escape story!

[Klassikal]

I just read this quite controversial entry of a young tenor we featured:

I have been through a fascinating 2007 in regards to my singing – experiences that are sure to pique the interests of many members of the Klassikal Musik community.  I started this calendar year as a student of a rather notorious teacher in New York City with no stage experience as a tenor under my belt. I am finishing the year as a liberated singer, with no specific teacher to my name, but having performed in 26 performances of 4 full operas since May of this year, with a further run of Boheme to take me through the new year.  Why was my former teacher notorious? What made me leave? What am I doing to develop my voice on my own? This will be the focus of my first blog entry.

I left my teacher ("L") at the beginning of this year.  I feel that I got out just in time.  I had always had my doubts about his teaching (as skepticism is always a healthy thing to have), but my voice was growing in power, which can be falsely intoxicating, and I thought it must be that this teacher has uncovered a singing secret that most others out there just happened to miss.  After a while, I discovered that vocal power is only one aspect of a voice, and I kept asking (mostly to myself) when I was going to be taught how to sing with softer dynamics, when my vibrato would speed up again, when the throat soreness would go away, when I would be able to sing for more than 30 minutes at a time,...


http://www.klassikalmusik.com/community/blogs/ben/


What do you think?

[zamyrabyrd]

Find and read:
1) "Bel Canto" by Cornelius Reid
2) "Singing and Imagination" by Thomas Hemsley
3) The excellent article on voice production in Grove's Dictionary
4) Take a vocal rest and start all over again.
5) Listen to tenors who didn't force like Gigli.

The first two books I read several times, gaining different insights everytime. The latter article took me one summer to fully digest.

ZB

[Klassikal]

Did you read the rest of the entry? And the first sentence? It's not the whole story, and it's not mine. Pass you advice to the tenor in question.

[zamyrabyrd]

What do you think?

The above is what I thought.
If you are concerned (which seems to be the pretext for including the story here), then you can pass on this advice. But really, addressing a general question on what to do about destructive voice teachers is to find out as much as one can about voice production and not trust people blindly which seems to be done more than 95% of the time, adding an especial caveat for former singer-teachers who lost their voices due to their own faulty techniques. (This begs the question if one would study driving from someone who wrecked his own cars, including his driving students.)

ZB

PS. I read his whole post. Music teaching is frequently cult-like: "Believe in ME!!!". If one is LUCKY (ie, not permanently damaged), one can get past the personalities of unscrupulous or just irresponsible teachers and do the job oneself.

[Xenophanes]

Find and read:
1) "Bel Canto" by Cornelius Reid
2) "Singing and Imagination" by Thomas Hemsley
3) The excellent article on voice production in Grove's Dictionary
4) Take a vocal rest and start all over again.
5) Listen to tenors who didn't force like Gigli.

The first two books I read several times, gaining different insights everytime. The latter article took me one summer to fully digest.

ZB

Thanks for mentioning the two good books, and I'll have to get to the library to read Groves.

I don't know all that much technically about singing, all about overtones and such, but one thing I found out long ago is that if it hurts your voice, it's wrong. Another is that one sign of strain is that you can't sing on pitch, tend to sing flat, particularly around range changes.  I can sing pretty well and I don't get tired doing it even as a senior, though when I was younger I had even more endurance.  If I was asked to sing the bass solos in Messiah, I wouldn't just do the solos but sang in the choruses as well (after all, I was and am a member of the choral society). I think I still could--certainly the choruses give me little vocal difficulty. We did Beethoven's 9th last spring, only about 12 minutes singing for the chorus, though much of that is rather demanding, and after the dress rehearsal, and I threw off some of the high F's afterwards. The baritone soloist asked if I wasn't tired! What, after a couple of run-through with a little piece like that, I thought! I refrained from asking what they teach singers nowadays, because I should think that being able to sing so that one can continue for a long time should be one of them.

I do have to disagree with you about Gigli.  Gigli sang well from his teens to over age 65, a career over 40 years.  I can't see that he could sing well for so long if he forced his voice, and his intonation was pretty good, too.  He could sing soft, medium, and loud, and could still sing well at age 65.  My mother said she went to a recital given by Gigli (I presume this was in the 'thirties) and he sang his whole program, then did a lot of encores, and finally, at the end, he turned hand springs on the stage! (From his pictures, I can't quite picture that but Mummy wouldn't lie . . . )  I don't think she was too impressed by the hand springs, and I assumed she considered it undignified for a classical concert.

But Gigli seems to have had a distinctive voice (so many of the big stars do), and so I think it is good advice for most people not to attempt to sing like him.  Most don't have enough voice, for one thing, and most would not have voices similar to his. 

[zamyrabyrd]

Preference for unforced singing may be an acquired taste, or conversely since aggressive vocal production is the norm these days with practically nothing else around to compare it to, an acquired taste for the latter is built up by default. I simply MELT upon hearing this guy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HfV_zAf2Jc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9ja7W9mCxI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GC199OS6_nA&feature=related

Berger's clear ringing soprano has also presumably gone the way of the dinosaurs.
If you get to read the article in Grove, do try to search up actual examples. I managed to get the
"History of Covent Garden" in several CD's.

ZB

[Xenophanes]

I must have misunderstood your remark on Gigli, which grammatically could be read two ways! 

My favorite Gigli track is Ah non mi ridestar from Werther, absolutely stunning.

As for "The Dream" from Manon, we always liked Richard Crooks.  Couldn't find it on YouTube but we had it at home on a 78 and I have it on an RCA Camden LP. Gigli did it a bit too slow, I think, but beautifully. I still prefer Crooks.

[Klassikal]

There are fine recordings of Crooks indeed, I like him too. I certainly agree Gigli had a great technique. I think in the thirties he sometimes packed in too much chest in the middle and higher register, but he could handle it because of his technique. He stated himself he could afford to do so because of his perfect breath control. Adding that he would ruin his students he would let them sing as he did. I think Calleja, although also has a distinctive voice, and although not too simimal to Gigli's, I think his vocal development is. A recent video of Calleja last summer:

That high B is stunning, more akin to Bjorling

Lamento di Frederico
http://www.klassikalmusik.com/index.php?page=videos&section=view&vid_id=100048

Granada (Great bravura)
http://www.klassikalmusik.com/index.php?page=videos&section=view&vid_id=100047

Una furtiva lagrima
http://www.klassikalmusik.com/index.php?page=videos&section=view&vid_id=100066

What do you guys think?