More Singing.
Blondel gave me an effing lied to learn today—you know, effing German art song. Schubert wrote a lot of them. So did Schumann. This is one of Schumann’s. Ugggggggh. I’m afraid of lieder . . . in a way, curiously, that I’m not afraid of opera. I may not be able to sing it* but I get it about going over the top.** Lieder are about precision, not one of my talents in any medium, and understatement, not one of my . . . well. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau sang a lot of lieder. He scares me. Luciano Pavarotti was just a fat Italian with an amazing voice.
. . . Although there’s a certain amount of pillar to post going on here. Sky Arts is apparently having a heavy opera December; I’ve already forgotten some of what I’ve seen*** but I effortlessly remember Anna Netrebko singing Elvira in I Puritani† last night and Natalie Dessay singing La Fille du Regiment tonight††. It’s very hard not to feel why frelling bother. ††† What’s a little lieder? At least they’re short. Well, Die Lotosblume is, anyway: two little pages. With one of those deceptively simple tunes.
But it’s in German.‡ Blondel had promised me something to learn over the holidays and as he scampered out of the room‡‡ he called over his shoulder, How’s your German?
About as good as my Italian, I said in what was supposed to be a dry, ironic tone.
Excellent, he said, coming back in again and handing me two pages of lotus blossom and a translation.‡‡‡
Aaaaaaugh. I can barely read the text any more, for my frantic notes on pronunciation. Blondel likes German. He says it’s a very musical language. Gah. Bleaugh. I am definitely going to look at Finzi’s It Was a Lover and his Lass, it’s in English.
Although my Fear No More was rather more of a hellhound’s dinner than expected/desired. Frell. I went in there thinking that I more or less knew what I was doing. To the extent that I ever know what I’m doing with my mouth open.§ But I’m practising wrong again somehow, and while it has to have something to do with the difference between me and a music stand and a piano and one finger and me and a music stand and a piano and an accompanist, I don’t immediately see what. But the result was that while the mouth-open noise-making part was something more nearly resembling legato, the smooth flowing line, than usual with me, I kept flubbing my entrances. Dratburgers. Cowpats. Frell. I might almost have been said to resemble a singer, except I kept falling over for the wrong length of time during the rests. Ungleblarg.
Meanwhile, right now I have to get back to PEGASUS, speaking of frell, cowpats, and ungleblarg. So I’m going to give you some of what Annagail replied to the comments on her guest post on singing, which is http://robinmckinleysblog.com/?s=annagail, in case you want to refresh your memory, which isn’t cheating because it’s really interesting. And there may perhaps be one or two interpolations.
Annagail said:
. . . great singers do have fabulous breath control—it’s just that you have to have air to control. Typically beginning/intermediate singers have to learn How To Overblow before they can learn How To Control My Air. Since singing is, to a point, controlled exhaling, and you obviously have to make your air last till the end of the phrase, the usual inclination is to inhale and then dole out as little air as possible,
Yep.
to make sure that one doesn’t run out of air.
Except, of course, you do anyway. And Blondel will keep telling me to stop gasping. Just relax, he says, and allow the air to come in. It will. Believe it will. He’s big on believing. He keeps telling me to believe in my top notes too.
Ironically (and as you can probably expect from my post), letting go and allowing the air to move through you actually frees up your air,
. . . and you find yourself floating several inches above the floor. Right? I haven’t done that yet.
so you end up using more and singing longer phrases more easily. It’s only when you start singing long slow 8-measure phrases that you have to start rationing your air, but if you tell a young singer that they’ll never have enough air to sing an 8-measure phrase to begin with.
Eight bars. Don’t make me laugh. (I have to breathe for every bar/measure of laughter too.)
Re: the six-pack—it’s actually a good thing to do crunches, because if your muscles down there are completely flabby you can’t use them for support;
Blondel likes to tell me to imagine that my air—and my support—are expanding sideways to fill one of those enormous ball-gowns that opera singers like to wear for concerts. I mean, even when the opera singer herself is not enormous.
you just need to be able to relax them at will, which you can’t when you have a six-pack. Being physically fit is really helpful as a singer (though you’d never know it to look at a lot of them)—operas take a lot of stamina, both mental and physical.
Operas. Getting your timorous butt to your voice lesson once a week takes a lot of stamina.
. . . The “lightheaded” feeling is less a technique and more a “this is how you should feel if you’re using enough air” sort of thing—and it goes away after awhile, when your body gets used to you filling it with more oxygen than it’s previously used to.
This is, to my considerable surprise, one of the things that improved quite quickly, from apparently having no lung space at all to having enough to be going on with. All that hellhound hurtling should be good for some cross-training.
I know when I get to the end of an aria (if I’ve done it right) I’m not exactly seeing spots, but my head feels like I just sprinted a medium-length distance. I’m not short of breath at all—it’s just the extra oxygen making things a little happy.
Yes. I get that. I still have trouble running out of air (approximately once per phrase. Sometimes twice) but when I manage several phrases in a row before Blondel stops me and makes me do something again, I start feeling a bit jolly. Although that may just be that I haven’t done anything so wrong in a line or two that my teacher has decided to pull the plug (again).
. . . . You do actually end up thinking about things aside from breath, eventually
HA. No, actually, I’m thinking about all kinds of things. I think, however, like a plate-spinner with too many plates spins plates. With much sound of crashing.
—you just aren’t allowed to think about how you sound.
The way I sound—and I don’t want to hear again about how you can’t know how you sound—this is a very good thing.
You can think about how much space you have,
Not enough. What is so infuriating is that I can feel myself shutting down. It’s like coming around a corner to a lot of orange cones blocking off a perfectly good piece of the road when there’s nothing wrong with it. Why can’t I use it?
where you want the next phrase to sit, check and see if your mouth is spread instead of being nice and vertical, see if your jaw is nice and loose—and if you’re paying at least a little attention to all of those things you hardly even realize you’re singing.
Sez you.
The coolest feeling in the world is a really unreleased note—it feels like you opened your mouth and the sound appears in the middle of the ceiling. It’s not even a part of you at all. It’s a very fun out-of-body-ish experience.
. . . Sigh. I’ll take your word for it. Although, I dunno, sunlight in December in Hampshire may come close.
. . . You do need to learn how to blend in the context of an ensemble, but one of the things the director is there for is to tell you if you’re not blending. Choral singing is a very different animal from solo singing- directors don’t always have your best interests in mind and will advocate “shortcuts” that sound good in a group but seriously fatigue your voice or teach you bad technique. . . . A director doesn’t have time to do the slow, hard work of teaching each individual how to sing coloratura cleanly and correctly- s/he needs a fix, now. Choral singing can be very beneficial, but make sure that first and foremost you are singing in a way that is healthy for you- and if the director asks for something that is unhealthy for you, don’t sing it. If s/he wants a piano that you can’t control, or a high note that you can’t support yet, mouth for that little bit and then come in later. . . .
I will leave you with something my teacher said the other day: “Never crescendo your voice past the point of its beauty and never decrescendo past the point of your control.” Forte and piano are relative and they will get more pronounced as your technique increases.
. . . SIGH.
And so back to PEGASUS, which does not feature a lot of singing.§§
* * *
* I am not able to sing it
** Stop that laughing. It’s very unbecoming.
*** Although Joyce DiDonato singing Una Voce Poco Fa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysGFMx6NOEY&feature=related
is a highlight under any circs. We had the Barber of Seville with her and Juan Diego ‘I’m almost as hot as I think I am’ Florez in it a few nights ago. If I ever sang Una Voce so anybody could recognise it I might have to die of happiness.^
^ But I could put off the die part.
† One of those really deeply silly plots where the heroine goes mad when her fiancé appears to run off with another woman^ and then comes to her senses at the end when he’s not going to be executed after all. What? you’re saying. Yes. Exactly.
^ He’s actually rescuing the queen. No, really. But you can hardly blame Elvira for having a little credibility trouble with this excuse.
†† With Juan di Hotness again as the tenor. La Fille is famous for the tenor aria with nine high Cs. Nine. Lesser mortals’ heads explode. Juany can definitely sing, I just wish he loved himself a little less.
††† Um. Because it’s fun?
‡ Well, yes. It is not unreasonable for German art songs to be in German.
‡‡ I knew the scampering was a bad omen. Voice teacher as hellhound.
‡‡‡ Robert is writing a song for/about/with thoughts of his sweetheart to whom he is finally engaged^, about a flower who fears the sun but awakens to show her, ahem, beauty to the moon her lover. Hmmmmmm. Hey, I’m an American. I have a low mind.
^ I think that’s the chronology
§ I’m much better off with my fingers on a keyboard. Not that this is foolproof either of course.
§§ Although one of the Third Damar Novels has some singing in it.
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