Moan* Or, Possibly, Lament
My second to last voice lesson with Blondel today. Moan. Now he’s gone for a fortnight, the ratbag, moonlighting at the three choirs festival**, and then he’s back just long enough to give a few valedictory*** lessons and for him and his wife to throw everything they own in boxes . . . and then they’re gone. GONE.
Moan. I’ve been tweeting about this with @emoontx and @violinknitter on Twitter: that’s it’s more than a little absurd that it matters that my voice teacher is leaving.† I’ve only ever been in this singing game because of some cranky idea about widening my musical appreciation, specifically making writing songs a little more comprehensible, encompassable. Or something like that. But I’m old, I have no dependents, few responsibilities††, I have a certain amount of disposable income and I love music. Why not?
And then I had to go and like it.††† Get, you know, involved. And of course a large part of that liking is that Blondel really suits—suited—me as a teacher. I’ve now got the cherub’s—Blondel’s infant successor‡—phone number; I have it written down in the little notebook that lives in my hip pocket, and I can feel it back there, lurking, like a very small snake that might bite. Blondel says he’s a very talented singer. That doesn’t mean he can teach. It especially doesn’t mean he can teach ordinary slobs: too much talent too often means you aren’t able to empathise with the slow and the clueless, or tell them anything they can use. I went through this with riding instructors: it’s the ones who had to work hard at it themselves who could teach me.
A good teacher messes with you, you know? You try scary, dangerous things because your teacher tells you to—because you’ve learnt to trust your teacher enough to give the alarming things they suggest a shot. Violinknitter wrote: It does matter. The rhythm of teacher/student relationship takes a while to establish. And it hurts when it’s broken. (As a teacher, too.) —I hadn’t thought of the teacher side, but yes, this makes sense to me; the teacher has to engage for the student to risk that trust business. I do understand why Blondel is taking this new job (drat him) but I bet he’ll miss us, the students he is deserting. Okay, let me put that another way: he’d better frelling miss us.
I wrote: Maybe it’s the fact that performing (however badly) changes your relationship to music, and your teacher is crucial to the process.‡‡ Emoon responded: That’s certainly part of it…was it as strong with ringing as with singing? Wondering if it’s the same for instrumentalists.
We need a diverse group of people who are good at method ringing, playing a more standard musical instrument and singing to give this interesting topic the consideration it deserves. Tonight you’ll have to make do with me. I’m delighted to hear someone who doesn’t do it herself call change-ringing music; it’s certainly music by my definition. But the crucial, and for these purposes differentiating, thing about method ringing is that you have to do it in company. You may get a few early bell-handling lessons by yourself, and there are computer programmes which will ring the other bells for you so you can practise, but generally speaking method ringing only happens with several of you present.
The other crucial aspect of bell ringing as against more conventional music making is that there are no dynamics involved in change ringing. As soon as you start getting into dynamics you’re getting into emotional response and expression and that’s scary and dangerous and revealing.‡‡‡ And here for me there is a difference between making a fool of myself at the piano and making a fool of myself as a mezzo soprano: the piano is at least itself.§ It’s not like you can hide behind (or under) it in any useful or comforting way; those wrong notes are . . . wrong. Thoroughly, chillingly wrong. But your piano is there. If you hit a key (supposing you are keeping her in tune), it is always that key. The really appalling thing about singing—at least as someone who got into this voice-lessons fix via the piano—is that it’s your body. And there’s almost nothing set or given about it. Are you in good voice today? Is that high G going to be there when you reach for it? Who knows? And all that wretched business about keeping your tongue forward and your larynx relaxed, and singing through your eyes, or coming at that high note from above, or going down when you go up or forgetting about the notes§§ and singing the phrase. . . . Oh come on. I’m trying to remember the frelling tune, all right? It’s not like I am or was ever going to be a great pianist—but there is a limit to the number of things you are trying to keep track of at once, because the piano is a lot of them. With singing there is no limit.
So since last Thursday I have listened to every performance of Dido’s Lament on YouTube at least 463 times§§§, and I’ve worn a little laser-bruise in the Dido’s Lament space on my CD of Dido and Aeneas. And I went in for my second-to-last voice lesson today trying not to think about its being the second-to-last and the need to go out on a relative high and that last Thursday has scarred my psyche forever. I think Blondel was a little worried about this too, so when he asked me what I’d been looking at and I said well, Dido, of course, but I also went back to Che Faro#, he said, let’s try Che Faro.
Che Faro has been good for morale these last few days because singing it now I can see I actually have made progress since I was first learning it for Blondel a few months ago. The funny thing is—that high F? Piffle. It’s nothing. This is not to say I sing it well. Only that I’m singing it better. And so, flushed with (relative) victory, Blondel said bravely: Let’s look at Dido’s Lament.
I’m here to tell you that listening to (almost) every performance of Dido’s Lament on YouTube at least 463 times is not a bad learning tool.## I got through it. I did. It was not wonderful. I have no plans whatsoever to hang a clip of me singing anything, let alone Dido’s Lament, on YouTube any time in the foreseeable future. But it was a whole exploding-planet’s worth better than it was last Thursday. It was recognisable. It was enough there that there was stuff to work with. If Blondel weren’t leaving, I would learn to sing it.
And the high G? The G above the F that almost killed me in Che Faro a few months ago? The G was there. It was there. It was there every time. I have no idea.### Aside from the fact that human bodies are perverse.
* * *
* I am GOING TO BED EARLY TONIGHT. DO YOU HEAR ME? EARLY.^ I barely made it in before dawn this morning^^ and had to roll out too few hours later for another appointment with Rajan . . . which has made me worse. Maybe osteopathy is not the wave of my future.
^ Peter is on his way to bed as I write this. Go to bed earlier tonight, he says. When I woke up last night at 2:30 and you were still here with the lights on I nearly came downstairs and read you the riot act.
Blah blah blah blah blah BLAH BLAH all right.
^^ Shut up, you frelling birds
*** cough cough cough cough. Well, valedictory only means last; it doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a worthwhile product involved, like a diploma, or a ridiculous robe in a silly colour with badly coordinated stripes and a cheezy hood.
† Moan.
†† Except finishing PEG II before my readers run out of patience. Remember, if anything unpleasant happens to me, you’ll never find out how it ends.
††† There is a serious downside to being an easy enthusiast. Twenty four hours in the day, remember? —Remember what? What did you say?
‡ My gods but I would not have taken it well if some pushing-sixty-year-old kept calling me infant and cherub when I was twenty-three.
‡‡ Note that I am detweeting what we all said, not having a 140 character limit in force on the blog.^
^ Ha hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha ha.
‡‡‡ The advantage of an almost total lack of talent here is obvious: you’re so busy struggling with the sheer technicalities of producing any remotely accurate noises you can’t possibly spare any attention for particulars of expression.
§ Or herself, in the case of my piano. Or himself, in the case of Oisin’s.
§§ AAAAAAAUGH
§§§ All right, there are a few that made me snarl and cut them off halfway through.
# http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brGYq97Of6w Janet Baker is one of my major heroines and this clip of her doing almost nothing but just singing the freller reduces me to a little pile of ash every time I watch/listen.
## I’m playing my Dido CD again now. And like automatically my hand picks up and clicks back to the lament.
### And Emoon, if you are reading this . . . I would happily trade in my increasing range for half an octave that anyone would want to listen to. Although I can at least say that my aspirations for the back row of the unauditioned chorus are beginning to look reasonably plausible.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.