How did Boston ‘Get Made’ so Quickly?
This is how a senior from Bentonville High, in just seven months, has become proficient in Bel canto vocal technique and learned art songs in English, Italian, German, and French, despite completely lacking the culture of Bel Canto singing and only knowing vocal arts through his (excellent) High School choir. It’s the story of how he got accepted at nine top Colleges and conservatories, with scholarship offers totaling over three-quarters of a million dollars including one offer of 110% of all costs for four years. I contend that (his physical youth factored in) Boston is now singing Five art songs and a Mozart operatic aria at a graduate level for many institutions. He can read a French, German, or Italian lyric with an accent that is already approaching the native level, and he can sustain a steady tone and dramatic throughline in Mozart’s aria, Non piu andrai. That is why every school he auditioned for is so eager to get him. He is usable, and usable is the threshold to attain College entrance in voice. It sounds modest but usable in opera, choir, recital and symphonic performance is so rare that hundreds of applicants get turned away every year.
Boston cuts in line
Last June a University of Arkansas colleague called. I had assisted in teaching her opera theater class: now, she asked me to train a young bass, whose ambition was to become an opera singer. I scheduled a consultation and learned he would be a High School Senior in the Fall, and he hoped to attend Juilliard and become an opera singer!
I was staring into a mirror at my sixteen-year-old self. A kid from a musical, but not a
professional-musical family. A sixteen-year-old, whose voice had recently changed from alto to bass. Though I’d had the advantage of voice lessons from age thirteen, I too was a Midwestern boy with no operatic experience, a little small in stature for my fach/voice type and I had also fallen in love with the powerful, cultivated sound of the great voices of Ezio Pinza and Dietrich Fischer- Dieskau. This young man couldn’t know what he would have to achieve in the time left before college entrance exams and beyond to survive in the competitive opera culture. How could he? How could he know how many other gifted and or similarly enchanted young singers had spent years like me preening those first recitals, visiting operas, reading divo and diva biographies, and books on and about Dieskau, Verdi, and Schubert? These kids have already stood in line for years. Boston wanted to cut to the front of the line. In front of sixteen-year-old me and all the others
Singing at Church and School
I asked for his entire singing resume. Boston answered; he had sung in the church and school choirs, nothing more. I asked can you read music? Yes. Do you read books? Yes. Poetry? Yes. He sang a few scales and for the first time in his life, intoned Italian and German phonemes for me. He could roll [r] and he could repeat German and Italian phonemes correctly without the typically American added diphthongs and added schwa substitutions for European vowels. I recognized a good ear for languages, a rich and stable low register, the usual male (passaggio) high-notes problems, and occasionally inaccurate pitch but only on descending passages and in the mid to low register. A beautiful voice, totally lacking in training but also lacking any serious defects.
I pitied his lack of formal training and naivete. He’d had learned a few songs with a local ‘voice teacher’ but had practically no technical tools; a perfunctory “warm-up” was the full extent of his functional technique. He had no phonetic tools for singing in German, French, and Italian, he could vaguely define IPA but didn’t know how to use it in any language. He wanted to attend a top-flight conservatory but had no regular practice regimen, no experience singing opera, and didn’t know what a German Lied was.
‘Just let them Sing!’
I thought of the times I’d observed my great teachers spending time with hopeless dilettantes to supplement their incomes or because of unavoidable institutional assignments. “I Just let them sing!” said one legendary teacher cynically after I commented that the student before me sounded like a lost cause. That teacher traveled every summer to Bayreuth to maintain some of the greatest singers of that time. Regine Crespin the great French soprano credited him with saving her career when she was in a desperate state. Still, he couldn’t resist the benefits of flattering the ‘dreamers’ and supporting their self-delusion.
Singing off-pitch- vocal Deal Breakers
Back to Boston-We worked to root out the pitch issue. I told him it would be an absolute deal breaker, nobody in the opera business tolerates off-pitch singing. Just like an unsteady rhythm, it’s like cancer in music. He took that very seriously. He made great progress on pitch accuracy, and he will have to monitor that until the dragon is thoroughly slain. I’ve taught amateur singers who have extreme amusia or tone-deafness. I have never found a singer who cannot expunge or at least significantly diminish tone-deafness with consistent effort over months. I will devote a future blog post to my experience in that zero-tolerance area.
Don’t take your voice Personally!
Within a few lessons, Boston had memorized four difficult exercises that form a regimen that he will probably follow for the rest of his life. A regimen that I took from Margret Harshaw which for me made the difference between a bottom-feeding career as a light lyric baritone and an exciting four decades of traversing the lyric repertoire from Mozart and Rossini to Wagner and Dramatic Verismo. Boston’s talent, work ethic, resiliency, and integrity make him an exceptional singer and a great student. I had to learn to objectify my voice. To treat my instrument and the exercises with patience and respect. Of course, in my first lessons, I learned to think of the voice as an instrument and to develop it in terms of physical functions within a cultivated aesthetic. But, until those lessons with Harshaw after twenty-five years of elite training, I hadn’t grasped the full extent to which I needed to objectively analyze every sound I made. Amateur singers fail to appreciate the level of control and practice necessary to satisfy the highest professional standards. It is easier to say “Luciano Pavarotti was born with a voice like that’ or, “Fischer-Dieskau” was born into the right culture to be the best Schubert singer ever.” Yes, Dieskau and Pavarotti were both richly physically and culturally endowed but we are too quick to judge the beginning classical singer’s voice, musicality, and culture. Especially, where ignorance of Bel
canto vocal culture prevails and instead screaming and speaking in ‘Sprechgesang’ are valued as equal with cultivated sound.
Boston “Gets Made”
First, I would not have wasted my time on a ridiculously ambitious neophyte without seeing his week-to-week progress. I asked him to practice four times daily on technical exercises but always stop after fifteen minutes. This gives the advantage of a fresh start/voice on each go. I’m sure he maintained that practice regimen all summer and throughout the school year. I demanded progress every week. I began with a challenging Italian song to see if he could sustain long legato phrases on-pitch. There were some issues there and again, it would have been a deal breaker had he not worked so consistently and shown progress in both areas.
The Diction Speed-bump
How apparent your native accent is when you speak a foreign language indicates not only your aural and diction skills but also your commitment to enculturation. Do you want to 'Go Native’ or do you prefer to continually sound like an alien, almost everywhere? Generally, Americans have little exposure to European language and culture. Apart from large urban centers our American heartland is a homogeneous monoculture. We have regional dialects and class- determined differences but media, radio, TV, film, and the Internet have significant class and regional signifiers.
In my first year in Europe, at the great Zurich Opera, I learned that Benelux and Scandinavian countries used subtitles for American television programs. Whereas, in Germany American films, and TV were dubbed with the voices of German actors. Thus, my colleagues from smaller countries spoke perfect idiomatic accent-free English, and Germans, generally, if they spoke English made comical errors in heavily accented ‘High School’ English. Not only did Beneluxian(sp?) and Scandinavian colleagues speak better English; they commonly spoke five languages as a result of watching European TV in original languages with subtitles in their native language. I reflected on how far you would have to drive from my hometown of Ann Arbor to be forced to use a different language. The size and hegemonic attitude of my beloved country are detrimental to the most basic level of international understanding, and it is perhaps the biggest challenge to the art of singing in the U.S. To learn a song in a foreign language you must study the meaning and pronunciation to the extent that, for example, an Italian would assume on hearing that you were Italian.
Two factors accelerated Boston’s and my teenage language acquisition. First, there was no
inept American-accented role model. I had my own teacher’s excellent example and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Cesare Siepi, and Gérard Souzay. Boston; my example and Hans Hotter, Ezio Pinza, and José van Dam. I set the highest standard from the first word that Boston spoke, and he spoke every word perfectly before he ever sang a note. To meet that challenge, he must have spent tens of hours practicing with the YouTube recordings of the songs, I selected.
I occasionally use the methods from International Phonetic Alphabet to Guided Practice that I learned at Juilliard with the finest diction teachers modified and enhanced by the one-to-one setting. I will explore those methods and the benefits of Diction training outside the classroom in future posts.
The existential reality of singing Europe languages for Europeans was always my greatest
motivator. To pronounce correctly and with emotional conviction within a dramaturgical
context is the American singer's first great challenge.
Zen In a Nutshell
Objectivity is the key. A song or aria must have the correct:
· Pronunciation
· Pitch
· Rhythm
· Phrasing
· Epochal style
It is painstaking work and like most beginners, Boston was frequently frustrated. I gave him a copy of the book, The Inner Game of Tennis to instill a nonjudgmental approach to his work. He learned to be highly discriminating without directing prejudice or malice directed at himself.
The book implicitly teaches that frustration is a form of vanity and that all emotions tied to
frustration are distractions from the task at hand. This Zen philosophy is key to rapid progress in
singing where you are your instrument.
Next, we take on the subjective work or dramatic interpretation:
· Pronunciation
· Rhythm
· Epochal style
No, you’re not experiencing deja vous!
Pronunciation, Rhythm, and Epochal style will be revisited and adjusted to individual
interpretation. But only after the objective elements are mastered. Voice teachers at the
secondary level often abandon objective work for lack of experience or language proficiency, making superficial work of the subjective process. Boston proved that he hadn’t lied; he read poetry and he knew how to turn over a phrase repeatedly looking at every angle for a clearer meaning.
Better, one well-Sung Song than twenty Sung Badly
To date, Boston only knows a few songs but he knows exactly what he is singing, and portrays a well-defined character and attitude specific to the text and the composer's relationship to that song. Moreover, he has an explicit understanding of what he may and may not do within the epochal style of the composer. It is the sorting out and order of objective VS subjective processes that create the clearest and most precise performance. Any shortcut will diminish the effectiveness of the performance.
It's better to avoid emotional expression until a song is memorized. The path of learning objectively, eventually reveals the subjective content more precisely and without false detours on the way. Using this method, by the time a piece is musically and technically perfected and memorized, the singer is bursting at the seams with emotion. Emotion is irresistible at that point and usually needs to be reined in to maintain the physical poise of Bel canto expression.
A word of warning to any teacher planning to ‘Make’ a student in record time. There were only seven months on the calendar but many hours on the clock. I spent many extra hours in his lessons and in preparing those. Weekly meetings became twice and even three times weekly. My UARK colleague provided some hours of musical coaching and the recordings for preliminary rounds were made professionally.
Boston’s parents also traveled with him dividing their trips between them to fit work and family obligations-Boston is one of six kids. His mother and father supported him in every phase of his metamorphosis, and they appreciated even when it got expensive our relationship is Transformative more that Transactional.
This is all, in response to a kid with a rare dream and the grit to follow that dream.