From: conrad@brahms.udel.edu (Jon Conrad)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: Re: The Artists of our day (was Das Lied van der Erde and Mahler 1)
Date: 12 Oct 92 16:39:22 GMT
Article-I.D.: news.Bw0oxn.976
Organization: University of Delaware

In article <10OCT199211525475@portal.lasc.lockheed.com> le01167@portal.lasc.lockheed.com (Ron Nadel) writes:

>So Nilsson's vocal quality was simply due to age intead of misuse?

>Interesting.  Again, are her vocal trials caused by age or misuse?

It's hard to draw a hard line between the two; it isn't either/or.  The
thing is, NOBODY sings 100% perfectly, or ever has.  There's always
something that is not in perfect balance or up to optimum efficiency --
that's real life.  Birgit Nilsson was a great singer, but no more
perfect than any other great singer; she couldn't always modulate that
steely voice, it wasn't as flexible as she would've liked, its color
range was not unlimited.  Small shortcomings in view of what she DID
achieve, sure.  But they represented ways in which the instrument didn't
function as fully as it might have, and when (after a couple of amazing
decades of utter reliability) the voice began to show signs of
faltering, it's not unreasonable to relate this to the marginal "misuse"
of it over the years.  Sure enough, she didn't wobble (my original
point) even at the end; but I wouldn't say she preserved her own best
standards to the end of her performing days.  Same, on a less exalted
level, with Soederstroem.

>>>On the one hand it may be that singers are not singing as well as they used
>>>to, but I also think that the amount of singing they do nowadays is too
>>>taxing on their voices.  
 
>>What's the difference?  Singing too much, too taxingly, is bad singing.
>>You seem to think the two halves of your sentence are opposites, but
>>they are in agreement.

>Well, I don't know, Jon, they seem different to me.  A singer can sing
>properly technically, but sing too often, and a singer can sing with
>improper technique and ruin the voice in that fashion (usually quicker).
>What I'm trying to do is distinguish if modern singers are not singing
>as well as the earlier greats (technically), or if modern singers just
>sing more often.  The result can be the same (wobbly voice), but the
>causes are different.

I still don't see them as different.  Singing often does not *in itself*
hurt a voice (hear me out before rebutting).  The danger is that, if a
voice is not in optimum shape at performance time (which can happen for
a variety of reasons: lack of rest, still unrecovered from earlier
performance, ill health, emotional stress, etc.) the singer will resort
to harmful extra effort to keep up the standard of performance: throat
pressure, pushing the tone instead of emitting it, whatever you want to
call it.  Such abuse, over the long term, hurts the voice itself.  If a
voice works exceptionally well, singing often may exercise it and keep
it lubricated, as little "recovery time" is necessary.  There are
instances where actually using a voice frequently helps it rather than
hurting it.  (Consider that most great singers of the 19th century made
professional debuts in their teens; the truism that "you have to wait
till you're older" is another modern misunderstanding.)

So I disagree with your second sentence.  If "singing too often" becomes
a problem, it's because the frequency of performance tempted the singer
into improper technique to deal with the stress.

>>>And they just can't say no to all those booking dates.  
 
>>Nonsense.  Of course they can.  The more conscientious ones do.  If you
>>say yes to things you shouldn't be doing, you are compromising your own
>>artistic and vocal standards, and have nobody to blame but yourself.
 
>True enough, and if you sing with poor technique it's your own fault, too.

Yes, though the two cases are different enough in degree to amount to a
difference of kind.  Finding a good technique is a longterm process for
many singers, with some hit-or-miss and trust and guesswork mixed in.
Whereas to say no, one simply has to say no to those 5 Elektras in 2
weeks.

>I just meant that many/most artists are weak in the face of the money etc
>and so sing more often now than the greats of days gone by (there are perhaps
>less great singers so more demand on existing ones).  So modern singers may
>sing just as well as the bygone greats, but have poorer judgement.

I can't agree.  Further, if you look at the actual schedules of the
older singers, they sang pretty damn often, some of them.  But their
voices were developed enough to take it.  Take a look at Karl Joern's
seasons at the Met, in the "Annals."

>When you read, in Berlioz's scores, his admonitions to conductors on which
>sections need to be particularly practiced with the strings because of their
>tendency to have difficulties with this and that, I wonder if our modern
>orchestras are made of more proficient (better) musicians.  

I can believe this.  Technical standards in our orchestras are very
high, on the whole.  (There's a way in which this affects opera
performance, but I'll leave that for another time.)

>On the other hand,
>we have only a few super tenors/sopranos etc, able to give the great opera
>roles their due, and there are no real coloraturae are there?  And there are
>some exceptions to these rules which obscure trends...so what do you think?

I think it has a great deal to the fact that voices are developed to a
great extent by "faith."  Or, if that sounds wrong, by "the going
standard," by "what's in the air."  I'm still not quite getting it, am
I?  :-)  Someone, ideally, aims for a major singing career by hearing
examples of good singing at an early age and thinking "I wanna do that."
But our modern singers cannot possibly have grown up in such a culture;
classical singing just isn't "in the air" any more.  Pop music has gone
in a vastly different direction, and early musical training often
doesn't expose one to those sorts of influences.  Most vocal majors I
see at the college level are there because someone said "you have a nice
voice, you should study."  True enough, but they seem to know nothing of
what the possibilities and standards are or have been.  It's not their
fault, but the problem remains.  A voice doesn't just happen by itself;
it develops because the person it's attached to works at bringing out a
certain potential.

This varies from one era to another.  When contraltos were prized, lots
of new contraltos were developed.  Nowadays, who would want to do that,
and find oneself unemployable?  The vocal potential is still around, but
nobody is thinking in that direction.  Same with deep basses, dramatic
coloraturas, and so on.  We do have a lot of baritones, mezzos (who
sound like sopranos), and almost-tenors.  We're losing the extremes, and
I think that's partly because to develop the extremes, you really have
to believe in them.

This is an interesting topic.  I'm always trying to further examine and
refine my ideas on it.

Jon Alan Conrad
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical