Singing and a ’cello

 

I had FOUR new songs to learn, or to try on for size and choose from, the last fortnight, since Nadia, the lazy slut, was taking Easter Monday off,* they just don’t make voice teachers like they used to.**  And then I had flu.***  I’ve only been really singing for about the last three days.†  So, at rather a pelt, I learnt a song and a half:  Long Time Ago arranged by Aaron Copland†† and half of When Daisies Pied by Thomas Arne†††. 

            In some ways the increasing gap between what I do or can do at home and what I do or can do for Nadia is INCREASINGLY FRUSTRATING.  I do my most emotive singing . . . mostly over the washing-up.  Please.  But there’s something about having something that is just slightly distracting‡ to do with your hands and about one-tenth of your brain, as well as no audience‡‡, that enables all kinds of freedom.  I caught myself breaking my heart over the dead Eurydice some time this weekend . . . and of course the moment I noticed it went away and I couldn’t get it back.  Arrrrgh.  But in terms of sheer howling frustration at the perversity of self-consciousness . . . I was doing scales at the sink.  It was, again, some time this weekend.  I’d been singing for a day or two at that point but this was my first attempt to get back into my top end.  Oh dear, I thought, that A is still very squeaky.  So I went to the piano because sometimes having the piano to lean on is comforting.  And it wasn’t the A.  It was the B.  I don’t have a B—yet—but I’ve thought I probably will because I have the A# most of the time at home and an occasional chalkboard squeal above that.  This was definitely a B, and while it was far from a thing of beauty, it was real enough that if I could make it on demand it would be useful in a choir where I’m being covered up by a lot of better Bs.‡‡‡

            Of course it only lasted long enough for me to go, glibberglingglang, that’s a B!  That’s a real, live B!  Whereupon it went away so emphatically I could barely hack my way to the A.  Siiiiiiiigh. 

            When I went in today the first thing Nadia did was make me do a lot of physical stretches to get the bits reconnected since, post-flu, they’ve all shut down in postures of rigid defense.  The point being that I was even singing badly . . . but I had still managed to produce that top B I don’t have (yet) simply because I knew I had had flu and wasn’t expecting much.   ARRRRRRGH.

            She then asked me what, of whatever I was singing, I’d most like her input on, and I pulled out Long Time Ago.  And here’s the thing . . . she didn’t say anything about the notes and all that basic stuff (despite the fact that they are not perfect).  She went immediately into phrasing and interpretation. 

            You know this improvement scam is kind of intimidating. . . . 

blondviolinist

cicatricella wrote on Fri, 13 April 2012 22:02

Re: the violoncello thing. I know not how it might apply to voice, and why there would be both a ‘cello’ and a ‘violoncelle’, but ‘cello’ is actually an abbreviation (or was originally anyway). ‘Cello’ is a diminutive in Italian and a ‘violoncello’ is a ‘little (contra)bass’. That’s why some books (especially older ones) write it ” ‘cello”

 

Yep. So the performer who listed it as “cello” was probably a nice enough person, and the performer who listed it as “violoncelle” was full of themselves.  

I did wonder.  It’s the ‘violoncelle’ performer that we missed.  The cello player was a nice young man—and I think I remember he placed in the instrumental category.  I did know about the “ ’cello” from reading lots of old books, but I assumed that since this was in some other language it must be some other instrument. 

Diane in MN

Unfortunately he’s not the least interested in opera and unless he has a voice teacher at some point who wakes him up to the glories of the operatic repertoire I think we’ll lose him to the West End. Feh.

How good are you at subverting voice teachers? 

SNORK.  That approach hadn’t occurred to me.  Well, the family have been threatening to move south, to be nearer the rest of the clan. . . . 

I didn’t hear Traviata this afternoon and from your description, I would have disliked the production a whole lot. As when:

[. . .] she realises he’s asking her to give up Alfredo forever SHE TAKES HER DRESSING-GOWN OFF and trails around in her slip. Oh gods how I hate the wandering around in your underwear to indicate vulnerability and innocence thing. (She does it again later at the party. [. . .])

This would have taken me right outside the performance, 

YES.   THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT IT DOES.  ‘Surreal’ has rules (even if I’m not sure what they are) just like ‘fantasy’ does, and if you break them, you ruin the story, and the spell.  The end of the first act, when she’s singing about how she has to be free, and then she hears Alfredo off stage singing about the power of love, in his wet way, and it stops her . . . in this staging, he comes on stage and confronts her, although I think you don’t have to know the standard set-up to recognise the dream-like quality of it here:  she is confronting herself really.  And it works.  That’s one of the things that works a treat.  It’s hard to believe that someone who came up with this would also come up with trailing around in your slip. 

even if other elements (like Alfredo in his underwear) had failed to do so.  

Indeed.  I was having a little trouble, although I would have coped, with the cabbage roses.  The boxer shorts broke my suspension of disbelief snap.  Reasons Never to Be A Stage Actor:  your director can make a fool of you and there’s nothing you can do about it. 

I dislike and am distracted by staging that wants to trump the music or libretto or both.  Aaargh. It’s too bad that on top of that, the singers were not at their best. 

Yes.  And part of the frustration is that a good deal of this staging was really interesting.  But . . . I was talking to someone else who saw it, who agreed that Dmitri sang like a stick.  It may have been characterisation—Papa Germont is a stick—but it was not a good choice. 

Blondviolinist

I haven’t seen many productions of La Trav, but I’ve yet to see one in which the 2nd act didn’t bore me. (Well, except for Papa Germond’s aria. He’s being a jerk, but oh! is it gorgeous music.) This includes two of Zeffirelli’s stagings. Maybe the act is simply hard to stage effectively. 

We-ell. . . . I wouldn’t say boring, myself, but then I love the opera too much.  I do absolutely know what you mean.  For me the music, well sung, can deal with anything (and Dessay, even not in top voice, was well worth watching, and I’d see her in it again without hesitation).  What I guess happens with me is that I look forward to all three scenes, and I would have said that it’s pretty hard to get both Germont and Violetta and the party scene wrong, they’re both oozy with easy drama.  All right, it’s not hard:  put Violetta in her dressing gown, and then make her take it off, and then wander brokenly around the rest of the stage pulling all the cabbage roses off the furniture.  ARRRRGH.  Anyway.  It shouldn’t be hard to stage both those scenes.  The rough one is the one between Papa the Thug and Alfredo the Wet Brat. 

              And yes, since you ask, I’m insane, we knew that, I’d love a chance to try. . . . 

* * * 

* I think this was a toddler-minding problem rather than a desire to loll around at home in her dressing-gown all day eating bonbons and watching soap operas.  

** WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WHILE SHE’S ON MATERNITY LEAVE FOR TWO MONTHS?  I’LL FORGET EVERYTHING.^ 

^ Drama queen?  What?  Clearly you don’t take music lessons from a Nadia. 

*** I know.  I still owe you a what? blog about how the New Thing came to be.  It may be some help if I mention now that ‘raving with fever’ had something to do with it.

 † And I still have one spectacularly blocked ear which is very, very boring.  

†† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D8wqsmkYT8  So I have a thing for baritones.  Sue me.  Of the half dozen that come up immediately on YouTube this is my favourite.  And having listened to all of the ones I liked twice (and this one three times) I have STOPPED because Nadia doesn’t like me listening to YouTube—I told you this, that she believes that you pick up interpretations without meaning to and she wants her students making their own mistakes.  And their own not-mistakes.  As recently as when I was first learning Dove Sei I thought she was straining at gnats with me—I could certainly see why she’d be thinking about this with a student who, you know, had a real voice and was really singing—but . . .

               Um.  Okay.  Yes.  I’ve crossed that line too.^  Granted that Long Time Ago (or When Daisies Pied) is a simple song, but my excuse for heading for YouTube was to learn the actual line as quickly as possible without worrying about my eccentric piano-playing.  But I was pretty much ignoring the melody because I knew I could pick it up, and listening to the phrasing.  How does he do that—oh.  Oops. 

EMoon

It is amazing, as I take more lessons and crawl slowly forward in the singing, how much more I can hear in others’ singing. 

Yes.  Exactly.  I’ve been aware of it increasingly—as I mentioned again on Friday after the Pan-galactic finals, that your listening is different in kind if you’re having even a feeble and talent-free stab at doing whatever-it-is yourself.  But I don’t think I had realised till I started listening to good professional singers singing Long Time Ago the other night just how far down this road I’ve come.  Oh wow.  Look.  Elephants.  Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas any more.  

All I need is more work, more work, more work, and no other things interrupting it. (Bwah-ha-ha-ha! she sings, with expression and only the right amount of vibrato. . . .

Well . . . that might be true with you people with voices.  It’s certainly true that I could use more practise time to good effect but . . . I’m still going to hit the wall with this voice-equivalent sooner rather than later.  Good reasons to keep singing off the McKinley Obsession List. 

My friend Susan . . . mentioned today that a great contralto died a few days ago at age 90, Lili Chookasian. I knew nothing about her, but Susan gave a link to one of her recordings and I was completely wiped out by it, tears and all. Well below both our ranges, on the low end, but in case you’re interested, here’s a link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrZTUm8IUAU&feature=relat ed 

Oh my.  Yes.  (Which is why I’m sticking it in here, for musical blog-readers who don’t look at the forum.)  I would love Kathleen Ferrier anyway, but I also love her because she’s the only true contralto I’ve pretty much ever frelling heard of. 

              I also sing Blow the Wind Southerly and even though I love the song and there’s no reason I shouldn’t, still . . . why?  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjvHg9cBriw ^^  

^ For better and worse.  Generally speaking I’m fine with the fact that I’m not going to be a (very) late-flowering Beverly Sills.  But I do kind of catch myself wishing that I had the chops+ to be a big frog in even a very small pond.   Some of this is worrying about the future of the Muddles:  I’ve told you we’re going to be getting a new director and Who Knows.  And thanks to having more throat trouble this last year than I have had since I was a bronchitis-prone preteen and that the Muddles have lots of long breaks from rehearsal, I’ve never quite fully committed to them.  If our new leader wants us singing medleys of old Beatles hits I’ll be out of there so fast I’ll give myself road burn.  

+ Er . . . croaks? 

^^ And Che Faro.  And He Was Despised.  And O Waly Waly.  She sang a lot of my favourite repertoire.  And I am a glutton for self-punishment.  

 ††† http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxiTrRwsW0E  

‡ There are good musical moments out with hellhounds too.^  But you can never afford to be too distracted from continuously scanning your surroundings for sudden perils.  And I’ve never had a spoon or a tea mug leap out of my hands and go scalding off after a rabbit. 

^ Even if Chaos will not stop looking up at me earnestly when I sing.  When we’re out hurtling he trots at my side.  At home he gets out of the nice comfy dog bed to stand near me and stare.   No, I’m not in pain.  Go away.   

‡‡ Other than a deranged hellhound.  

‡‡‡ Or at least Griselda.  You really only need Griselda.