Dissertation. Subject research on "Singing didactic: from theory to practice",

 

'References to external influences that constitute the foundation for my research and the development of my teaching method'.
from directives of Trinity Guildhall, Music Education_Vocal Teaching Diploma

 

The method, rooted in my basic philosophy, is a summary of my personal experience, of my constant study with teachers and personalities of the musical world, physiology, personal interests such as sports and dance and the study of texts from various sources, such as practical methods, treatises and biographies.
My personal experience as a singing student and performer in a career mostly classical and operatic evolved through several stages, as I will try to explain to emphasize the link between my research and the development of my singing method.

During my workshops and lessons, the students are guided to highlight strong and weak aspects of their technique and choice of repertoire, and to express their potential in a program tailored on each of them at the best level.
Thanks to my personal research, I developed the ability to recognize where the problems of the student lie, if there is any, and how to overtake a vocal defect through breathing exercises and specific training of the vocal apparatus, inclusive to draw inspiration from speech therapy and other disciplines when necessary (i.e. Alexander and Feldenkreis method).

Many believe that who has a good voice was born with it, but experience leads me to assert that it is possible to develop the voice working into all its parameters of emission, extension, projection and richness of colour, volume and intonation.
It's also possible to phase out the flaws in pitch, throatiness, a nasal and hoarse voice, always considered defects of the voice.

The more beneficial process for the singing technique is the one that takes into account all the qualities we need to get, first of all the homogeneity of registers and proper projection of sound.
We need to let the voice developing at its own pace naturally, never going beyond the ability of the moment -just like a plant that we can't push to mature earlier- penalty the destruction of the qualities of the voice and the emergence of defects that cost then so much to eradicate.
 

There are singers who reveal a voice already mature at a very young age, but this innate characteristic has always been very rare to find. To let the talent flourish, most of the singing students need a clear technical path and to rely, especially at the beginning, on the care of a teacher who will carry on with perseverance and determination.

All the people that I have met during my studies and career have taught me, shown or confirmed the technical aspects of singing that has enriched my knowledge and motivated towards a much deeper insight.
I would like to refer to some eminent personalities who constitute my basic coordinates for the development and synthesis of a singing technique method: Professor Mauro Uberti, Manuel Garcia and Alfred Tomatis.

I am going to highlight the salient points that inspired me, in order to  understand how I transfused them into my personal experience.

                        1. Professor Mauro Uberti (www.maurouberti.it) has been my first singing teacher.
Saying that, we could imagine the classical singing technique commonly taught in a Conservatoire in order to get a diploma, but at the time it was not so.
Mauro Uberti, biologist, researcher and professor, was a teacher at the Music Conservatoire of Parma when we met. He founded the first School of Early Music in Italy called "Stanislao Cordero Institute" of Pamparato (Cuneo, Italy), and he was brought to my attention as an eminent professor during my first course of Renaissance Music in Belluno, held by Rebecca Steward.
For some years, I attended singing lessons during the scholar years and summer courses in Pamparato, during which I studied in depth a proper technique to sing the compositions of the pre-Romantic era, since operatic repertoire was of no interest to me at the time, and I wanted to become a singing teacher.

I adhered to the conception of my teacher, who considered the possibility to maintain a natural voice, not "set", like a blank canvas where even the most subtle change of position of the larynx -together with a very accurate use of the text, like the elocution of an actor- creates a palette of colours whith which we want to realize the so-called "theory of affects".
 

All voice's parameters - such as vibrato, the range and the quality of vocal sounds- are different compared with the operatic technique, in an attempt to express the appropriated aesthetic criteria of that historical period, which has been deduced from the study of treaties.
One observation: in no treaty or preface (by Caccini, Monteverdi, De Cavalieri, from Maffei to Mancini) we find the concept of "no vibrato voice” or “white voice”,  as pursued as an essential aesthetic element by many musicians and singers of the Early Music revival during the last 50 years.

In order to keep our voice with no vibrato, some muscles of the vocal apparatus inevitably will get tight. This type of sound became fashionable and it has been adopted by many musicians but it is not a rule; we can implement it if it is required, but I would not recommend it.

Prof. Uberti showed me to a conference in Pamparato as a living example of the possibility of using at least 4 different singing techniques. We could describe them as a progressive modification of the position of the larynx (and adjustment of the layout in the mouth cavity) and a sound that progressively becomes more “supported”.
Even my own experience of laryngitis was enlightening, after singing during a summer course with a cold, as the specialist who visited me increased my curiosity  to deepen my knowledge on singing physiology.
The diagnosis by the laryngologists was significant: I realized that the concepts of "support of the voice" and "breathing activity" are not the same things, because it is possible to breathe correctly but do not support the voice, as the “support” implies the coordination of many fnctions.
At that stage, I learnt that in order to achieve high-pitched sounds, I was leaving my larynx going up and after a while I was getting tired. The high notes of my vocal range were not natural for me and sounded poor in harmonics, like a "white voice" (the children voice), and I needed to connect them with the lower portion of the voice, the one where I had always sungto feel at ease.

I also understood the importance of other factors, like vocal classification and tuning.

If for singing Early Music the vocal classification is relative   - because in general the compass of the voice is limited (at least in the solo singing) and we sing mainly in a middle range -for the operatic music is of vital importance, if we don’t want to ruin our voice. We have also to take into account that in Early Music it is used  a lower tuning pitch, where the vibration of the middle A4 is on 415 Hertz instead of 440.
When few years later I discovered how beautiful and powerful is the operatic singing and I started to dedicate myself to its study and then to teach, I realized I can perceive how the throat of the students is working and be able to help them when the technique they possess is not fully established.

                        2. From my experience as a student and researcher of my own sound, the encounter with the Method of Manuel Garcia has been very important for me and his profound teaching very alive.
I discovered that what I had always perceived as a break in my voice, a change mainly in the middle of my voice, and then also in the higher octave trying to develop the higher range, it was a physiological factor called "passage", already coded by other musicians but analyzed deeply in first place by Garcia.
You can try to imagine what a relief it was to realize that there was a physiological explanation behind the occurrence of this type.
Many singers and teachers, who have never had this issue strongly emphasized in their voice, do not know what to do about it and they can’t explain to a student what to do either.
What it is even worse, some of them argue that the passage does not exist and accuse the student to have a psychological or imagined problem.
In this way they exclude to the student the possibility to address the problem and to overcome it, limiting the opportunities to develop his voice.
In the attempt to overcome the "passage" some singers leave the larynx rise until the sound changes abruptly; this happens because they don't make any adjustment, the so- called "preparation of the passage”.

Following the concept of Garcia and his technical explanations, we can learn to "mix" the different registers of the voice - in this case the voice of the "chest" with the "head"- practicing until the registers are blended.
Garcia recommends patience and specifies: "This study (blend the registers), as necessary, discourages the student almost always ......... It shall be exercised passing alternately from one register to another, on each of these sounds (specified) without interruption and without inhaling during the transition.... Do not be afraid to highlight the sort of hiccup that occurs in the transition from one register to another. With the continuous exercise you can reduce it and then eliminate it" (Ginevra, S. 2001 pg.23)

Mathilde Marchesi (1821-1913), having been a Garcia's disciple, maintained the concepts of registers and the importance of joining them, obtaining an accurate and successful result in the technical process.

Manuel Garcia senior (father of Garcia mentioned above) went to Italy to study with “the highly respected tenor and teacher Giovanni Ansani around 1812. In spite of his Spanish origins, Manuel García became a paragon of the Italian-style tenor of the early 19th century. Ansani taught him how to project, and perhaps how to achieve the heavier sound that Mozart had recognized in all Italian singers as long ago as 1770” (Wikipedia, accessed the 12/12/2015)

In all Europe united by culture and music centuries ago, - where all the great musicians were travelling across the country up and down, West to East, and particularly to or from Italy- the experience of Manuel Garcia represents one testimony of the importance of the Italian singing technique spreading all over the world.

Garcia, Marchesi and Luigi Lablache among them (1794-1858) describe the technique fully detailed to blend the registers, which are 2 in a male voice but 3 in a female voice. Joan Sutherland, among others, underlies the possible existence of another passage of the voice at the top of the high octave in the female voices (A5-Bb5), to prepare the upper head tones.
We have to be very careful to work with the concept of  "passage" to assure the achievement of a well balanced and effective technique, the only one that permits to become virtuoso and master the art of singing.
             
                                                3. The encounter with Alfred Tomatis through his book "The Ear and the Voice" has been a revelation and an exciting discovery to me.
Tomatis is above all acknowledged because he invented an electronic ear for therapeutic purposes. He, the son of an opera singer, felt repugnance for the easiness with which his contemporary laryngologists advised operating in the case of damaged voices.
He argued that the ears are the ones that are damaged by singing incorrectly, particularly the right ear, because of the cybernetic system between the ear and the larynx that activates in the emission of a vocal sound. Tomatis, A. (2005 pg. 157)
From recovering the ear and feel the correct sound again, it is maybe possible to avoid to operate the throat. Simplifying: what he meant was that singing badly creates a bad sound that our ear, and our brain, return to the vocal cords in a bad way.
Tomatis studied the voice of a singing genius like Beniamino Gigli, and through his analysis he developed some concepts that I think so important and useful for the singing teaching method.
He noted that the term "mouth" is reductive for a singer because he/she could actually experiences and perceive 2 mouths.
We singers do not have a rigid instrument such as a barrel organ but an instrument made of muscle and cartilage, elastic and supple.
Tomatis identified that such elasticity, manifesting itself i.e. in the movement of the tongue, is creating sound spaces: the dorsal portion of the tongue at the point where we say "G" (as “Go”) actually creates 2 mouths: one at the back, where the sound originate, and one in front, where the sound is modelled and the words are produced.
He calls this point "ignition point of the sound" and he gives it extreme importance, arguing that many defects in the emission of sound are generated by the interference of the two spaces between them.

When an interference manifests it is because the "G" point is not well regulated and the sound can be positioned too far back (or throaty), or too anterior, in which case the sound would result too flat, or bleached, as often happens in the search of the so-called "mask". Tomatis, A. 2005 pg.241 Italian ed. and 107 Eng ed.
In this regard, about how to perceive the points of resonance of the sound, Tomatis suggests very specific exercises in his chapter on the “bone conduction”, to be taken with clarity of purpose.
I consider also very important the chapters on “Breathing” and “Falsetto”, although in my opinion the most important of all is the study on the “Volume of vowels”, which concepts can be systematically applied to the singing technique and developed with surprising results

Suggestion of a list of Classic Books and Methods
About the books of technique: in the Conservatoire you need to train like a pianist does (i.e. with Hanon, Czerny, Clementi) and prepare vocalizations of authors such as Concone, Panofka and Bordogni. The reason to train in this way is because you have to arrive to dominate your voice in all the technical aspects of pure attack of voice, legato, staccato, messa di voce (swelled sounds) trillo (shake) and all the embellishments, in all combinations of scales and arpeggios, applying these skills on vocalizations written by authors before to do it on a score.

List of books and EBooks you can find in English:
1. Tomatis, A. (1987) “L’orecchio e la voce” Italian ed. Baldini e Gastoldi, English ed Scarecrow Press, Inc.USA, 2005.
Same author: (1991) "The conscious ear: my life of transformation through listening", Station Hill Press
Italian: (1992) “L’orecchio e la vita” ed. Baldini e Gastoldi
(1998) “Ascoltare l’Universo” ed. Baldini e Gastoldi
2. McClosky, D.B. (1972) “Your voice at the best” ed. The Boston Music Company
3. Rogers, C.K. (1893) “Philosophy of singing” NewYork: Harper and Brothers Pub., EBook
4. Tetrazzini, L. and Caruso, E. (1975) “On the Art of Singing” ed. Dover
5. Sabine, E. (1996) “The passionate voice” English and Italian, ed. AWF Production
6. Marafioti, P.M. (1949) “Caruso’s Method” ed. Dover
7. Ginevra, S. (2001) “Manuel Garcia, Trattato completo dell’Arte del Canto” in two parts, French and Italian, Torino:.G. Zedde
8. Garcia, M. (1894) “Hints on Singing” New York Ascherberg-Mopwood and Crew, Limited, EBook
9. Lehmann, L. (1902) “How to Sing” The Project Gutenberg, New York ed. Macmillan Company, EBook
10. Marchesi, M. “A theoretical and practical Vocal Method, Op.31” ed. Schirmer 1900, ed. Dover 1970