Honesty's the key, I mustn't lie to myself. Nor must I be self-indulgent. Home practice (from the score, for memory is treacherous) must always comply with V's instructions:
"This note's double-dotted, a bar later there's a single dotted note; the two differently sustained sounds must balance out over time," V says. Eventually they do and I'm closer to what the composer had in mind.
A fortnight ago, minutes from the end of the lesson, V gave me the score of Im Rhein, by Robert Schumann, words by the poet Heine, from Dichterliebe (Poet's Love) a song cycle I've owned on CD for decades.
Im Rhein, im heiligen Strome,
da spiegelt sich in den Well'n
mit seinem großen Dome
das große, heilige Köln.
(In the Rhine, in the holy stream,
there is mirrored in the waves,
with its great cathedral,
great holy Cologne.)
It's very short, some parts have immediate appeal, some are subtler and it's those I fear. Over the week I listen many times to Jonas Kauffmann singing it, later to a Turkish baritone who is more help. Relating that which I hear to that which is printed, then imitating. At the next lesson I offer V an imperfect but complete version and there's enormous pride in doing that. Then we start on the detail.
Not for the world, alas. I remain in the garden shed but I do, of course, sing for V.
I listened to the Turk. Much prefer this, particularly between 2:00 and 4:00. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSYX-8ND6qo
ReplyDeleteMikeM: I see your point, virtuoso stuff. But when I made the decision to take up music, voice was the only option; my fingers are too arthritic for playing an instrument, even the triangle. The impassive Mr Lynch sounded as if he could go on until dusk without repeating himself. Incidentally I've never before seen a guitarist go all the way up the fretboard with his right hand like that.
ReplyDeleteBut not exactly apples vs. apples.
You could definitely sing for me, mein lieber Robbie!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8CAw7uomcE Wunderlich is one of my favourites. I'll check out the turk ...
Oh, and the wonderfully deep Piotr Beczała
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/WbyeZNFVW_E?t=378
RW (zS): I'm glad you tried out other recordings. I too am a great Wunderlich fan and I also enjoyed Beczala. However these two (and Kauffman) are tenors and I am a baritone. Wherever possible I search out baritone recordings even if they may be less interpretively magnificent, since they fit better as I sing along with them.
ReplyDeleteAlso I tend to look for lesser-known baritones (even if they are less well recorded, as with the Turk) and even advanced students just because they have less individuality. They sing the song "straight", sticking very close to the score and this is what I most need. Having said that it may be that Im Rhein breaks new barriers for me. Yesterday I had another lesson (more than half of it without singing a note, devoted to more discussion of the detail) and V appears to be pleased with my progress, more particularly with the speed at which I was able to learn the song's structure.
I am toying with putting up a recording of Im Rhein although if I do it will suffer, as with my previous recordings, in that it will be done at home and will have no piano accompaniment.
If I work up sufficient confidence for this I will dedicate it to you (though, of course, this may be a mixed blessing). Not many people have in effect asked me to sing for them.
This may be of interest to you:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQCfmgSYQqI
MikeM: Excellent, even if it tells me that whatever progress I've made as a singer I still have a long way to go with music in general. And, although Im Rhein is marked Ziemlich langsam (Quite slow) the pros still sing it faster than I do. And that it's fiendishly difficult to simultaneously read the words, the singer's notation (thank God, comparatively simple) and the piano's notation. Most significant of all that V, at the keyboard, is very kind to me, adjusting her tempo throughout to my imperfections.
ReplyDeleteA further discovery is the nature of the piano accompaniment both in Im Rhein and in another of my favourites Schubert's An die Musik which I noticed from your other (emailed) link: its melodic simplicity (once I'm freed from making head or tail of the chords), its repetitiveness, and its rhythmic insistence. Singing for me still requires enormous concentration and although I acknowledge the piano as I sing I don't have a brain capable of time-sharing from moment to moment and thereby judging the aesthetics of what the piano is doing. That - musically - the piano's voice is a world away from me and yet simultaneously as intimate as my heartbeat.
All very naive of me, of course. But an inevitable side-effect of the policy I was forced to adopt when I started out with lessons, that at eighty I didn't have time to study musical theory, per se, from the off. That I would try and pick it up as and when it became necessary. The question arises: what should I do now?
Thanks for your interest, it's much appreciated.