"Problems?" asked V. There usually are, even when it's only been a week.
"You said I wasn't singing Es Ist Ein Ros... high enough. But it starts with that weak e; I lack confidence, don't feel I'm going to make it. Should I elide "es ist"?"
"No. Emphasise the "s" more."
Always these weird tricks. Even weirder, they work. "What's next?" asked V.
"In Santa Lucia there's a six-note jump between "..prospero รจ il vento." and "Venite al l'agile..." Another weak e in "Venite". My tone changes."
I demonstrate. V says, "You're singing the e as uh. Let your lower jaw swing open more and add some a to the e." Adding a-sound to an e-sound is hard but I sort of get there.
"And...?" says V.
I fidget."Look, you're terrific at choosing new stuff. Surprising me, taking me up another level. It's just that..." I rootle through my bulging bag of scores as V looks on bemused. “Just give me a hint,” she says.
“It’s my favourite aria...” More rootling. “...in Messiah.”
“Which is?”
Finally I find the damned thing. “He Was Despised.”
The piano accompaniment (an orchestra in real life) is difficult but the vocal line is comparatively easy. Soon I’m singing in the shade of that familiar soaring soprano voice and I’m thinking... what am I thinking?
“It may not be progressive enough,” I babble. “Perhaps something harder. But...”
V ponders. “It’s for an alto, of course. But it’s straightaway obvious you like it. That could be interesting.”
Little of the lesson left but we sing it again.
I’m no longer out of sorts.
DESPISED, for an alto but lowish
You have a wonderful teacher.
ReplyDeleteColette: Not just in the technical sense but in the door V has opened on the wider scope of music. After three-and-a-half years' tuition I am - it sounds fanciful - altered, more absorbed by an activity which continues to reveal unexpected truths. Singing started out as a whim, now it's an added perspective.
ReplyDeleteUnexpected? I know more now and my problems are often comparatively advanced. V says this is professionally good for her. Before I float off like a hot-air balloon I carefully remind myself I'm still a babe in arms when it comes to marking time. Breathing properly. This and that. Eager perhaps, but no more than a student.
I am pleased you have found your niche in singing. I guess you sing in Italian? I like Italian operas in Italian – I believe German is too harsh and I’m not sure about French. Italian is melodious because of all his vowels – it just sounds right to my ear. I do like Russian too, it is so eloquent. Do you know who is my favorite baritone? Or was, really because he died in 2017 – his name is Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Toward the end of my husband illness, he could not read, or speak, so I would bring my cell phone close to him with a little speaker. When I was too stressed I played Dmitri singing “On the Hills of Manchuria” – do you know it? Oh, my gosh, that would calm him and me immediately and would take me far away from his disease – maybe all the way to long gone Manchuria? No, seriously it would bring tears to my eyes and I did not even understand what Dmitri said. I did find a translation though; it is a sad tale about fallen soldiers. In case you don’t know it, here is a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9UlYlQJCDI
ReplyDeleteVagabonde: How wonderful that music could reach you both and displace your awful suffering. If only briefly.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know Hvorostovsky but I should have. He won the Cardiff Music Singer of the World Festival in Wales, just over the border from where I live, beating Wales's Bryn Terfel whose singing I know very well. I have the boxed set of Wagner's The Ring in which Terfel sings Wotan.
Hvorostovsky's performance of On The Hills of Manchuria was very impressive, although I'm surprised he's not classed as a bass-baritone. I don't think I've ever heard a more relaxed low-voice singer, perfectly in tune which isn't always the case when such singers are plumbing those oh-so-low notes. The camera scanned over faces in the audience, everyone rapt and still. They knew who they'd come to hear.
When I attended my first singing lesson, three-and-a-half years ago, my teacher V - then and now - tried out my voice then handed me the score of Sarastro's aria O Isis Und Osiris from Mozart's The Magic Flute. I couldn't read music at all but I'd heard the opera a handful of times. I managed to follow her lead (she's a soprano and was singing an octave up) and to decode the score here and there. After two or three goes I produced a shaky version of the complete aria. I broke down in tears - I was singing Mozart in my first lesson! V said not to mind the tears, they were "supposed to happen".
I too - as with you and your husband - then understood how music can absorb you.
During the first three or four months I listened on YouTube to a lot of basses and bass-baritones singing Mozart. Here's one of my more recent favourites, the Hungarian bass, Laszlo Polgar, singing O Isis...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZIVxu_MpwA
My preference is to sing German but this is because Germans and German-speakers (Mozart, Schubert, Schumann, Wolf, Brahms) have written the music I most love.
Thank you for commenting. I was unbearably touched.
Music doing what only music does.
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