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Thursday, 27 February 2020

Lieder, Op. 12: IV. Liebst du um Schönheit




This guy's a tenor, I'm a baritone. He can sing higher than I can but it shouldn't make a lot of difference if we're singing from the same score. For several reasons, some even shameful, I had problems maintaining the necessary pitch (ie, staying in tune) at the necessary solidity (ie, not wobbling) when I tackled this song at my last lesson. Yet it's within my range. The first sung note is A-flat and during my warm-ups (ie, five-note phrases getting a tone or semi-tone higher with each repetition) I can reach a somewhat strangulated F.

I've been working at it ever since, since this was the biggest technical failure I've ever experienced. Gradually I sang more easily. I've also sung along with the tenor but, given his different timbre, I wasn't entirely sure I was hitting the same notes he was. A grievous deficiency after four years.

Finally I recorded myself singing against him. As a pro he had different interpretive ideas about timing so I'm out of synch a lot of the time. But during certain on-the-beat passages it sounded as if we were singing the same note. Finally I got VR to listen and she mainly agreed.

This will be of little interest to many but it may suggest that singing is just a little more than opening my mouth and just bellowing. 


By at

3 comments:

  1. Sir Hugh28 February 2020 at 08:54

    Do composers make their music technically difficult so that accomplished performers can pit themselves to the challenge, or does their music just evolve as it has to from their initial conception as a whole, resulting in a piece that they had no intentions for its difficulty or otherwise?

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  2. Roderick Robinson28 February 2020 at 13:06

    Sir Hugh: This question is more knotty than you might imagine. Song writers only want to write masterpieces and who can define how that comes about? Masterpieces may be musically simple (ie, slow, limited range, lacking difficult intervals) but it's often the case that such songs are the hardest to sing persuasively. The singer's inherent skills (tone, breath control, legato control) are often more exposed and faults turn out to be catastrophic.

    At first hearing Schubert's Du bist die Ruh sounds simple - as well as overpoweringly lovely. Even without a glance at the score it's apparent that there's a good deal of repetition. Surely that makes things easier. But this flowing, soothing melody is a prelude to a harder repeated finish which steps up relentlessly, ending penultimately on a highish D, sustained and sung quite loud, then steps up another half-tone and does the same again. The sequence isn't musically complex but it's hard to do for me. But the contrast with the restful beginning seems a legitimate change of mood for words which say "The temple of my eyes is lit by your radiance alone; Oh, fill it wholly"

    Listen to it several times on YouTube. Ignore Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau - try Matthias Goerne who's more less perfect. You may also listen to a soprano but - uncharacteristically for me - I think this is a fella's somg.

    So that's musical simplicity. With Mozart's Magic Flute aria for the Queen of the Night we get the exact opposite. This is complex and way up at the top of the soprano's range; unsuitable for many sopranos and often botched. You may say it makes you feel uncomfortable and to some extent it's intended to; the Queen is horribly disturbed and the music reflects this.

    The answer will sound to be something of cop-out. Great composers write music that fits certain circumstances; how they achieve this is up to them. If the singer finds the going difficult he or she should take comfort in the fact they're singing a masterpiece.

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