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| The Doon; blooms are fresh and fair, says the song |
Ploppetty-plop goes the Skype music and V's face appears on the PC screen asking what progress I've made with Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon (see pic), working alone over the past week. Then there's the warm-up.
I imitate V singing the five-note phrase over and over, ascending, attending to variations in tone, pitch and repetition she slips in slyly. Sometimes three extra staccato notes, sometimes a hint of sorrow. My voice is solid and resonant but V's face remains neutral.
Up, up we go. To gain each higher phrase I must push harder but this must never be obvious. We are close to my ceiling and still V is expressionless. And now I suspect why. I sound the F which is the limit. This done, V does not slide back down to the E but sings the next one up, G. I do too. Shaky but it's a real note.
Now we drop down, with V adding all sorts of complexities. The warm-up is over. A ghost of a smile and V says, "You now a have two-octave voice."
My first thoughts are not of myself. I've been V’s pupil for nearly two-hundred lessons. From scratch. She recognised I would do what she told me without lolly-gagging. Progress has not been straightforward since I hadn’t enough life left to learn all the technicalities. She picked songs to build up a serious yet varied repertoire. Her patience has been inexhaustible. The thrill of singing was never absent. Perhaps she already knew I could hit that G today.
Is that G mine or hers?
It's yours, Robbie.
ReplyDeleteBeth: But do I deserve it? I tried to imagine what the last forty-odd months had been like from V's side of the fence. Of course she has tutored others, brought them along, improved their singing (and their violin playing). I am not unique to her as she is to me.
ReplyDeleteBut she can't have tutored too many octogenarians from scratch, More particularly, watched someone who merely liked music and had a tiny amount of "by ear" competence, eventually become - at the very least - a low-level "musician."
How much of a risk during that first exploratory lesson was it to hand me the score of Sarastro's O Isis und Osiris, start playing the piano accompaniment, sing the aria an octave up and listen out to the results from the novice in the room. It was the first score I'd ever held! Of course I was familiar with the aria, but only as a member of an operatic audience. And I'd never been tempted to sing it "by ear".
The fact is I surprised myself both technically and emotionally (breaking off in tears at the enormity of it). Within a week or two I was singing it (albeit with nothing of a voice) all the way through. But V must have recognised that potential. Had I been overcome with embarrrassment that would have been bad for both of us.
However, I very much appreciate your concise comment. And ache at the fact that you may be on the verge of giving up singing for understandable and entirely professional reasons.
Your sense of achievement and pride in what you have have attained with V shows through RR. At your age (and mine) to have set out on the path and reached your goal must give great satisfaction.
ReplyDeleteEver onward!
Avus: "Achieve", "attain" and "goal" are all slightly alien in this context. All progress is relative, never definitive. One concentrates on singing in tune and finds the tempo has gone astray. In aiming for a relaxed style, pitch too is relaxed and one sings flat. And on the rare occasions when all these familiar requirements are met there remains the great imponderable: interpretation. For it isn't enough merely to duplicate the score, one must attempt to give the song a personal meaning.
ReplyDeleteOf course this makes it sound as if I spend my life dissatisfied and frustrated. There is pleasure in knowing (And there's a difficult word when it comes to music!) that this week's performance is better than last week's but this mini-gratification must be tempered with internal honesty. There is no room for self-delusion.
Chris Boardman, one of my great heroes, speaking on another matter uttered an important parallel truth. In a mass-sprint finish to a road race, he said, you may not be certain you have won but you always know when you have been beaten. Bad singing is bad singing and no amount of lies can change that.
My singing is - and may always be - imperfect. But joy too is unquantifiable and to have converted a body with its associated instincts and abilities into a viable instrument is a joyful experience. One then embarks on an inarguable musical masterpiece; despite the imperfections one is, for a time, at one with this marvellous creation. And there is nothing quite like that.
Schubert's An die Musik (To music!) is a masterpiece. It's quite short. As you convalesce Google YouTube and find a singer of AdM you like; nearly all of them have recorded Schubert's heartfelt tribute. Listen a couple of times.
I've just done so, singing along with Bryn Terfel, putting my very guts into the words. For a couple of minutes I was no longer fat, besieged by time nor by The Plague.