Dear Nande and co-vocalisters,
Nande wrote [...]I believe that
talented people have less need for the paperwork. [...]
A couple of weeks ago I heard a very talented violist (who won the Elisabeth
Concourse, if I remember correctly) on Dutch Radio, you might have heard him as
well. He said (the quotation may not be literal): 'There are many talented
people. But only those who are very talented and work very hard will make it.'
That is exactly my experience in many fields, not only in music. And it is even
worse: often people who are not that talented and/or intelligent make it, just
because they try harder.
Working hard on a piece of music means reading it in the first place, not
listening to some other singer who is believed to do it well. If you study a
piece of music, you will see for example, that even good singers make mistakes,
or just 'forget' dynamics etc., for whatever reason. Or maybe this singer is
using a different score that the one you're supposed :) to use. But what's even
more important: somebody else's interpretation can never be yours: to start
with your voice is different, you personality as well, the experiences you made
in your life etc, and so on.
When doing oratoria or opera, studying the score is the proper way to see to it
that you learn the notes as they are written. If you don't do that, you'll make
life difficult for other people like the conductor, who will have the choice to
either live with your mistakes, or to correct you and wait until you learned to
do things right instead of wrong, or to chose somebody else, which happened in
your case. Believe me: a conductor prefers somebody with a mediocre voice who
sings the right notes above somebody with a better voice, who sings wrong
notes, or notes that are too short or too long. The latter will spoil
everything for other people, and that does certainly not compensate for the
fact that the voice is better.
If you sing Lieder it is even more important to read the music. There you don't
even have a conductor and besides that there are many more moments where you
have to change your way of singing than in an aria. I am convinced there is no
way making a good interpretation of a Lied without studying the score. This is
the most efficient way to deal with questions like: those notes come back many
times, how do I sing them different, why does the composer modulate here, why
are the pianonotes here so dramatic, how is that related to the text and what
does that mean to my way of singing the piece? Of course you can use your
teacher's view on the piece as 'your' interpretation, but then you're again
borrowing somebody else's interpretation. In the beginning that might be better
than your interpretation, but there has to come a time, where your
interpretation is better, for you, that is to say.
And don't forget: there are many people with great voices, especially lyric
soprano's and baritones, just as there are many great Steinways and
Bösendorfers etc. It is the way you treat the music, that makes you a musician.
And the most efficient way to learn how to do that, is to study the score.
The more you study a score, the more you will see and hear in it. Sometimes
singers do things so subtle, that you won't hear it consciously, if you did not
study the score thoroughly. In the beginning, reading the score was just a
thing I had to do, like reading a user's manual. Meanwhile I really like it:
while reading it, I can hear the music, imagine how a different interpretation
would sound etc. And it is an excellent way of studying a piece without
fatiguing your voice as well. Just do it often enough, one day you'll love it!
Best greetings,
Dré
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