On Tue, 4 Jun 2002, omtara wrote:
> Nope! It is the accompanist's job is to follow the singer. That's
In an ideal world, yes. But in the real world, the pianists who bill
themselves as accompanists out there often don't have good accompaniment
skills. They are solo pianists looking to make some extra money. And, as
I've recently discovered, there are also trained *accompanists* out there
whose specialty is not accompanying voice, but accompanying instruments. I
work with such an accompanist at the church where I sing. Because he has
little understanding of the *vocalist* (vs. violinist or cellist - he
works mainly with a string trio when he's not soloing...or playing at
church), he takes tempos chronically too slow, and no amount of my efforts
to "lead" him, to speed him up, etc. can get him moving faster. His ear
just doesn't seem to be trained to recognize when a VOCAL line is moving
faster than his piano line is. Interestingly, what he DOES respond to are
*visual* cues - which leads me to believe the way he judges when one of
his string players is changing tempo is to watch their *bowing*, and not
to LISTEN to their changes. So I've learned to accommodate this
peculiarity of his by subtly (so the congregation doesn't see) moving some
part of my body - a finger, my foot, etc., - that he can see in the tempo
I intend to sing, i.e., doing what no singer should ever do, which is
*conducting* the music as I sing. I hate having to do this - but this
particular pianist (despite his being a piano teacher!) never even seem to
check the metronome markings I always include clearly in my solos, which I
always provide to him (the sheet music) at least a week before we rehearse
them. Even times when we've done extra rehearsals of certain pieces, I
can't always rely on him to remember the tempo we've agreed upon. I think
he makes an initial judgment of tempo based on his own internal "sense"
when he plays the piece through solo the very first time, and that tempo
digs a very deep rut in his memory that I'm apparently unable to bulldoze.
The other times when the singer is not 100% in charge of the tempo of the
accompaniment is when she works with an orchestra which has a conductor.
Then the singer is not only at the mercy of the conductor's ego - the more
egotistical the conductor, the less likely he is to "sacrifice" his idea
of the music to the singer's - as well as his comprehension of the
capabilities of his orchestra. The latter isn't a problem (or shouldn't
be) with professional orchestras, but some community, school, and other
amateur orchestras may have their own technical limitations that make it
very difficult for them to respond as well as they should to the
conductor's tempo changes (and the problem is worse if the conductor isn't
a good "signaller" to his instrumentalists) - the problem being, possibly,
their inexperience following a conductor, their overreliance on reading
the score (which keeps them from looking up as much as they should), or
simply their inability to bow or finger as quickly as they should. A
good, sensitive conductor will, of course, take his tempo cues from the
singer. In my experience, at least at the non-professional level, the
opposite is far more often the reality.
> > When Herbie Hancock was playing piano for a Miles Davis trumpet
> solo > he once played a horribly wrong chord. Miles heard what
> Herbie had > played and responded by playing a phrase that fit
> Herbie's chord, > making it sound as though it had been planned.
>
> That works great for jazz, but in classical, you're not
> improvising. You spend hours and weeks and months and years
> learning how to sing things exactly correctly as written and/or as
> prescribed by tradition or current performance practice.
> Improvisation really has no part in classical music at this point in
> time.
Unless, of course, the singer makes a mistake! There's nothing worse than
a singer who, if she botches an entrance, sustains a final note over-long,
forgets the words, etc. suddenly switches into "deer in the headlights"
mode, and falls apart - or, less extremely, makes it obvious that she's
made a mistake and has not got the imagination - i.e., the improvisational
ability - to recover from it. My favourite "resourceful singer" stories
are about singers who, when they forget lyrics, are able to make up words
- sometimes real ones, sometimes just nice sounds - to fill in the "hole"
where the forgotten words should go; or who, having forgot a particular
series of notes, are able to "write" a phrase of music "on the fly" as
they sing, to make up for the notes they forgot - or who can elegantly
"rewrite" the music a bit as they sing to get themselves back in synch
with the accompanist/orchestra, without missing a beat. A singer who
cannot do this either better have an absolutely flawless photographic
memory or should be willing to accept a career that never reaches the top
ranks of the profession. No, it's not the same as jazz improvisation -
which is a cornerstone of that musical genre - but it is improvisation
nonetheless, and is a truly valuable skill for ANY musician to develop.
Karen Mercedes
http://www.radix.net/~dalila/index.html
______________________________________
I will sing with the spirit, and I
will sing with the understanding also.
1 Corinthians 14:15
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