Dear Vocalisters:
It is interesting that the topic of types of voices and their training should come up on this list and on another list to which I subscribe. I am posting this little bit on both of these lists, for what it is worth.
Lloyd
A singer sings. Simple. What a singer sings is determined by so many different influences that it defies codification.
In opera we have almost as many different voice types as we have voices. There is a constant disagreement raging, now and the the past, over who or what voice should sing what role. The singer for whom a role was written will find that another singer of a very different voice type will make that role his or her own. There are no rules about this; there is only the taste of a time and the personal ideas of opera producers, conductors and stage directors.
In art song we have the same situation. There are specialists in this field who have made their vocal inadequacies an accepted norm for this art form. There are stylists who replace technique with mannerisms that obscure the composers expression. One can add to this the same argument about what voice type should song what kind of art song.
In music from Broadway or pops music, both forms of music built on the concept and emphasis of individual expression, all of the arguments mentioned above are still argued regularly. It would appear that in these genres, especially, there would be little necessity to even consider the possibility that one type of singer is better equipped than another to give "authentic" performances of the songs. Yet we do.
As a teacher of singing I teach just singing. Not opera, not art song, not pops, not Broadway, not folk song. Just singing. I have had students who are comfortable in only a few of these forms and students who are comfortable in all of them. People are different.
But I have never had any student with whom I found it desirable to discourage the singing of any form of song. Each student finds their own form of expression. The only difficulty I have consistently encountered is the protective instinct of students to restrict themselves to literature that is too narrow in scope. And it is my duty to broaden their horizons just as my teachers had to do with me.
Some day I will try to figure out why I and many others need so desperately to put things in "boxes" and make judgments about those "boxes" and who or what they should contain.
The Vocalist is certainly one of the best discussion groups to explore these needs.
Lloyd W. Hanson, DMA Professor of Voice, Pedagogy School of Performing Arts Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ 86011
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