lloyd,
i would seperate those who produce their voices in streamlined spectrum from those who make an attempt to produce the same timbre throughout. miller compares the 'international' school with the 'german' school, saying that singers of the 'german' school are often guilty of 'deckung', or, the excessive darkening of their high ranges. within the 'world of opera', there is a wide range of approaches to this problem from the french who bother less with it to the germans and their 'deckung' (at least according to miller). i would say that fischer-dieskau is one who exhibits a wider range of timbre, from bottom to top than paul plishka who attempts to produce the same sound everywhere (steamlining requires adjustment not holding on for dear life).
the problem of distortion of text is common to all vocal music that makes use of a range higher than the singer speaks. in 'pop' music, the solutions run the same gamut (to wider extremes, usually in the 'do nothing' approach). bob dylan doesn't bother, david bowie and scott walker darken 'too much' and steve perry finds the in between (in the song 'open arms', there is a similarity in the treatment of his high notes that is very similar to that of the 'international' school).
the idea that the (ideal) opera singer serves the opera and not the other way around? i would suggest that the singer of opera serves the composer in the role of instrumentalist at the expense of the text rendering it without 'completeness'. the composer himself has served the text. in most other types of music, the music is usually composed first and the lyrics jammed in afterward. without text there is no dialogue. without dialogue, we never meet the personalities, be they of the singers or of the characters. (i think you'll find the 'personality' of other styles to be primarily text driven.)
what i dislike about listening to opera singers is the lack of resemblance to spoken communication. i would almost rather hear them sing 'ah' and skip the text (as leontyne price and joan sutherland had the decency to do). but, to be fair, perhaps i have just grown sick of opera singing and my dislike of it is strictly personal. my embrace of other styles, musical theater, 'easy listening' and pop that resembles those two styles, is as much a search for fulfilment in singing as it is the result of philosophical reasoning.
mike
(nice title, btw. very tasteful.)
|