Dear Vocalisters,
during the last months I have been quite busy, which kept me from posting a few
things, that i.m.o. deserved to be posted. It looks like I will find the time
to do that in the next days, so here is one of the postings, I wanted to send
months ago. The next one will be the one about the Schubertiad/Janowitz
masterclass or one in the sequel 'never again a singing teacher' (BB's remarks
on this subject are very interesting as well, see below)
A few months ago (now almost a year;) Barbara Bonney gave a public lesson to
amateur singers in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. I was there as a listener and
thought at first it was not that interesting to pass on, since it was a lesson
for amateurs. But today the first part of it was on the Dutch classical music
station 'radio 4', and while listening to it in my car, I heard some
interesting things and the last part I taped. I wrote a few quotes down, so
judge for yourself.
'All music is about sex [...] and love and about feelings and [...]
(Then I missed two minutes while driving through a tunnel, some kind of a
cliff-hanger, wasn't it?)
[...] that is why we are so lucky to have this music and that is why this music
must be taught in the schools because if everyone sounds like Andrew Lloyd
Webber, that's it, I quit. I'm so sick of it.(big applause)
[...]'Please, please, do whatever you can to pass this on to your children, I
mean they don't have to love it, but offer it to them, make it available,
switch off their computers and let them (applause, interrupting the rest of
this sentence)
[...] you just taught us a big lesson there, that the simple act of smiling at
the audience. It not only enhances your performance, it also makes your voice
sound so much more beautiful and it make singing much easier because you don't
have to think about it, you start enjoying what you're doing, right, [...]
Actually this was very important to her: she was telling all people to look at
the audience all the time. She certainly knows how to do that (I heard and saw
her singing the night before this lesson) but she has some very personal ideas
about this. Her idea was, to look for a nice person in the audience to should
sing for. In this way, Bonney said, you will get a lot of attention of the
audience, because they will be puzzled about the fact you are looking at -
singing for - this one person. To me this sounds a little peculiar, but maybe
it works for some people. Of course she wanted everybody to get rid of their
scores, because with a score it is difficult to get in contact with your
audience.
The most interesting things she said about singing teachers. I did not record
them, so I'll have to do this by heart:
'An opera singers does not *have* to sound like an American police car. Please
tape your lessons and listen honestly to them. If you really don't like what
you hear, you should listen to the voice of your teacher. If you don't like her
(BB seems to have a peculiar relation to men, but more about that later) sound
either, find yourself a new teacher. I had several bad teachers, and it was not
until I was so lucky to find a good one, who taught me to sound like myself.'
Barbara Bonney turned out to be quite sexistic. When she drew a card of a man
out of the box (the amateur singers were chosen at random) she said: 'Oh no, a
man, how nice, in a tone, meaning 'how terrible'. Sadly enough the guy that was
chosen, did not have the courage to turn around, because that might have shown
us what Bonney really meant. Furthermore she said, that all men hate literature
and poems, and only are interested in motor bikes (the manufacturers of
motorcycles would be very happy if such would be the case). Almost the only
exception in her opinion was Thomas Hampson (with whom she gave a concert the
day before the lesson). Now I've heard several times about Hampson, that he
does not sing because he likes poetry or music, but because he likes himself
very much. I don't know whether this is true, but I am quite sure the majority
of girls c.q. women don't like literature and classical music that much either,
and that there are many men that prefer classical music to motor bikes.
Personally I (= Dré) think it is more a matter of eduction and stimulation, and
growing up in the right environment, than of gender, sexual preference or
whatever. The fact that less men than women sing, has i.m.o. to do with the
consequences of the mutation of the voice. Most choirs say goodbye to boys when
they're about 12 years, whether their voices have changed or not, and after
that they mostly don't return. (Personally I experienced this as something
quite sad.) And let's be honest: the average non trained male voice, does not
sound very beautiful, does it? To me it is something between a mad man shouting
and a cow. There is one cultural thing though: when men sing together, they
mostly tend to make a sound as loud and as ugly as possible, cf. the German
soldiers singing their terrible things (I don't want to call that Lieder) in
Casablanca.
From the technical side, the lesson was not very interesting, because the level
of the amateurs was not high enough, to do interesting things with them (they
were chosen at random). Besides that, BB only had 15-30 minutes per singer,
which is not that much.
All in all it was a strange experience: I like BB very much, as a singer and as
a person, as far as you can say that about someone you don't really know, but
this was a bit disappointing. But then I though, maybe I should blame her
ex-husband HH for her sexistic remarks, and forget about all when listening to
her. It took me a couple of months, but I succeeded finally.
Best greetings,
Dré
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