Power of Performance for Singers – Transcending the Barriers by Shirlee Emmons & Alma Thomas

This is the last ‘official’ book of my books I have carried with me around the world. I’ve decided to keep it, so it holds a special place above the others in that sense. I am sad I did not read this book sooner, but, in a lot of ways, I can say that for all the books I’ve taken the time to read on this trip. Plus, it’s never too late to learn and, at least, I’ve read it now. Take the philosophy of: it was read when I was ready to read it.

This book offers a lot of practical exercises to help with any of the physiological problems which can arise from singing or any performer. The, only chapter, for me, I would give a bit of a wide birth is Chapter 15 – Exploring and Planning “Meaning” for Performance or, as I see it, the singers acting. I done a lot of work on my own acting and this chapter goes against quite a bit of what I have learned to bring a character to life. It’s not wrong in what it says is required, but how you go about it, just gets me into my head, hence, why I went to acting training to get me away from the ‘singing acting’ and into the actor acting.

Otherwise, I believe, anyone with an open mind would gain some insight to dealing with any problems they may face in this industry. It talks about the ideals and the fact that those ideals often don’t exist, but you do the best you can.

My favourite part was the part which explained so well about keeping your goals about performance and not about outcome – loved it!

The Music of the Spheres by Jamie James

‘In the modern age it is a basic assumption that music appeals directly to the soul (which has been called by many names – sensibility, temperament, the emotions, among others) and bypasses the brain altogether, while science operates in just the reverse fashion, confining itself to the realm of pure ratiocination and having no contact at all with the soul. …. These suppositions would have seemed very strange to an Athenian of Plato’s day, to a medieval scholar, t an educated person of the Renaissance, even to a habitué of London’s coffeehouses in the eighteenth century.’ – quote from The Music of the Spheres

This quote is a great place to start to understand what this book is really about and why I enjoyed it so much. I have not read nor understood this side of the history of music, as it is so well laid out in this book. It’s like the history of science and music meets Angels and Demons. It is just a wonderful study of how the understanding and acceptance of music has changed so much, especially in the last 200 years, which isn’t that long ago, when you think that he starts from the Greek era in some of his descriptions of music and its historical understanding.

‘Somehow, Mozart’s symphony, rather than telling us about joy, creates joy. The music is a zone of joy. How is that possible? The Greeks knew the answer: music and the human soul are both aspects of the eternal.’

Its statements like these that make me wonder, why did we stray so far away from these understandings of music and science? For such a long time they were all considered the same thing and carried an equal weight of appreciation and understanding. In this book Jamie James explains how we lost touch with this understanding and why, a brilliant journey through our past history to the turn of this last century.

A beautiful argument against science of today:

‘In this century the classics have slipped to the periphery of the curriculum, and in the place of enquiring humanism we now have condescending nihilism: the modern intelligentsia smiles at Christian fundamentalists, at credulous followers of absurd schools of psychotherapy, at adherents of what is call the New Age. Yet if people are driven to feel a connection with the Absolute by wearing crystal jewellery and listening to voices from beyond the grave, as naïve as those beliefs may be perhaps we ought not castigate them for abandoning science – for has not science abandoned them? Is it reasonable to expect that the man in the street will be content with being told, “Your life is pointless, and you are destined to be a sterile, meaningless speck of stardust, but be of good cheer: science will tell you how to power your automobile with pig droppings?”’

I think there is much to learn that this book highlights and I wish it was part of today’s curriculum, as it shows quite clearly why the arts are so important and needs to continue to be on equal footing with all other sciences and studies.

The Cambridge Companion to Singing edited by John Potter

‘But of all musical instruments the human voice is the most worthy because it produces both sound and words, while the others are of use only for sound, not for a note and words.’ – Anonymous thirteenth-century treatise

I’m now almost finished the books I’ve brought with me on this round the world trip, this being the third from the last, sadly, it’s been the least enjoyable. It got to the point that I just wanted it to be over with. I’m not sure a book like this was ever going to be or ever could be all that enjoyable, as it’s quite clearly the editors ‘pet’ favourites, so is going to miss a lot. This, he explains, in the beginning, so I can forgive that part, but what is hard is the way it’s presented. Some of the chapters feel like you are dropped in the middle of the topic and are not well introduced (Part IV: Chapter 16 – Alternative voices: contemporary vocal techniques is a good example of this, it’s like the authors have forgotten who their audience is in their writing – a problem I find a lot with contemporary explanations of this style of music – it’s like they try to confuse you when it’s not necessary and make it sound elitist and un-understandable, as someone who has performed this style, it’s always been one of my bug bears, it’s no wonder no one, gets interested when it’s presented in such an over the top un-understandable way.) or exited (like the book itself – there is no conclusion or an attempt to try to sum up the book!) There is a chapter that I feel really got it right and that was the chapter on children’s singing, another area I am familiar with, that really is well presented and easily understood and makes you want to know more – (Part IV – Chapter 18 Children’s singing by Felicity Laurence.)

The fact that this is a Cambridge University Press edition and it came highly recommended, has not help me, but to be very disappointed. After reading books which were almost seventy years older or more, but with a far better idea of how to present a topic and write about it, this books falls very short of the post.

I feel this book is trying to do too much. I did like the variety of styles of singing that are covered and I’ve learned quite a bit, so there is a lot of interesting things to learn, but I found it very hard to read it from one chapter to the next. My suggestion to anyone else who reads it after me, do not read it in order! Choose a method of reading it – maybe oldest to most recent – that may make the book flow more and therefore more interesting.

Also, I’m not sure that performance practise and history of styles is the basis for one book, as there is a lot missed, so the whole last third of the book, really, is a completely different subject that deserves its own book and then that would allow for more depth of the history and styles in the first half. Also to finish on the science of singing, a particularly dry chapter to read, is not a good way to end this book. Once again, I feel this chapter, while interesting to those who know a bit about it, is not a good way to end and deserves a different placement either in this book or, a better choice, in that second book on performance practise. When I was in university they had a whole years course devoted to this one chapter, so I’m very impressed that the author condensed so much into one chapter, but it’s not a pleasant read.

I’ve not read any of the other Campion series, but I have taken a sneak peek at some of the other titles and found that they have a book just devoted to Bob Dylan, so if they feel a whole book to Bob Dylan is necessary, why on earth did they think they could do as much as they tried in this book?! Doesn’t say much for one of the most world-renowned Universities.

Voice and Verse – a study in English Song by H.C. Colles

Voice & Verse: A Study in English Song by H.C. Colles

This book was written in 1928, almost 100 years ago. I didn’t know that when I decided to take it along on this trip, but it still rings of truths that are endangering todays English Opera/Music, as it did then. In this book, Colles argues how music, all music, comes from the voice and, he presents a very valid argument, one I had not considered. That, even, explains, why some of the modern interpretation of the 20th century didn’t/doesn’t work, as it comes from a pure instrument approach and tries to neglect the vocal influence on music – hence it’s lack of appeal and why, this style of music, often, doesn’t work. He even goes so far to say that instruments evolve purely from the voice.

It’s written from a series of lectures which were given at Glasgow University and, boy, do I wish I could have been there to hear them, as they used singers to sing the examples presented in the book to help emphasize his arguments of why English song and Opera have struggled to ever find a firm footing. When it has, it loses it quickly, due to poor public appreciation. One example he mentions is how the English public does not hold onto that which marries the mastery of words/drama well with musical composition – examples such as Purcell and Sullivan. How sad, that I have to say that this problem, in my mind, still very much exists today for English writing of music. I believe, the Americans have done far better at this than the Brits. The amount of times, since living in Britain, I’ve heard the cynical snort of Sullivan, is far too often. I think it is very sad, that someone who wrote something so engaging and fun is thrown onto a pile of ‘poor music’ because of its subject matter and not for its genius of writing.

I am so glad I read this book, as it has helped me to understand what has eluded my understanding of the British attitude to its own music and its poor support of it. It’s true there have been some great successes, but, really, overseas performers/composers and musicians can often go a lot further, mainly due to the fact, that they are often working in their own languages of birth. The Brits produce some great people, but they have to learn how to do it in a lot of different cultures – this including American culture. British classical music struggles because there is still too little of it written that has gone very far. Hence Colles fears are still the fears of today – almost 100 years on:

“Dramatic expression of words through song is an essential stage through which a nation’s music must pass if it is to maintain its identity. We value French, German, Italian, Russian music because each has maintained its identity and shown itself different from the art of its neighbours. Our neighbours cannot value British music because they cannot find that it has an identity in which it differs from theirs. That is because we have refused to allow it the necessary scope to expand. We have said an emphatic ‘no’ each time it has approached the dramatic phase of its development, have silenced each composer in turn on the plea that opera is an imperfect form of art and that anyhow foreign composers can do it better. The argument has been that we want very little opera, so let us import that little from the best foreign firm. That may seem commercially sound, but in that case it is not commercially sound to go on creating and enlarging institutions for training composers and performers. If we are not going to have English opera, in the end we are not going to have British music. If we are not going to have British music, it is neither fair to the individuals concerned nor a sound policy for the community to encourage an appreciable proportion of the population, whose talents lie in that direction, to devote their lives to the provision of the unwanted commodity. Sooner or later we shall have to choose; we cannot long halt between two opinions.”

On and Off the Record – a Memoir of Walter Legge by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

When I started reading this book I wasn’t sure quite what I was reading, as it seemed to start from what others said about him and then ran into a long list of critics he had written. It took me awhile to get into how it was being presented, but in the end, I found it a really good read and very insightful, as a lot is written by Legge himself, so it does give you a really good impression of who he was and how much he devoted to his life to his work, so it feels more autobiographical.

I really enjoyed it and it’s added a really good understanding to the other biographies I’ve been reading about people and the industry at this time. I’ve heard good and bad about him, but one thing I do not doubt was his devotion to something he loved very deeply and that was classical music on recordings and elsewhere. I am sad I did not find out more about him when he was alive and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, as they really were about trying to do the best with what they had and nurturing that. Something I find really lacking in the modern music industry, especially classically, it seems to be all about the bottom dollar. I do understand that the industry needs to make money, but Walter Legge managed to do that, but kept to nurturing talent, rather than using it for as long as it serves the gimmicks with which they sell recordings, rather than the true talent of the artists behind those recordings.

Love some quotes from the book:

Walter Legge: ‘I was the Pope of recording.’

Edward Greenfield: ‘In my meeting with him on that occassion he went onto lament that no one in the industry wanted to employ him any longer. I felt compelled – though it hardly made him feel any happier – to point out an obvious moral: no one employs the Pope.’

Elizabeth’s audition for Legge: ‘a proper audition – two or three hours. I don’t want you to buy a cat in a sack and regret it, and I don’t want you to offer me less you think I am worth.’

Essays on Opera – Egon Wellesz

‘I think it is a mistake to underrate the social strength of opera. Wherever operas are performed care must be taken that the performances do not take place in isolation from the life of the town, and that the whole complex, the opera house as an institution, the works performed, and the artists who perform them, should not be regarded as an occasional luxury. Given this, only a few years are needed for opera to become an essential part of a town’s, or even of a nation’s, artistic life, and this is doubly true to-day when the wireless provides a means of enormously increasing the sphere of influence.’

This quote from the book is very admirable and a lot of why Germany still has so many opera houses in comparison to other parts of the world. Seems the argument of Opera being able to survive has been around for a while – ‘wireless provides a means…’ – it’s really been around for longer than that and I refer to another quote to give a better answer for the future than I can:

‘Now, I should like to try to give some kind of answer to the question which must have occurred to many. Opera has been a living thing in the past and is living to-day, but has it really a future? In spite of the activity of composers and the efforts of theatre managers are we not at the end of a development? If I have been able to express what I wanted to express you will know that I believe. Opera, I think, is not in its nature a narrow and limited field. A glance at its history shows that it’s whole nature and form is, and always has been, extremely flexible. Whenever in the past external or internal circumstances have brought it to the end of a particular line of development, a path has always been found which has led to a new flowering. Even in its most modern developments the path of opera has branched in several directions, some of which may well prove blind alleys, but one of which may become the high road of the future. Another point which I hope I have made clear is that opera cannot play the role of a casual visitor in the life of a nation. Wherever opera has flourished, it has been accepted as an important factor in the nation’s spiritual life. Every effort has been made to give it a permanent place among the activities of the human spirit which are the justification of our civilization. Another thing I hope to have made clear is that the action on the stage in an opera must be intelligible to the public, or the music will fail to hold their interest. Opera in England, therefore, must be sung in English. Only then will it be possible for the whole audience to be united in the action, and to experience, as in the theatre, the emotions of the drama. But opera as an institution cannot hope to arouse real interest unless it is concerned with the works of living men. In every place where opera was and is an essential element of the spiritual atmosphere, there is a line of connection between the past and the present. But it is the present which fulfils the promise of the past and in the works of the present resides the vitality of opera.’

So there is always hope for the future, as long as there are people willing to work on it. I enjoyed reading this book and it gave me some nice new insights into the history of opera and anyone wanting to see a different perspective would do well to read this book. I would add that the last 2 chapters on his own works, didn’t interest me much and not sure they really added much to this collection.

To round off with a lovely quote on composition ideals:

‘A comparison with painting will make this clear. Poussin, speaking of the artist’s task, says that in the first place it depends on the choice of a fitting subject, in the second on the composition, in the third on the way in which the material is treated, and last of all on the colours. The same order holds for opera, but it often seems as if composers relied above all on the colours, the scoring, as if they made no fundamental distinction between the treatment of a serious and a comic subject, as if the principles of structure were almost unknown to them, and they were mainly concerned with the choice of the most effective rather than the most suitable subject.’

Singers of the Century – J.B. Steane

Singers of the Century

‘It makes one resolve when thinking of the singer, to spare some thought also for the human being.’ – I loved this quote from the book, if really shows J.B. Steane’s devotion to the singers he likes. For me, this book was not so well put together, mainly, in my mind, due to how short the biographies had to be to fit in 50 of them. At times, they seem to lead down blind allies of non-comprehension.

Over all I liked reading about all these great singers, but the cohesion just wasn’t there, but it was refreshing to see there are all types at the top and they are all very much ‘human beings’.

Simon Rattle – The Making of a Conductor – by Nicholas Kenyon

Simon Rattle – The Making of a Conductor by Nicholas Kenyon

I wish I could say I had a master plan in the order of the books I’ve been reading, but I haven’t, and yet, there seems to be a distinct pattern forward. This book ends at 1987 and while some of the books I’ve read have gone beyond the timing, there is still a movement forward – a way forward. As I’ve read time and time again, in this series of books, the classical music industry is struggling and it has big competition – sports, TV, Film, Gaming, Internet, etc. Who wants to go to an art form, which quite frankly, just seems to constantly stare at its own belly button.

So what has this to do with this book, well, I feel, Simon Rattle has helped in his small way and in this period of time in his life, as I believe things are quite different for him now, that he helped to shack up those belly button starer to start to see what is really going on and how it can be done differently. I am not saying that everything he did at this time is right and accurate and all musicians can do the same, but there is a sense of finding the confidence and strength to work at it, believe in your instincts and judgements – where they work or not.

I enjoyed it, which surprised me, as I knew very little about this man before reading this book, but it’s quite something to read how the pegs all fell into place and he had the courage to stick to what he believed. Unlike the author, I do feel he was lucky too! I am a firm believer that luck or destiny is involved when people, so called, make it and there was a lot of that in this story of Simon Rattle – why not, I believe in the saying ‘we make our own luck’ and I believe we are all lucky in our own ways.

I wanted to find out where Simon Rattle is now, not surprising he went to Germany and has worked there for a long time. Soon, he will move on again, maybe retirement, because he can afford to sit back and enjoy it or maybe, it’ll be America and LA at long last. I don’t feel London will ever hold for him what makes him tick – that city is still a bit too much about the belly button staring. A quote from Simon in the book about this:

Interviewer: “What about the problems like whether to follow the metronome marks?”

Simon: “These things are all just dogmas: the dogma of following the metronome marks, the dogma of the squeezed note, the dogma of borrowing this way or that. They’re too rigid, and if you think those things will provide you with answers about how to do the piece, you’re wrong. But I think if you rehearse a very small part of the piece, as you saw us doing in those early sectionals, and insist on certain things, a certain approach to phrasing and so on, then with intelligent musicians it will spread over the whole piece. So without sounding pretentious the thing is to get a microcosmic approach to detail which actually creates a macro-cosmic approach to the while symphony.

You need gradually to build it up: like running – I used to run, believe it or not – you don’t go first for the full distance, unless you’re an idiot; you build up gradually. That’s what I hate about an orchestra where you’re given an overall view to start with. You can’t unpick it. And in London you rarely have time to unpick it anyway. I believe in building up from the very smallest bricks and making performances like that, and the nearer we get to the performance the more I want to be performing.
I find I am not good at letting things go. I mean, God, as an English conductor you really ought to be, because that’s what you expect from the players: leave it to us, and it will be fine. With the London orchestras you can get a solid level of performance, but it’s so predictable. I find that unless I’ve built it up gradually, and have a certain amount of structural order, then I don’t have enough rigour to give me the freedom I need.”

When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the coporate murder of classical music

When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the corporate murder of classical music

When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the Corporate Murder of Classical Music

I have no idea how I acquired this book, but, I have some vague remembrance of buying it to get a better understanding of the industry today. I have to echo what others have said, this book is not for the faint hearted. If you have delusions of grandeur for a carrier in the Classical Music business, this is likely to kill them, especially if you aren’t a young and up and coming performer, but really, it’s pretty bleak for all artists.

Still, I am glad I read it, even if I had to grip tight at times at the detail of corruption and for how long. I would say, try to take a pinch of salt, but, it really does seem quite accurate, even for today, it was first published in 1996, but it gives a huge legacy of how things are the way they are today. Ironically, it does do some comparisons to sports, which has had a similar corruption done to it. Run by big corporations, with little or no understanding of this incredible style of art and how the big stars have contributed to the current day dearth of any long term relationships with artists, this book exposes the’ what sells’ attitude of the current industry and not what it was more like 100 years ago when there was more of a nurturing of incredible talent that is out there. So if you are a one hit wonder, this book, is likely to give you some great insight, but personally, I’ve always been one for the long game of doing the best I can and working on my art, as best I can.

Plus, as always, its luck, you can be the best at what you do and just not have the opportunity, I’ve seen this over and over; someone who maybe great at promoting themselves, isn’t always great at the art form and vis-versa. It’s just the nature of the beast today and it’s better to accept this and do the art because it’s something you really believe in and hope for the best.

The book does end on a fairly upbeat note, stating some stories of professionals who are doing this because they love it and have managed to eke out a living by creating their own niche. So, as I’ve often heard, if you want to do something, do it yourself, seems to be the catch phrase and even if no great big producer/manager/agent falls in love with your work, at least, you have the personal satisfaction of having done something brilliant and it’s all your own. I know I have done this with my ‘Miss Givings’ one woman show and it has been a wonderful adventure and artistic joy. The reviews have been good as well!

Debbie Bridge – the Books I Carry

Book Reviews from my library of books

Category Archives: Music