The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #165559 Message #3972721
Posted By: keberoxu
21-Jan-19 - 06:44 PM
Thread Name: BS: my cautionary tale
Subject: RE: BS: my cautionary tale
What I witnessed is not easy to explain to anyone who hasn't observed how singers and voices are cultivated. I reckon that actors would understand the situation, even though actors are not required to execute musical passages with their voices as though they were playing an instrument in a symphony orchestra.
I don't recall, in my time as an accompanist, seeing a singing teacher sexually molest a pupil. Would I not have reported this to the immediate department if I had? I hope I would.
What was being done in the lessons with this singing teacher was not simple, although the consequences were stark and shocking. But how to explain?
The singing teacher directed the student to breathe this way, that way, to make these sounds in this fashion, to coordinate the body like this or that ... it was all done without hands on. I would remember that. No, the teacher would demonstrate, from a respectful distance in the room, and the student would politely make a response, and the little dance would go on. And on, and on ... the sounds were hideous but the actual manner and behavior never broke protocol.
The dilemma is not a superficial thing. What I observed of this singing teacher, was scrupulously observed gestures that were conventional and acceptable. And the teacher, at all times, appeared eager to help and to be of service; and with the teacher's extroverted nature and ambitions, definitely wanted to be SEEN to be of service.
Whatever was driving this teacher was only partly, if at all, conscious. The problem is, how could this teacher have corrected himself, you know? Clearly this was a conflicted person, tremendous inner tensions and drives, inner stuff getting projected onto and worked out through the hapless student.
There is very little, furthermore, that I can tell you about the student, because the student was an exquisitely controlled introvert. It was the more startling when the student would sing an exposed challenging musical passage and it would come out sounding perfectly hellish -- because this person appeared and seemed incapable of putting a foot wrong, so well-heeled and well-groomed in deportment. Truly one of the stranger, more extreme instances among dozens of students whom I worked with.
The question I have had to put to myself, is how could I have felt that I was complicit, simply by showing up and doing my job while teacher and student went through this ongoing ritual behavior. And of course the answer, for my accountability in it, is an answer that is rooted outside of the music studio and beyond the academic world where all of this was acted out.
I'm tiring myself here so I will close this post.
My most inadequate thanks to everyone who responded, who made me feel that I am not alone, who validated my perceptions and feelings.