Subject: RE: Eliza Carthy in the Guardian
From:
Surreysinger
Date: 16 Apr 08 - 04:25 PM
Well,as a singers I've been doing both since being knee high to a grasshopper. I've been a sightreading choral singer since schooldays, and have been singing folksong in tandem (although not, I hasten to add, at the same time !) I wouldn't dream of using most of my choral techniques for folk singing though ... overly dotted i's and crossed t's sound daft, and extremely uncomfortable, for traditional unaccompanied English songs. Similarly I wouldn't dream of using some of the vocal mannerisms that I sometimes I adopt when singing folksong for the choral singing. I'd be strung up for that ! When singing with the dots, it's mostly a matter of following the instructions you're given - either by the score, or by the conductor, and singing (in my case) to someone else's direction.
I've found that choral or classically trained singers of my acquaintance have deep difficulty in shaking off their training in terms of use of consonants and vowels - these can sound so over the top in traditional song. They are also exceedingly nervous of coming off the page - ask them to improvise something, and they'll get intensely jittery. Ask them to memorise something, and they'll panic (I've seen that happen on a music summer school that I've been attending for a number of years, where the (very well known) conductor insists on two songs being learned by heart for performance at the end of the week.) When told that you can sing over 80 songs from memory they invariably ask how on earth you can manage to do that ! I've often wondered what they would have made of Henry Burstow with his 400 songs, or James Parsons and his phenomenal number (not to mention others).
I know that I switch from one mode to the other without thinking about it too much - and that's probably because I've been singing both types of music (and loving both) since I was small. I suspect it's more difficult to make the transition if you've become ingrained in one type of music for a long time before tackling the other.
As to one style informing the other - of course there's a crossover. For me that would have to be the tuition I've received in vocal techniques, breathing techniques, posture etc while singing with choirs - all very valuable stuff - and the principle guidance on the need for communication with the people that you're singing to. Those principles apply whatever type of music you're involved with, as does the need to transmit the story or the message of whatever you are singing - whether it be Mozart Requiem, or "The Unquiet Grave". As my long term choral conductor always says, you should be aiming to get it over to your stone deaf granny in the back row !! And in both forms the singer is trying to put over to the audience their own enjoyment of and feeling for the music .
Having the ability to read the dots does, of course, mean its possible to shortcut some of the learning process. However, whereas with classical music, on the whole, one stays with what is written on the page, the music of a song in a book is just the leaping off point for a folksong. Once the basic tune has been learned, then its a matter of learning words, and moulding the tune to fit the words and the feel of the content.
Coo - that all sounds a bit pompous dunnit ??
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sj
