A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers: Introduction
Palestrina to Pärt.
Pleasures and Pitfalls of Performing Publicly: A Personal Perusal
As we find ourselves in a second period of reflection caused by the resurgence of the awful Covid-19 virus, it seems appropriate to move from a survey of my career as a professional singer to a survey of what the great composers of classical music have to offer, and how we react to that music as performers, rather than as listeners. Now, it’s obvious that we cannot separate one entirely from the other, as we are also listeners, but I am not sure that anyone has attempted to look at the great works of lyric art from the point of view of those of us who perform it. What makes Verdi easier for some than Mozart, and vice versa? What are the qualities needed to sing Tallis perfectly and how do these qualities differ from those needed to sing Pärt?
I plan, over the next few weeks, to explore these dilemmas, and also to write about some of the masterpieces I have been lucky enough to find myself performing over the last 40 years or so.
I hope that I might be able to interest my readers in a survey that will take in most of the great names of classical music who have written well for the human voice. Obviously, this will mean that some great names are omitted, giants such as Bruckner (who, despite forays into choral music, cannot be considered a great vocal composer), Chopin and Scarlatti, but these composers have been written about comprehensively without needing any further attention from me.
I propose also, as I did with ‘A Singer’s Life’, not to cover these composers chronologically, but to dip into various styles and periods randomly, to see if we can find a relationship with the voice that is not historical but empathetic, that doesn’t imply progress from one age to another, and that gets to the core of what makes music singable, and therefore listenable. Perhaps at the end, I can draw some conclusions. Perhaps not. We shall see!
For those unacquainted with my previous writing, I offer a quick précis of where I am coming from in this enterprise. I have been singing professionally since about 1980, originally from Edinburgh in Scotland, and now, once again living in our capital city, having been lucky enough to travel the world being paid to sing some of the finest music ever written, and having met and worked with many of the greatest singers of this or any other era. I have been able to sing music from all periods and styles, as I have benefited from a voice which is both flexible and controllable. It also helped enormously being a bass, as it is used in ensemble music as a grounding or blending voice, rather than a dominant one. I have no experience as a professional chorus singer, but always enjoyed joining amateur groups of friends over the years, particularly in Renaissance music.
My aim in this new Blog is to focus each time on a particular composer and write about the problems and delights of singing each one’s music, using various examples to clarify what I mean. However, in this article I thought I would have a glance at some of the composers who didn’t quite make it to my shortlist but are nonetheless worthy of brief examination.
Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) took his surname from his powerful patron, Federico Cavalli, a Venetian nobleman, and was important both as a brilliant composer for the voice and as a historical figure at the very beginning of the musical genre we know as opera. Unlike Monteverdi, he wrote for comparatively small orchestral resources, so attention was focussed more on the vocal lines he produced. I have sung in three of his operas (he wrote 41, 27 of which we still possess!) and always enjoyed the thrill of singing his music. I sang ‘L’Egisto’ and ‘L’Orione’ at Scottish Opera in the 1980s, at the beginning of the modern rediscovery of Early Music, in sumptuous productions with a dazzling accompaniment in the orchestra arranged by Raymond Leppard. Nowadays, his extravagant orchestrations played on modern instruments would be regarded as way over the top, but, at the time, audiences were thrilled to hear these very early experiments in vocal theatre, and his work paved the way for more historically accurate productions in recent times.
Cavalli was the first composer to introduce the idea of an “aria”, a song in which the action is, to an extent, paused to allow the singer to express his or her emotions, and also to show off his/her technique. He was not averse to humour, and his operas provided an early combination of what later split into Opera Buffa (comic opera) and Opera Seria (serious or tragic opera). Most of his libretti dealt with mythological subjects from Greek and Roman sources, but also were peopled by characters not dissimilar to those in Commedia del’Arte, who allowed the audience a bit of respite from what could become terribly serious and tragic stories. I sang in a beautiful production in France of Cavalli’s opera ‘La Calisto’ later in my career, and often wished I could have sung more of his music. It never forced one to over sing and stayed within reasonable limits of vocal possibility, permitting the singer to concentrate less on vocal gymnastics and more on character and emotion.
I have always instinctively shied away from the music now called ‘Bel Canto’ (beautiful singing), and that is why, in this personal overview, you will not find the names of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, which many others would have included as a matter of course. These were fine composers, masters of their art, who produced many of the operas which are now rightly considered chefs d’oeuvre- ‘The Barber of Seville’, ‘Norma’, ‘Lucia di Lammermoor’ and ‘Cenerentola’. However, they do not appeal to me and I rarely enjoyed singing them on the infrequent occasions I was contracted to perform them. Maybe my voice didn’t suit the style, but they will not appear in these articles.
A similar, perhaps surprising, omission is Jules Massenet (1842-1912), a reasonably prolific composer of operas, several of which have become standard in the repertoire. Werther, Manon, Cendrillon and Don Quichotte are all performed quite regularly, and Le Cid and Hérodiade often crop up. Again, like the Bel Canto composers mentioned above, Massenet’s exclusion is highly personal. I just don’t find his style interesting or profound, and these operas, on the whole, leave me cold. There are, clearly, fine sections and arias, especially in “Werther” which I sang way back in the early 80s, and I remember fondly a splendid concert version of “Hérodiade” at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in the same decade, which brought me stunning reviews from the national press. However, much as I have tried, I must admit that poor old Jules fails to float my boat, and so, he will be another absentee from these Blogs.
A composer who might have made the shortlist is Georges Bizet (1838-1875), who, of course wrote one of the most famous operas of all time, ‘Carmen’. He is also eternally famous as the composer of the famous tenor/baritone duet from ‘The Pearl Fishers’ and there are plenty of delicious melodies from some of his other works. His tragically short life prevented him from developing his style into old age, but his legacy is marvellous nonetheless.
I should add Bela Bartok (1881-1945), the Hungarian composer who gave us ‘Bluebeard’s Castle’, one of the finest 20th century operas, and one I have been lucky enough to sing on two occasions, although in English translation rather than the original Hungarian. It is a magnificent one act piece, deeply creepy and profound, full of splendid vocal and orchestral writing, about... well what, exactly? It’s hugely symbolic and seems to evoke thoughts of psychoanalysis, as proposed by such as Freud and Jung. It appears much more than a scary story about a Duke who murders his wives (or preserves them in a living death), but no one really knows. Written in 1911 and 12, and first performed in 1918, it has only become well-known after Bartok’s death as a masterpiece. It is a fantastic piece to sing, both for the bass who sings the duke and the mezzo-soprano/soprano, Judith. Bartok was also a fanatical collector of Hungarian folk songs and turned them into modern but singable part songs for mixed voices. The Hungarian language is a huge barrier to understanding his music, as it is one of those tongues unrelated to any other, and translation into English or German fails to convey the essential feel of the language when sung. He was a genius, though, I think.
Finally, in this not quite making it section, we have Michael Tippett (1905-1998). The main reason I haven’t included him is that, somehow, I have never sung in any of his operas. He was hardly prolific, writing only five operas, but was considered one of the giants of 20th century British music. He wrote quite a few choral pieces, but, apart from his early oratorio ‘A Child of our Time’, I have not sung a note. However, I feel it is worth noting his contribution to the extraordinary outpouring of British (primarily English) music in the previous century, and on the several occasions I sang in ‘A Child of our Time’, I really enjoyed it. He became more avant-garde as he grew older, and I don’t think that was necessarily a good thing! ‘A Child of our Time’ is an extraordinary piece, a heartfelt plea for tolerance written in response to Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom of Jews in 1938, and first performed in March 1944, when the Second World War was at its height. His pacifism, like Britten’s, was an essential part of his psychology, and this piece is a great monument to pacifism. It is in 3 parts, like Handel’s ‘Messiah’, and is structured not unlike that of Bach’s Passions, except here the chorales are replaced by African American Spirituals. These songs of oppression are deeply poignant and are used to reflect on the story of the piece. I just hope that, in our present debate about slavery and colonialism, we do not find that Tippett’s brilliant use of these songs of lamentation is taken amiss. It would be a profound mistake.
In the next Blog, I shall be looking at Thomas Tallis and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, titans of Renaissance music, and creators of some of the most beautiful music ever written.
