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CONCEPTS OF VOCAL PEDAGOGY |
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diversion of the singer's attention from direct vocal control would tend to have a salutary effect upon his singing.
Technical principles and objectives. The technical approach to voice teaching is based, largely, upon a specificity of training theory according to which certain exercises and drills are designed to improve the control of breathing, phonation, resonance, range, dynamics, diction, etc., as separate skills. These are later to be integrated into a whole performance pattern through the smooth coordination of its many interrelated parts.
Removing muscular interferences. Vocal faults, caused by chronic extraneous tensions or interferences in the vocal tract, are common among students of singing. Physiological, rather than psychological, correctives are proposed by those who favor mechanistic methods of vocal training. Remedial exercises are used to induce compensatory muscular actions that will offset these extraneous tensions in the vocal tract. Physical relaxation and deep breathing drills are also recommended.
Handling beginners. The inception of the vocal training program is just as important as its outcome since preliminary appraisals of a student's vocal equipment must, to a large extent, determine initial instructional procedures. Authors are not agreed on voice classification factors. Majority opinion favors quality as a criterion. Others propose the use of speaking range, middle range (tessitura), extreme range, intensity, and emotional temperament as criteria. A warning note is sounded against the needless insistence upon the preliminary classification of all voices. As a studio fetish, classification serves no useful purpose. All worthy vocal teaching methods are supposed to subserve aims that are exploratory and diagnostic, constructive, reeducational and habit-building. Such aims allow for procedural revisions in teaching as often as the need arises. The question here is, should the teacher consider it necessary to stretch the pupil's voice to meet the arbitrary dimensions of an imposed classification (e.g., tenor, contralto, soprano, etc.) instead of allowing the voice to develop within its own natural tendency for growth with correct use? Some authors believe that, through a resourceful and efficient utilization of the vocal equipment actually available to the beginner, the singing voice would eventually grow into healthy maturity and acquire normal characteristics of quality, range, etc., without any preliminary classification at all. The reaching out for extraordinary pitch and tonal effects should be deferred until the student has attained considerable mastery over the vocal equipment he already possesses, especially if the student's true vocal stature has not yet emerged. The vocal classification may not reveal itself "until the technique has reached a very high state of perfection. ... A voice may, indeed, continue to grow for many years." [Stan- |
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