# Vocal Individuality



## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

A brief debate over the distinctiveness of the voice of Cheryl Studer over on this thread, https://www.talkclassical.com/73643-round-1-meine-lippen-2.html#post2190947, made me want to elicit people's thoughts on the general matter of vocal individuality - what determines it, and how we react to it.

We've all observed that certain very distinctive voices owned by singers of high artistic or professional achievement seem to inspire strong reactions, positive and negative, to their sheer sound. Good examples among sopranos are Callas, Olivero, Schwarzkopf, and Nilsson, all of whom have elicited, right here on TC, reactions ranging from enthusiastic enjoyment to strong dislike. Of course this isn't a consistent pattern; other very distinctive voices, belonging to equally distinguished artists, seem noncontroversial. I've seen few negative reactions to the timbres of Steber, Farrell, or the younger Sutherland or Price.

I suspect a great many voices are agreeable to almost everyone because they're more "central" in sound - not particularly dark or bright, edgy or muffled, "heady" or "chesty," and not possessing vibratos of unusual pitch variation or speed of pulsation. Such voices would be found more obviously "beautiful" by most listeners, but not necessarily "better" or more interesting in the context of actual music-making.

Any thoughts.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

On one hand, I do appreciate genuine vocal individuality...but only if it is accompanied by a correspondingly strong technique. As it stands, we've seen 5+ decades of singers with bad technique trying to sell themselves on "vocal individuality" and asserting revisionist takes on what "real" baroque/bel canto etc was supposed to sound like (baroque is the worst offender. full of male voices with thin, strained singing devoid of healthy vibrato and woofy, fake-contralto voices that sound almost like countertenors).

fortunately, I have several counterexamples, who correspondingly serve as examples of singers with distinctive timbres. For the sake of brevity, I'll stick with just two.


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> A brief debate over the distinctiveness of the voice of Cheryl Studer over on this thread, https://www.talkclassical.com/73643-round-1-meine-lippen-2.html#post2190947, made me want to elicit people's thoughts on the general matter of vocal individuality - what determines it, and how we react to it.
> 
> We've all observed that certain very distinctive voices owned by singers of high artistic or professional achievement seem to inspire strong reactions, positive and negative, to their sheer sound. Good examples among sopranos are Callas, Olivero, Schwarzkopf, and Nilsson, all of whom have elicited, right here on TC, reactions ranging from enthusiastic enjoyment to strong dislike. Of course this isn't a consistent pattern; other very distinctive voices, belonging to equally distinguished artists, seem noncontroversial. I've seen few negative reactions to the timbres of Steber, Farrell, or the younger Sutherland or Price.
> 
> ...


Very nice observation. Actually, the attraction of averageness is also a phenomenon in facial recognition, not just in voice. Please see these articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averageness 
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/18/why-we-find-average-faces-most-attractive

Claudia Muzio is for me an example of what you call a "central" voice. What you put in words describe exactly what I feel about her instrument: not particularly dark or bright, edgy or muffled, "heady" or "chesty," etc., in sums, just a _lovely_ Italian voice if we are discussing timbre. But she has been universally recognized as one of the most individual female voices thanks to her artistry i.e. how she used her instrument to interpret the music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> we've seen 5+ decades of singers with bad technique trying to sell themselves on "vocal individuality" and asserting revisionist takes on what "real" baroque/bel canto etc was supposed to sound like (baroque is the worst offender. full of male voices with thin, strained singing devoid of healthy vibrato and woofy, fake-contralto voices that sound almost like countertenors).


How do HIP notions of vocal sound - thin and bland, with vibrato minimized - represent any sort of individuality, or allow for much of it? Seems the opposite to me.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> How do HIP notions of vocal sound - thin and bland, with vibrato minimized - represent any sort of individuality, or allow for much of it? Seems the opposite to me.


same, but it doesn't seem to stop them from trying.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

silentio said:


> *Very nice observation. Actually, the attraction of averageness is also a phenomenon in facial recognition, not just in voice. Please see these articles:
> *
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averageness
> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/18/why-we-find-average-faces-most-attractive
> ...


The research on this is a little misleading. What people are attracted to in facial composites is not their "averageness", but the resulting symmetry of the odd imperfections of any one individual being balanced out by hundreds of other faces not likely to have the same defect in the same location.

Otherwise, we would see a correspondent rise in the attractiveness of overweight people, which has not been demonstrated in any western country.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

silentio said:


> Very nice observation. Actually, the attraction of averageness is also a phenomenon in facial recognition, not just in voice. Please see these articles:
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Averageness
> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/18/why-we-find-average-faces-most-attractive
> ...


Muzio is unmistakable in most of what she sings, but I agree that it's her intense, eloquent, very personal articulation of music more than her timbre that accounts for it. Her chest voice, though, does have a certain tang that's rather distinctive.


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> The research on this is a little misleading. What people are attracted to in facial composites is not their "averageness", but the resulting symmetry of the odd imperfections of any one individual being balanced out by hundreds of other faces not likely to have the same defect in the same location.
> 
> Otherwise, we would see a correspondent rise in the attractiveness of overweight people, which has not been demonstrated in any western country.


The wiki page cited a couple of peer-reviewed articles mentioning that:

_"That the preference for the average is* biological rather than cultural* has been supported by studies on babies, who gaze longer at attractive faces than at unattractive ones.[25][26][27] Furthermore, Mark Stauss[28] reported that 10-month-old children respond to average faces in the same way as they respond to attractive faces, and that these infants can extract the average from simply drawn faces consisting of only 4 features. Adam Rubenstein and coworkers[29] showed that already at six months of age, children not only treat average faces the same as they treat attractive faces, but they are also able to extract the central tendency (i.e. the average) from a set of complex, naturalistic faces presented to them (i.e. not just the very simple 4-features faces used by Strauss). Thus the ability to extract the average from a set of realistic facial images operates from an early age, and is therefore almost certainly instinctive.[28][29]"_

I don't see what is misleading here. The rise of obesity is a very recent event in the course of modern human evolution (200,000 years). At least it hasn't caught up (e.g. having consequences) to the evolutionary psychology of humans.


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

I certainly did a dramatic change in my preferences between the most beautiful voices and the most interesting voices.
When I first began my trip into the opera world you would see names like: Carreras/Tebaldi/Sutherland/Freni/Merrill/di Stefano/Bjorling/Fleming/Price etc. at the top of my list. Who cannot be awed by "The Art of the Prima Donna" by Sutherland, or Price's luscious "Blue Album"? Such beautiful voices.
With time I discovered that the most interesting voices were attracting my attention much more than the beautiful ones. Those were the ones I preferred to see live if I had a choice between the two (an early example being a Fleming vs. Radvanovsky Lucrezia Borgia at Washington National in DC.) I called to order tickets only to be sadly told that the Fleming performances were all sold out. "B-b-b-ut I want to see Radvanovsky," I explained. "Oh good" she answered. "We have plenty of those." And my icing on the cake was a new up-and-coming tenor named Vittorio Grigolo who was wonderful as well.
I started to discover the sounds of Olivero/Pertile/Callas/Ponselle/Muzio/Rachvelishvili/Vickers/Gobbi/Stratas/Zajick/Furlanetto. They seemed to add something that the others had missing to my ear. 
As a once "rather well known singer" once said, "A beautiful voice is not enough."
It's all so subjective. And no one is wrong and no one is right. And no one is a snob for expressing their particular opinions, and because someone says it is so does NOT make it the gospel. It is what it is.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

nina foresti said:


> I certainly did a dramatic change in my preferences between the most beautiful voices and the most interesting voices.
> When I first began my trip into the opera world you would see names like: Carreras/Tebaldi/Sutherland/Freni/Merrill/di Stefano/Bjorling/Fleming/Price etc. at the top of my list. Such beautiful voices.
> With time I discovered that the most interesting voices were attracting my attention much more than the beautiful ones.
> I started to discover the sounds of Olivero/Pertile/Callas/Ponselle/Muzio/Rachvelishvili/Vickers/Gobbi/Rashvelishvili/Zajick/Furlanetto. They seemed to add something that the others had missing to my ear. As a once rather well known singer once said, "A beautiful voice is not enough."
> It's all so subjective. And no one is wrong and no one is right. And no one is a snob for expressing their particular opinions, and because someone says it is so does NOT make it the gospel. It is what it is.


I suspect many of us undergo a similar evolution - a broadening of what we find pleasurable (and not only in voices).


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

I will speak to a similarity between two very different singers regarding their distinctiveness. Both early Callas and throughout her career Joan Sutherland had notes above C6 that were very different in sound but both had an enormous, distinctive sound with overtones that you just didn't find in any other singers. No one else in the history of opera could produce such distinctive sounds and of such amplitude in generations of singers. A similar effect occurred in two very different singers. Both Nilsson and Flagstad could create a spacious sound repleat with tons of overtones in the middle of their voice that I have not heard in other singers. A good example of that is Nilsson's singing in the Panis Angelicus contest. A final unique trait is Jessye Norman's chest register which could sound as if it were coming out of a cave.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Man have I wanted to participate in this discussion. Been typing and erasing for an hour and a half. Got to know when its time to sit back and listen to someone else........and I really hate doing that! But its better than trying to make stuff up when you've proven to yourself that you aint got nuthin to say!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

ScottK said:


> Man have I wanted to participate in this discussion. Been typing and erasing for an hour and a half. Got to know when its time to sit back and listen to someone else........and I really hate doing that! But its better than trying to make stuff up when you've proven to yourself that you aint got nuthin to say!


It's wisdom to prove a thing to oneself before proving it to others. :angel:


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

Voices that jump to mind for me include Corelli, Tucker, Callas, Rysanek, Souliotis, Gobbi, Bechi, Barbieri, Baltsa, Christoff...

I think a common feature is how energetically they sang - they never sounded half-asleep. It arrests attention when they are on stage or when you hear their records. It is not always just about volume - although all were generous - but also a sort of mental focus, they rarely let a phrase or perhaps even a word go by without doing something with it.

They all sang with the entire compass of their voices and their native accents are evident in their singing.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Revitalized Classics said:


> Voices that jump to mind for me include Corelli, Tucker, Callas, Rysanek, Souliotis, Gobbi, Bechi, Barbieri, Baltsa, Christoff...
> 
> I think a common feature is how energetically they sang - they never sounded half-asleep. It arrests attention when they are on stage or when you hear their records. It is not always just about volume - although all were generous - but also a sort of mental focus, they rarely let a phrase or perhaps even a word go by without doing something with it.
> 
> They all sang with the entire compass of their voices *and their native accents are evident in their singing*.


Glad to see I'm not the only one who tends to view this as a positive rather than a negative. The idea that all opera should be sung in this neutral accent that doesn't betray one's origin of birth always felt unnecessary and inauthentic. Like...is there anything inherently less classy or less artistically proficient about sounding clearly British, Greek, American or Russian while singing an Italian aria?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> Glad to see I'm not the only one who tends to view this as a positive rather than a negative. The idea that all opera should be sung in this neutral accent that doesn't betray one's origin of birth always felt unnecessary and inauthentic. Like...is there anything inherently less classy or less artistically proficient about sounding clearly British, Greek, American or Russian while singing an Italian aria?


Are you saying that not learning how to pronounce foreign languages well is desirable? That bad pronunciation is more "authentic"? Is that how you interpret what Revitalized Classics said? Do you Know what French or German - or, God forbid, Russian - actually sounds like when pronounced with an English or American accent?

The thought is sending cold shudders through my body.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Revitalized Classics said:


> Voices that jump to mind for me include Corelli, Tucker, Callas, Rysanek, Souliotis, Gobbi, Bechi, Barbieri, Baltsa, Christoff...
> 
> They all sang with the entire compass of their voices and their native accents are evident in their singing.


You just haven't lived until you've heard Boris Christoff sing Wagner in Italian with a Russian accent...


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> Are you saying that not learning how to pronounce foreign languages well is desirable? That bad pronunciation is more "authentic"? Is that how you interpret what Revitalized Classics said? Do you Know what French or German - or, God forbid, Russian - actually sounds like when pronounced with an English or American accent?
> 
> The thought is sending cold shudders through my body.


I'm glad that this point has come up as it was exactly what I wanted to introduce to the topic as part of the question as to what makes a voice individualistic. If we think about how voices sound when talking then I think we would all agree that whilst some people have more distinctive voices than others, most people have recognisable, individual voices. I think the same thing applies to singing. That is, that the singers with distinctive voices are those that sing vowels in a similar way and position to the way they speak them. Thus meaning that the vowel production during singing is natural. The opposite of this would be to manufacture or put on a sound (and this is usually done by imitating a favourite singer) and I've known singing teachers that try to obtain a particular type of sound (dark, throaty, clear etc.) rather than bringing out the natural voice of the singer. Just as with speaking, some singers' natural voices will be more individualistic than others, but trying to sound like an ideal of beauty only results in bad technique or all singers sounding the same.

When it comes to singing in a foreign language and pronunciation, there are two considerations: 1) Pronouncing the sounds as correctly as possible; and 2) Singing with natural vowels. If an English singer is singing in Italian (for example), are these two things in contradiction to one another? Whilst you might have thought so, no. The key is to find the vowel sounds in English that are closest to the vowel sounds in Italian. If I want to sing an Italian 'Ah' vowel I don't think of the sounds I associate with the ah of PA-dre or MA-dre (because I will end up putting on a false 'accent' trying to sing 'Italian'), but instead think of the English word 'are' to keep the vowel sound natural.

French is notoriously difficult to sing if you aren't mother tongue. Actually so much so that the French can always tell when someone isn't French (except possibly Callas), therefore it could be said to be impossible for foreigners to sing in French.

N.


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

The Conte said:


> I'm glad that this point has come up as it was exactly what I wanted to introduce to the topic as part of the question as to what makes a voice individualistic. If we think about how voices sound when talking then I think we would all agree that whilst some people have more distinctive voices than others, most people have recognisable, individual voices. I think the same thing applies to singing. That is, that the singers with distinctive voices are those that sing vowels in a similar way and position to the way they speak them. Thus meaning that the vowel production during singing is natural. The opposite of this would be to manufacture or put on a sound (and this is usually done by imitating a favourite singer) and I've known singing teachers that try to obtain a particular type of sound (dark, throaty, clear etc.) rather than bringing out the natural voice of the singer. Just as with speaking, some singers' natural voices will be more individualistic than others, but trying to sound like an ideal of beauty only results in bad technique or all singers sounding the same.


I enjoyed your post. I was thinking of Joan Sutherland when I read this passage: I remember Bonynge always saying about 'rounding' and 'warming' the voice and I date some of the changes in her singing to performing in Italy and speculate they were trying to approximate a more 'authentic' sound. If there is a downside to this, it is that shifting away from the bright clear voice and pronunciation which was intelligible and Australian-sounding comes at a cost as well as making some gains.



> When it comes to singing in a foreign language and pronunciation, there are two considerations: 1) Pronouncing the sounds as correctly as possible; and 2) Singing with natural vowels. If an English singer is singing in Italian (for example), are these two things in contradiction to one another? Whilst you might have thought so, no. The key is to find the vowel sounds in English that are closest to the vowel sounds in Italian. If I want to sing an Italian 'Ah' vowel I don't think of the sounds I associate with the ah of PA-dre or MA-dre (because I will end up putting on a false 'accent' trying to sing 'Italian'), but instead think of the English word 'are' to keep the vowel sound natural.
> 
> French is notoriously difficult to sing if you aren't mother tongue. Actually so much so that the French can always tell when someone isn't French (except possibly Callas), therefore it could be said to be impossible for foreigners to sing in French.
> 
> N.


In contrast to Sutherland, her contemporary Jon Vickers - a very strong character by all accounts - never made any attempt, so far as I can tell, to sound anything other than himself. If you hear a recording of him singing in English in the 1950s, much of that distinction is still there twenty years later when singing in Italian/French/German despite all the influences made on a singer during an international career.

The makeup of his voice was the same whether he was singing Messiah or Otello: if singing the vowels with maximum focus and conviction and pronouncing them clearly means that he never sounds anything other than Jon Vickers, _Canadian_, it is one way of sounding vocally distinctive.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

The Conte said:


> I'm glad that this point has come up as it was exactly what I wanted to introduce to the topic as part of the question as to what makes a voice individualistic. If we think about how voices sound when talking then I think we would all agree that whilst some people have more distinctive voices than others, most people have recognisable, individual voices. I think the same thing applies to singing. That is, that the singers with distinctive voices are those that sing vowels in a similar way and position to the way they speak them. Thus meaning that the vowel production during singing is natural. The opposite of this would be to manufacture or put on a sound (and this is usually done by imitating a favourite singer) and I've known singing teachers that try to obtain a particular type of sound (dark, throaty, clear etc.) rather than bringing out the natural voice of the singer. Just as with speaking, some singers' natural voices will be more individualistic than others, but trying to sound like an ideal of beauty only results in bad technique or all singers sounding the same.
> 
> *When it comes to singing in a foreign language and pronunciation, there are two considerations: 1) Pronouncing the sounds as correctly as possible; and 2) Singing with natural vowels. If an English singer is singing in Italian (for example), are these two things in contradiction to one another? Whilst you might have thought so, no. The key is to find the vowel sounds in English that are closest to the vowel sounds in Italian. If I want to sing an Italian 'Ah' vowel I don't think of the sounds I associate with the ah of PA-dre or MA-dre (because I will end up putting on a false 'accent' trying to sing 'Italian'), but instead think of the English word 'are' to keep the vowel sound natural.
> *
> ...


I wouldn't debate at all the importance of those two points but I would say that there are others that contribute to successfully singing in Italian - the only one I spent much time with in my wannabe years - such as dipthongs. It didn't take too many sessions in a practice room, listening through the wall to CA- ROH OOO MI OH - OO BEH-EEN to realize that you had to keep on listening to that language to increase the accuracy of your pronunciation.

And, for me, the question shows up in a negative way with an artist whom I enjoy completely in all other ways, Leonard Warren. I've never heard anyone give him a hard time about this , so maybe its just me, but I've always heard what I think of as an "A+ student" approach to the way he sings italian; like he learned the lesson and he's going to get it right every time, but it never comes out like...forget Gobbi and Bastianini...for me it never comes out like Tibbet or Macneil. I find it gets in the way of my enjoyment. It impedes his legato.

I think elision is part of the question as well. It may not be literally wrong, in Cosi fan Tutte, for Richard Van Allen to sing Don Alfonso's line *Saldo Amico* but it has never had that easy sound (it almost sounds like he's inserting a W between the o and the a) that Walter Berry ( and I'm sure many others) get from *Sald 'amic*o. In this case, I find it subtracting from the characters all important easy charm! A little Ochs shows up in his Alfonso. And the reason is the use of the language.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

I woke up thinking that I forgot one of the best rules of conversation...if you don't have a substantial point of your own to put in, you rarely offend people by inquiring as to their points!

I want to take my question from Woodducks' initial jumping off point... the debate about whether or not Studer's is a distinctive sound. A few of us disagreed, as we should!! But when I started attempting to discuss it yesterday I kept meandering into voice compared to interpretation, which is not the same. Woodduck made that point discussing Muzio. The more I focused on distinctive individual timbre, the more I got slowed down. You all had great discussion about technique, vibrato, "centrality" of various facets. 

But at the very core of the voice, isn't there something in a distinctive voice ( whomever you may feel to be the possessor of that uniqueness) that is like a stamp and is actually below the reedy-ness, the woofy-ness, the darkness or whatever else hits your ear?

Example: Giuseppe DiStefano's gorgeous voice, for me and certainly quite a number of others, became increasingly white over the course of his career. But I always found it extremely recognizable....distinctive. The stamp was below the coloration. Is that quality simply a God given thing?


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

ScottK said:


> I woke up thinking that I forgot one of the best rules of conversation...if you don't have a substantial point of your own to put in, you rarely offend people by inquiring as to their points!
> 
> I want to take my question from Woodducks' initial jumping off point... the debate about whether or not Studer's is a distinctive sound. A few of us disagreed, as we should!! But when I started attempting to discuss it yesterday I kept meandering into voice compared to interpretation, which is not the same. Woodduck made that point discussing Muzio. The more I focused on distinctive individual timbre, the more I got slowed down. You all had great discussion about technique, vibrato, "centrality" of various facets.
> 
> ...


This is an excellent comment! Thank you for sharing your experiences and I certainly agree that there is a lot more to singing in Italian with the correct pronunciation than I covered (or indeed could cover) in my comment.

I think you have put into words part of what I was thinking, that individuality is more than just coloration and that the _stamp_ of a voice, as you put it, is also what makes a speaking voice so distinctive (after all we can often recognise an actors voice even if we can't see them).

N.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> I'm glad that this point has come up as it was exactly what I wanted to introduce to the topic as part of the question as to what makes a voice individualistic. If we think about how voices sound when talking then I think we would all agree that *whilst some people have more distinctive voices than others, most people have recognisable, individual voices.*


"Recognizable" and "distinctive" are not necessarily synonyms, but both are context-dependent. Plenty of people whose speaking voices we would recognize instantly sound commonplace, even anonymous, as singers. This is partly because the classical singing voice is NOT identical to the speaking voice, specifically in the development and mixing of the registers. It's been pointed out that chest voices, where most speech sounds occur in most people, are highly individual, while head voices tend to sound alike. We can hear this in singing itself as singers move from one register to another. Sopranos easily distinguishable at the low end of their ranges are often harder to tell apart on high notes.



> I think the same thing applies to singing. That is, that *the singers with distinctive voices are those that sing vowels in a similar way and position to the way they speak them. Thus meaning that the vowel production during singing is natural. The opposite of this would be to manufacture or put on a sound* (and this is usually done by imitating a favourite singer) and I've known singing teachers that try to obtain a particular type of sound (dark, throaty, clear etc.) rather than bringing out the natural voice of the singer. Just as with speaking, some singers' natural voices will be more individualistic than others, but trying to sound like *an ideal of beauty* only results in bad technique or all singers sounding the same.


Here, too, I think you conflate things which are not the same. I don't agree that to learn to alter a vowel or consonant so as to better approximate its sound in another language is "artificial" or opposed to one's "natural" voice, and it has nothing to do with an ideal of vocal "beauty." It is simply to speak or sing one language as opposed to another. Vocal pedagogy that makes voices all sound the same has nothing to do with distinguishing between the open American "ow" and the more closed German "au," or between the soft "t" of Spanish and the crisp, explosive English one.



> When it comes to singing in a foreign language and pronunciation, there are two considerations: 1) Pronouncing the sounds as correctly as possible; and 2) Singing with natural vowels. If an English singer is singing in Italian (for example), are these two things in contradiction to one another? Whilst you might have thought so, no. *The key is to find the vowel sounds in English that are closest to the vowel sounds in Italian.* If I want to sing an Italian 'Ah' vowel I don't think of the sounds I associate with the ah of PA-dre or MA-dre (because I will end up putting on a false 'accent' trying to sing 'Italian'), but instead think of the English word 'are' to keep the vowel sound natural.


This may a sensible initial approach to singing in a language new to us. Unfortunately, sounds in one language tend not to be truly equivalent to the similar sounds of another. You could run through the English alphabet comparing the way you pronounce its letter and letter combinations with the way speakers of French, Italian, German, Russian, Hindi, etc. pronounce them, and you'd find dozens of important differences. Heck, the differences between English as spoken in London and English as spoken in Minneapolis can still surprise me; even knowing these differences and being pretty good at imitating them when I choose to, when listening to the BBC I must often run into the next room and turn up the volume on my computer or radio so as to hear better what can, if I'm not attentive, turn into a string of alien-sounding vowels.



> French is notoriously difficult to sing if you aren't mother tongue. Actually so much so that the French can always tell when someone isn't French (except possibly Callas), therefore it could be said to be impossible for foreigners to sing in French.


Does this mean that an English-speaking singer should ignore those pesky nasals and just use their nearest - in this case nonexistent - English equivalents so as not to sound "artificial"? How far to you want to take your theory? And wouldn't it imply that the custom, common in classical singing, of rendering the French guttural "r" as a flipped or rolled "r" makes French singers sound "unnatural" in their own language?

Singing in a foreign language is certainly an art that requires practice. But it seems to me that sound vocal technique requires an ability to phonate linguistic sounds freely without disturbing the sound-producing mechanism. That many singers can manage this, and still sound utterly natural and distinctively themselves, does seem to support that belief.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Revitalized Classics said:


> I enjoyed your post. I was thinking of Joan Sutherland when I read this passage: I remember Bonynge always saying about 'rounding' and 'warming' the voice and I date some of the changes in her singing to performing in Italy and speculate they were trying to approximate a more 'authentic' sound. If there is a downside to this, it is that shifting away from the bright clear voice and pronunciation which was intelligible and Australian-sounding comes at a cost as well as making some gains.
> 
> In contrast to Sutherland, her contemporary Jon Vickers - a very strong character by all accounts - never made any attempt, so far as I can tell, to sound anything other than himself. If you hear a recording of him singing in English in the 1950s, much of that distinction is still there twenty years later when singing in Italian/French/German despite all the influences made on a singer during an international career.
> 
> The makeup of his voice was the same whether he was singing Messiah or Otello: if singing the vowels with maximum focus and conviction and pronouncing them clearly means that he never sounds anything other than Jon Vickers, _Canadian_, it is one way of sounding vocally distinctive.


Do you think it's possible that you would feel a little differently about this if again and again, the music dramas you were listening to were sung in English....English that, in practice, had a decidedly foreign flair to it? Would you listen, filled with the sense that the "differently" pronounced English was primarily a mark of the individuality of the performer? Or would you perhaps find it something you would like to hear improved?

Note: Great thing about these discussions.....I've been listening to and loving opera for 52 years...Jon Vickers has been, from very early on, one of my beloved singers....until today it never occurred to me to think of him sounding Canadian.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Are you saying that not learning how to pronounce foreign languages well is desirable? That bad pronunciation is more "authentic"? Is that how you interpret what Revitalized Classics said?


strawman



> Do you Know what French or German - or, God forbid, Russian - actually sounds like when pronounced with an English or American accent?
> The thought is sending cold shudders through my body.


in fact I do. tbh, it just sounds like you wanna argue about something.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> strawman
> 
> in fact I do. tbh, it just sounds like you wanna argue about something.


I'm neither strawmanning nor arguing for the sake of arguing. I'm asking you what you're saying. You may know what you mean by "the idea that all opera should be sung in this neutral accent that doesn't betray one's origin of birth always felt unnecessary and inauthentic," but I don't. For one thing, I don't know what a "neutral accent" is. As a former singer, I always strove to pronounce foreign languages as authentically - as much like a native speaker of those languages - as possible. The idea that I was being inauthentic by doing so is a bit, um, puzzling.


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## BalalaikaBoy (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I'm neither strawmanning nor arguing for the sake of arguing. I'm asking you what you're saying. You may know what you mean by "the idea that all opera should be sung in this neutral accent that doesn't betray one's origin of birth always felt unnecessary and inauthentic," but I don't. For one thing, I don't know what a "neutral accent" is. As a former singer, I always strove to pronounce foreign languages as authentically - as much like a native speaker of those languages - as possible. The idea that I was being inauthentic by doing so is a bit, um, puzzling.


I don't think singing with an accent OR singing without an accent is inauthentic. the point was that, as long as you have clear vowels and good overall pronunciation, that shouldn't be something people spend a lot of time criticizing


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Dear Woodduck,

you offer much food for thought in your post (which I haven't responded to with a 'reply to' in order to save space).

Speaking is certainly different from singing (and I haven't said that they are the same), but there are similarities between the two. I agree with you that one of the differences is the mixing of the registration, another would be the increase of support needed when singing. However, shouldn't the purity of the vowels remain the same? The early teachers of singing told their pupils to concentrate on the purity of the vowel as a key to avoiding errors in technique and no doubt this also resulted in better diction. It's been a long time since I read the relevant treatises and so I can't remember whether those Italian teachers of Italian pupils told them to phonate the vowels when singing as they did when talking, but it would make sense if they had said that.

I agree that attempting to modify the vowel sounds one makes in order to pronounce more authentically is different from trying to sound darker or lighter in tone. That was a bit of sloppy writing on my part. Modifying vowel sounds when singing is a nuanced topic. In general one should keep the vowels pure (for me that starts, but doesn't necessarily finish with phonating them in as close a way as possible to where and how they 'sit' when speaking). However, the vowels will modify to a certain extent at the bottom and the top of the range naturally, such is the more heightened nature of singing compared to speaking. Furthermore, some vowel modification is necessary to pronounce foreign languages correctly. Whether one modifies the vowels consciously in an attempt to sound more authentic in a foreign language (which may be highly unsuccessful, of course) or it happens due to trying to lighten or darken the voice, putting on a voice results in the vowels becoming impure.

My post was in no way intended to be a guide on how to sing in foreign languages, which is a much more complex and involved topic (perhaps for another thread). I see it more as a starting point on the road to phonating vowels purely when singing. Where vowel sounds aren't equivalent in two different languages then some modification is obviously necessary (by that I mean modification from ones vowels in ones native language). I haven't mentioned consonants and I agree with you that singers need to learn exactly how they are pronounced in the sung language. When it comes to the vowels (which were always considered more important by the early teachers), phonating them as when speaking is a starting point, not a be all and end all. I fail to understand the relevance of English being pronounced differently in different parts of the world, so what?

What of the nature of singing as heightened speech? I find that the increase in breath support and coordination of the registration when singing mean that vowels don't need to be quite as precise as when speaking. In addition, if the vowels are pure then the registers will develop naturally and coordinate cleanly. Once the registers are coordinated the vowels will take the small amount of modification necessary to make them accurate in terms of pronunciation.

When it comes to singing in French, everyone should leave it to the French, of course! :devil:

Joking aside, it's like that Irish joke: "Excuse me, can you tell me how to get to Dublin?" - "Well, I wouldn't start from here!"
Unless someone is a native French speaker, I would leave singing in French aside until someone has enough mastery over technique that they are capable of producing pure vowels, they can then modify the vowels safely.

"But it seems to me that sound vocal technique requires an ability to phonate linguistic sounds freely without disturbing the sound-producing mechanism."
Lovely! But how do you suggest that is achieved and how is it different from singing with pure vowels?

N.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> I don't think singing with an accent OR singing without an accent is inauthentic. the point was that, as long as you have clear vowels and good overall pronunciation, that shouldn't be something people spend a lot of time criticizing


You cover an important point here. There's a difference between pronunciation and accent.

N.


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

ScottK said:


> Do you think it's possible that you would feel a little differently about this if again and again, the music dramas you were listening to were sung in English....English that, in practice, had a decidedly foreign flair to it? *Would you listen, filled with the sense that the "differently" pronounced English was primarily a mark of the individuality of the performer? Or would you perhaps find it something you would like to hear improved?*
> 
> Note: Great thing about these discussions.....I've been listening to and loving opera for 52 years...Jon Vickers has been, from very early on, one of my beloved singers....until today it never occurred to me to think of him sounding Canadian.


With the example of Vickers, I've experienced both sensations listening to his records. Sometimes in fairly rapid succession.

I recently went on a bit of a wander through Youtube listening to performances of 'Comfort ye, My people' from _Messiah_. There were earlier recordings which tended towards a more Received Pronunciation style such as Heddle Nash and Walter Widdop, this was toned down a little by the time of Kenneth McKeller and there was some variety in the form of Scandinavian singers like Aksel Schiotz and Nicolai Gedda. North Americans included Simoneau and Vickers.

Of these singers, Vickers' muscular singing is outstandingly energetic, exciting and forthright. It hit a nerve, for me, untouched by the other versions and was entirely unmistakable.

It was not necessarily, though, the one version I would choose to live with. While Vickers is a distinct pleasure, you might bring Schiotz's version, say, down from the shelf more often. The very idiosyncracies of pronunciation and emphasis which command attention also mean Vickers' is the one version which is most likely to begin to grate on repeated listening.


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## ScottK (Dec 23, 2021)

Revitalized Classics said:


> With the example of Vickers, I've experienced both sensations listening to his records. Sometimes in fairly rapid succession.
> 
> I recently went on a bit of a wander through Youtube listening to performances of 'Comfort ye, My people' from _Messiah_. There were earlier recordings which tended towards a more Received Pronunciation style such as Heddle Nash and Walter Widdop, this was toned down a little by the time of Kenneth McKeller and there was some variety in the form of Scandinavian singers like Aksel Schiotz and Nicolai Gedda. North Americans included Simoneau and Vickers.
> 
> ...


I can say that I've been listening to Vickers rendition for a long time and it still comes down off the shelf! But I would understand if someone versed in the specifics of Handelian vocal writing found it lacking in qualities they cherished.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BalalaikaBoy said:


> I don't think singing with an accent OR singing without an accent is inauthentic. the point was that, as long as you have clear vowels and good overall pronunciation, that shouldn't be something people spend a lot of time criticizing


Thank you for clarifying. That seems a much more modest and commonsense assertion. I too find finicky criticism of singers' linguistic skills annoying. One can sing well and expressively without a perfect accent, so long as one understands and communicates the way the music and the sounds of the words work together. But getting the sounds right can make a difference there.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

The Conte said:


> Dear Woodduck,
> 
> you offer much food for thought in your post (which I haven't responded to with a 'reply to' in order to save space).
> 
> ...


The question that occurs to me after reading your discussion is: "What is a pure vowel?" I'm not a vocal pedagogue, and I don't have a definitive answer, but I do have my own conception of the issue. I believe that the idea of "pure vowels" arose in the context of Italian vocal training, which was the root and the gold standard of classical singing. Italian vowels are clearly differentiated and largely free of nasals, diphthongs, contextual modifications and other peculiarities one finds in many other languages, distinctly including English, both British and American. Think of the Italian article "lo," with its simple, clean "o" sound, and then compare the word "low" pronounced in almost any English accent you choose. I swear that some of those accents take us on a virtual tour of the vowels in the space of a three-letter word! Given this, the emphasis on pure, uniform vowels is a way of stabilizing the vocal mechanism - of working with a consistent physical alignment necessary for us to develop a reliable technique. English diphthongs, triphthongs and other phthongs require constant shifts in the mechanics of phonation. Detrimental, too, are the French nasals, guttural "r"s as found in French and German, or closed and swallowed vowels such as the French "u" and "eu," or the British "a" as in "all" or "o" as in "or." As you suggest, the relatively "impure" sounds of these languages often have to be modified to some degree for singing, especially until the technique is secure, but that's a subject in itself.

The idea behind your statement - "I would leave singing in French aside until someone has enough mastery over technique that they are capable of producing pure vowels, they can then modify the vowels safely" - was taken to an extreme by old-school Italian pedagogues, who apparently wouldn't let their students sing anything but vocal exercises based on pure Italian vowels for a very long time. I was never tortured that way, but I still have my Vaccai.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I suspect many of us undergo a similar evolution - a broadening of what we find pleasurable (and not only in voices).


Tut tut W. You are awful, but I like you! 

(The cultural reference there is a British comedian called Dick Emery.)


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Revitalized Classics said:


> With the example of Vickers, I've experienced both sensations listening to his records. Sometimes in fairly rapid succession.
> 
> I recently went on a bit of a wander through Youtube listening to performances of 'Comfort ye, My people' from _Messiah_. There were earlier recordings which tended towards a more Received Pronunciation style such as Heddle Nash and Walter Widdop, this was toned down a little by the time of Kenneth McKeller and there was some variety in the form of Scandinavian singers like Aksel Schiotz and Nicolai Gedda. North Americans included Simoneau and Vickers.


Btw, it's McKellar. Touchy Scot here!:lol:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Barbebleu said:


> Tut tut W. You are awful, but I like you!
> 
> (The cultural reference there is a British comedian called Dick Emery.)


Goodness! I wasn't thinking what you're thinking, awful man that you are. :angel:


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## OffPitchNeb (Jun 6, 2016)

Steber and Farrell, while being very great voices, don't sound very Italianate either if you compared them to Tebaldi, Carteri, Cerquetti, etc., (Leontyne Price is even more helpless in this regard). Does anyone also feel this way?


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

OffPitchNeb said:


> Steber and Farrell, while being very great voices, don't sound very Italianate either if you compared them to Tebaldi, Carteri, Cerquetti, etc., (Leontyne Price is even more helpless in this regard). Does anyone also feel this way?


Farrell said some people felt her voice was too Italianate for Wagner. I have her Verdi album and I think it is one of the best Verdi albums for sopranos. A lot of warmth and exciting vibrato to her voice. She doesn't use lots of chest but the voice is so big she doesn't have to. I like her better than Milanov who made her career singing Verdi.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Seattleoperafan said:


> Farrell said some people felt her voice was too Italianate for Wagner. I have her Verdi album and I think it is one of the best Verdi albums for sopranos. A lot of warmth and exciting vibrato to her voice. She doesn't use lots of chest but the voice is so big she doesn't have to. I like her better than Milanov who made her career singing Verdi.


I think Farrel's voice suits both Verdi and Wagner. It's warm in tone and has a good, well-integrated (non-stentorian) chest register. It may not have quite the projectile force of a Flagstad or a Nilsson, but then whose does?


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I think Farrel's voice suits both Verdi and Wagner. It's warm in tone and has a good, well-integrated (non-stentorian) chest register. It may not have quite the projectile force of a Flagstad or a Nilsson, but then whose does?


I think you are spot on. She felt that it would not have been a good thing for her voice to actually sing Wagnerian roles and she only sang Wagner in concert, which is a very different thing. Her Immolation Scene and Siegfried's awakening scene are among the very best ever recorded. Singing Wagner operas also would have interfered with her prioritizing her family life as they were a big commitment in time she wasn't prepared to make.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Woodduck said:


> Thank you for clarifying. That seems a much more modest and commonsense assertion. I too find finicky criticism of singers' linguistic skills annoying. One can sing well and expressively without a perfect accent, so long as one understands and communicates the way the music and the sounds of the words work together. But getting the sounds right can make a difference there.


Isn't what you're saying kind of like:


vtpoet said:


> I've been listening to Bach's cantatas all my life, have listened to all the cycles from beginning to end, and though I may have once read the libretti, and though I speak German, I hardly ever bother sorting out what they're actually singing. I go for the music.


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## The Conte (May 31, 2015)

Reflecting further on this interesting topic, I think it's difficult to find a reason for distinctive singing voices other than they just are. Some people have distinctive speaking voices because they do and the same applies to singers. This is something independent from technique. Netrebko had a distinctive voice in the early part of her career. Most people acknowledge that she is now putting on a false darkness and yet she still sounds distinctive. Sutherland's voice had a similar twang whether in her early good diction or her later mushy diction phase.

A good question is what causes some singers to all sound the same. One thing that can cause peoples' speaking voices to all sound like echoes of one another is when they are putting on an accent or speaking style that is considered the proper way to speak. Received Pronunciation in British English is one example of this.

I wonder if many singers with voices that sound like many other singers with the same type of voice are putting on a voice that matches what they are taught or what they think a beautiful voice should sound like.

N.


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## Seattleoperafan (Mar 24, 2013)

The Conte said:


> Reflecting further on this interesting topic, I think it's difficult to find a reason for distinctive singing voices other than they just are. Some people have distinctive speaking voices because they do and the same applies to singers. This is something independent from technique. Netrebko had a distinctive voice in the early part of her career. Most people acknowledge that she is now putting on a false darkness and yet she still sounds distinctive. Sutherland's voice had a similar twang whether in her early good diction or her later mushy diction phase.
> 
> A good question is what causes some singers to all sound the same. One thing that can cause peoples' speaking voices to all sound like echoes of one another is when they are putting on an accent or speaking style that is considered the proper way to speak. Received Pronunciation in British English is one example of this.
> 
> ...


I strongly suspect it is a homogenization of the sound to appropriate a sound that sells well. It is like pop songs that must adhere to a certain formula computers have noticed in good selling songs. There are no distinctive voices in pop as well. Unique vocal production is discouraged in favor of the received sound. I think there were more singers who were encouraged by their teachers back in the day to produce a NATURAL sound as opposed to sounding like the generic type everyone aspires to today. We have a vey imitative music scene today. I could name endless opera singers from the middle and late 20th century who had instantly recognizable sounds. Now just a handful like Calleja and some countertenors.


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