# What happened to legato?



## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Just heard on Radio 3 the soprano Simone Kermes singing Strauss's _Morgen_ on a new recording of Strauss and Mahler Chamber music. Every single note is given an individual accent, a slight push, with absolutely no sign of the long legato line, once considered desirable in good singing. John Steane called it the squeeze box method, and here is its perfect exemplar. The voice itself sounds like that of a boy soprano (though I've heard many a boy soprano with a better legato) and that ends up making its erotic message rather distasteful.

Despite the interesting repertoire and forces, this is not a disc I'll be rushing out to buy.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

If you will take Simone Kermes for a singer who embodies contemporary singing standards, there are lots of questions about "what happened to X?" that you might ask after listening to her. 

Fortunately enough, she's just confused about what she should be singing.


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## Bellinilover (Jul 24, 2013)

GregMitchell said:


> _Just heard on Radio 3 the soprano Simone Kermes singing Strauss's Morgen on a new recording of Strauss and Mahler Chamber music. Every single note is given an individual accent, a slight push, with absolutely no sign of the long legato line, once considered desirable in good singing. John Steane called it the squeeze box method, and here is its perfect exemplar. The voice itself sounds like that of a boy soprano (though I've heard many a boy soprano with a better legato) and that ends up making its erotic message rather distasteful. _
> 
> While I've never heard of Simone Kermes (I must be really "out of it"!) I do remember that John Steane term. "Hairpin legato" was his other term for what you describe.


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

^ I've only heard her sing 



, which I personally enjoyed because I like a temperamental singer but she's polarising enough within that repertoire as well. I guess Aramis is right. From Baroque to Strauss there's quite a ways, it might not be a good repertoire choice for her.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

deggial said:


> ^ I've only heard her sing
> 
> 
> 
> , which I personally enjoyed because I like a temperamental singer but she's polarising enough within that repertoire as well. I guess Aramis is right. From Baroque to Strauss there's quite a ways, it might not be a good repertoire choice for her.


I still don't understand why this "squeeze-box" or "hairpin legato" method is deemed ok in early music. It just sound completely _un_-musical to me. Not all early music singers are guilty. David Daniels sings with a wonderful legato. So does Philippe Jaroussky. Sandrine Piau might have a small voice but she still has the ability to sing a long legato line. I always thought legato was the first principle of _all_ singing, whatever period.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

My first encounter with Kermes was a CD of Vivaldi arias, most of them requiring coloratura fireworks, _molto furioso_. I found it great fun. Subsequent encounters have been less fun. Dipping into YouTube, I've had to conclude that the woman is a clown, a superior Florence Foster Jenkins, seemingly willing to commit all sorts of musical atrocities for reasons known only to her (unless it's the usual reason, in which case we all know what it is). Her voice is naturally suited to Baroque music, and she's made some enjoyable recordings of it; outside of that she could handle soubrette stuff in Mozart et al. But now she's recording arias from the likes of Norma, Trovatore and Semiramide. Check them out, you won't believe your ears (or, in the last-named, your eyes). As far as legato is concerned, I think she knows what it is and can do it when she wants to. Why she doesn't want to in some cases... Well, that's the question she provokes in general: WHY???

Here. Enjoy if you can.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> Her voice is naturally suited to Baroque music, and she's made some enjoyable recordings of it; outside of that she could handle soubrette stuff in Mozart et al. But now she's recording arias from the likes of Norma, Trovatore and Semiramide. Check them out, you won't believe your ears (or, in the last-named, your eyes). As far as legato is concerned, I think she knows what it is and can do it when she wants to. Why she doesn't want to in some cases... Well, that's the question she provokes in general: WHY???
> 
> Here. Enjoy if you can.


I'm speechless!


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## Headphone Hermit (Jan 8, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> I'm speechless!


its ghastly :scold:


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> I still don't understand why this "squeeze-box" or "hairpin legato" method is deemed ok in early music. It just sound completely _un_-musical to me. Not all early music singers are guilty. David Daniels sings with a wonderful legato. So does Philippe Jaroussky. Sandrine Piau might have a small voice but she still has the ability to sing a long legato line. I always thought legato was the first principle of _all_ singing, whatever period.


The question of phrasing in Baroque and Classical period music seems a bit vexed, and especially with respect to singing style, where I think it gets mixed up with the matter of vibrato and leaves many performers in such a state of uncertainty that singing note-by-note is a way of evading the whole problem. There was no such problem in "the old days" (before the period practice explosion in the 1960s). People played and sang Baroque more or less like everything else, in long phrases without too much internal articulation. Period practice "experts" (no sarcasm intended) then declared that phrasing in early music should be more detailed, more attentive to the internal patterns of complex lines, and we begin to hear performers bringing out shapes and shadings we hadn't noticed before. It was quite a revelation, and something we now expect as an essential of Baroque performing style; most people feel that the music just sounds better this way, more like itself. Singers, though, have a special problem: how to accommodate the new sense of articulated phrasing to the text and to the act of breathing. In a Brahms song or a Verdi opera, the assignment is generally simple in principle: take a good breath at the beginning of a sentence and let the voice roll out in a single well-supported, well-shaped line to the end of the sentence or the phrase, depending on how the composer has set the music to the text. In a Baroque aria, though, the relation of musical structure to text tends to be more complicated, less direct; words and sentences are broken and repeated to fit them to a complex, detailed musical line which could just as well be played on an instrument, and which often asks a singer to articulate in ways contrary to the simpler, more natural way of phrasing a sentence or a thought. Composers differ in how "instrumental" their vocal writing is; Handel, e.g., is notably more considerate of singers than Bach. But the problem of articulating detailed phrases and disjunct word-setting, at the same time preserving the virtues of steady breath support and legato, is fundamental to most "early" music, and nothing is easier than to "just sing the notes." The whole problem is further complicated by the question of vibrato. I believe that the notion that singers in the Baroque era sang without vibrato is nonsense. I won't argue that point here, but what's relevant is that a natural vocal vibrato is necessary for legato articulation, and if if a singer "straightens" the tone she pretty well confines herself to a uttering a series of unconnected notes with little possibility of expressive inflection. Under such "straightened" circumstances, her expressive options are basically reduced to one: swelling or diminishing the volume of individual notes. This does indeed seem to be the approach of some singers of early music. But I don't for a moment believe that it represents the whole repertoire of affect and style which we know from ample documentation to have been prized by performers and listeners in the 17th and 18th centuries.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

> Quote Originally Posted by Woodduck View Post
> Her voice is naturally suited to Baroque music, and she's made some enjoyable recordings of it; outside of that she could handle soubrette stuff in Mozart et al. But now she's recording arias from the likes of Norma, Trovatore and Semiramide. Check them out, you won't believe your ears (or, in the last-named, your eyes). As far as legato is concerned, I think she knows what it is and can do it when she wants to. Why she doesn't want to in some cases... Well, that's the question she provokes in general: WHY???
> 
> Here. Enjoy if you can.
> ...












_Susan: ...My singin'. I'm through. I never wanted to do it in the first place.

Kane: You will continue with your singing, Susan. I don't propose to have myself made ridiculous.

Susan: (exasperated, she screams back) You don't propose to have yourself made ridiculous! What about me? I'm the one who's got to do the singin'. I'm the one who gets the razzberries. Why don't you let me alone? _


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

> Originally Posted by Woodduck
> Her voice is naturally suited to Baroque music, and she's made some enjoyable recordings of it; outside of that she could handle soubrette stuff in Mozart et al. But now she's recording arias from the likes of Norma, Trovatore and Semiramide. Check them out, you won't believe your ears (or, in the last-named, your eyes). As far as legato is concerned, I think she knows what it is and can do it when she wants to. Why she doesn't want to in some cases... Well, that's the question she provokes in general: WHY???
> 
> Here. Enjoy if you can.
> ...


Simon approves.

(No, not the _Forum_ Simon but rather the _American Idol _Simon.)


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

I think Legato was snuffed out on the fourth episode of the Sopranos. He was good, too.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

hpowders said:


> I think Legato was snuffed out on the fourth episode of the Sopranos. He was good, too.


Steve Buscemi was my favorite. Loved the show. Sorry it had to end, as it would have anyway with the real death of the big guy.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

Let's not trash Simone Kermes! In the right repertoire, she is a goddess! Yes, she has her faults, and no, she shouldn't be singing bel canto or (*sticks finger in mouth and gags*) Verdi(!) She calls herself a dramatic coloratura soprano, but I think she is more of a lyric or light lyric soprano with facility for coloratura. I would love to hear her in more Mozart. As for legato, two words: Alto Giove.

If we want to talk about singers senza legato, what about Diana Damrau? The phrase from I puritani 'Al contento ond'io son piena' cannot be applied here!


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

PS:

Woodduck - two words for you: Joan Sutherland :devil:


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BaronScarpia said:


> Let's not trash Simone Kermes! In the right repertoire, she is a goddess! Yes, she has her faults, and no, she shouldn't be singing bel canto or (*sticks finger in mouth and gags*) Verdi(!) She calls herself a dramatic coloratura soprano, but I think she is more of a lyric or light lyric soprano with facility for coloratura. I would love to hear her in more Mozart. As for legato, two words: Alto Giove.
> 
> If we want to talk about singers senza legato, what about Diana Damrau? The phrase from I puritani 'Al contento ond'io son piena' cannot be applied here!


Until I heard her in the Strauss songs I listed at the beginning of the post, I had never heard Kermes before _in any repertoire_. It was not a good introduction. No sense of line. No _legato_, which in my book equates to bad singing. She may be better in other repertoire, I don't know, but I have noticed this tendency in _some_ singers of early music to use what John Steane called the squeeze-box method. It's such a brilliant description, I can't better it. I find it as unmusical as the introduction of aspirates in rapidly moving coloratura music. Surely _legato_ is the absolute _sine qua non_ of all good singing.


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

hpowders said:


> Steve Buscemi was my favorite. Loved the show. Sorry it had to end, as it would have anyway with the real death of the big guy.


Steve Buscemi's great. But last time I checked, neither Paul Giamatti nor Steve Buscemi had teeth that were still in character.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Until I heard her in the Strauss songs I listed at the beginning of the post, I had never heard Kermes before _in any repertoire_. It was not a good introduction. No sense of line. No _legato_, which in my book equates to bad singing. She may be better in other repertoire, I don't know, but I have noticed this tendency in _some_ singers of early music to use what John Steane called the squeeze-box method. It's such a brilliant description, I can't better it. I find it as unmusical as the introduction of aspirates in rapidly moving coloratura music. Surely _legato_ is the absolute _sine qua non_ of all good singing.


Did you look up her Alto Giove?  Have a listen:






I don't think legato is _always_ necessary, though. What about in the storm arias of the baroque era?

In which Kermes excels, I might add.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BaronScarpia said:


> Did you look up her Alto Giove?  Have a listen:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I liked her better here, in fact I quite enjoyed it, while still noting her use of the squeeze box method. But then I listened to Philippe Jaroussky singing the same aria and his legato, and sense of the long line is so much better, to my ears, much more musical.

I'm not sure what you mean by storm arias, but it is possible to be explosive or forceful without losing one's legato.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

BaronScarpia said:


> PS:
> 
> Woodduck - two words for you: Joan Sutherland :devil:


Baron - Thank you. No one has ever given me two words before (that I'm allowed to say on TC, anyway). Now what am I supposed to use them for?


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Baron - Thank you. No one has ever given me two words before (that I'm allowed to say on TC, anyway). Now what am I supposed to use them for?


OK, three words: Joan Sutherland's legato.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by storm arias, but it is possible to be explosive or forceful without losing one's legato.


A storm aria (probably not a technical term, to be honest!) is one which compares a character's anger or other strong emotion to a bout of bad weather. E.g. Agitata da due venti, Son qual nave ch'agitata, Dopo un'orrida procella, Come nave in mezzo all'onde. In baroque opera the storm was a popular metaphor for a particularly strong emotion. Kermes's passionate delivery and unique style certainly help to convey the message of such arias!


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BaronScarpia said:


> A storm aria (probably not a technical term, to be honest!) is one which compares a character's anger or other strong emotion to a bout of bad weather. E.g. Agitata da due venti, Son qual nave ch'agitata, Dopo un'orrida procella, Come nave in mezzo all'onde. In baroque opera the storm was a popular metaphor for a particularly strong emotion. Kermes's passionate delivery and unique style certainly help to convey the message of such arias!


Ok, I typed Agitata da due venti into youtube and listened, in quick succession to Bartoli, Kermes and DiDonato. Hated Bartoli. To my ears, it sounded merely grotesque, and I just hate those aspirates. I found Kermes's physical mannerisms more irritating than her vocal ones, to be honest. She certainly made light of its difficulties. 
But DiDonato was the one that worked best for me. This was a sound only clip, but having seen DiDonato live both in opera and in conert, I can attest to the fact that she doesn't have any odd physical mannerisms, though she does have a superb dramatic concentration. Her version was certainly the only one I could live with


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Ok, I typed Agitata da due venti into youtube and listened, in quick succession to Bartoli, Kermes and DiDonato. Hated Bartoli. To my ears, it sounded merely grotesque, and I just hate those aspirates. I found Kermes's physical mannerisms more irritating than her vocal ones, to be honest. She certainly made light of its difficulties.
> But DiDonato was the one that worked best for me. This was a sound only clip, but having seen DiDonato live both in opera and in conert, I can attest to the fact that she doesn't have any odd physical mannerisms, though she does have a superb dramatic concentration. Her version was certainly the only one I could live with


I couldn't resist checking this one out! Bartoli and Kermes are clearly both vocal virtuosi and they are also both, if I may say so, weird. Kermes sounds good but looks weird. Bartoli both looks and sounds weird. Try Vivica Genaux; only her mouth does something a little weird. Don't try Montserrat Caballe; not weird, just wrong. This piece seems like a very popular showpiece. It sounds terrifyingly difficult, so I guess a little weirdness is forgivable.

If you want a laugh, check this out:


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I couldn't resist checking this one out! Bartoli and Kermes are clearly both vocal virtuosi and they are also both, if I may say so, weird. Kermes sounds good but looks weird. Bartoli both looks and sounds weird. Try Vivica Genaux; only her mouth does something a little weird. Don't try Montserrat Caballe; not weird, just wrong. This piece seems like a very popular showpiece. It sounds terrifyingly difficult, so I guess a little weirdness is forgivable.
> 
> If you want a laugh, check this out:


Sheer brilliance. He got her to a tee!


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

He stepped outside for a quick smoke. 

He should be back in but a few moments.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> But DiDonato was the one that worked best for me. This was a sound only clip, but having seen DiDonato live both in opera and in conert, I can attest to the fact that she doesn't have any odd physical mannerisms, though she does have a superb dramatic concentration. Her version was certainly the only one I could live with


I don't believe Joyce has ever sung Agitata da due venti - though if she has I'd love to hear it!


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)




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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Couac Addict said:


>


THEY'RE TAKING LEGATO TO ISENGA-GA-GA-GA-GA-GARD? ssss


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BaronScarpia said:


> I don't believe Joyce has ever sung Agitata da due venti - though if she has I'd love to hear it!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Simone Kermes is my Rodelinda and I love her in it. Preferable to Renée National Anthem.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


>


Er... that's not Agitata da due venti from Griselda; it's Da due venti in mar turbato from Ercole. I believe the Griselda aria may have been based partly on the Ercole one, but it's not really a fair comparison (in my opinion).


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

BaronScarpia said:


> Er... that's not Agitata da due venti from Griselda; it's Da due venti in mar turbato from Ercole. I believe the Griselda aria may have been based partly on the Ercole one, but it's not really a fair comparison (in my opinion).


Oops! Well one Vivaldi storm aria sounds very much like another to me, so forgive my mistake. Either way, DiDonato's singing falls far more easily on the ear than most.


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## BaronScarpia (Apr 2, 2014)

GregMitchell said:


> Either way, DiDonato's singing falls far more easily on the ear than most.


Deffo agree with that - she's a goddess. I'm going to see/hear her at the Barbican in September - already really excited!!!


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