Memorizing Your Role

I don't know about you and your various methods of learning, but I always found it was easier to commit music to memory if I was keenly aware of the emotional content, the color, the overall rythm, the importance of the words and my own thought-out choreography. For instance, let's take an imaginary opera where we are playing the part of ghost that can be seen and heard by the hero and heroine. We know if we are supposed to be fierce or friendly. That will dictate our color or intonation. We know if we are having a friendly conversation or instilling terror etc. That will determine the inflexion we give certain words. We know we are supposed to be at a certain part of the stage upon uttering certain expressions or words. That will help us remember those very expressions both verbally and musically. The combination creates a picture so that the music and words become reinforced very quickly. None of that takes place if we are merely reading from score. Actors don't learn roles, line by line. They can't. They learn lines by association with mood changes, actions, gestures etc. So must the singer. If you asked a child to read a passage over and over again and then repeat it without book in hand, he/she probably couldn't. If, however, you take a class through a song combined with gestures or perhaps a little hop or a skip or a quick scooping action, the class is perfectly capable of repeating the song, gestures and actions, word and note perfect after two run-throughs. In short each part acts to reinforce the whole.

You will find, if you translate your pieces, understand the piece, word for word, give thought to the mood and the character uttering those words (and, if the situation demands it, the reaction of those to whom you express those words,) you will memorize much, much faster. The same applies to arias, pops, spirituals etc., whether sung in English or a foreign language. For my part, I would sooner hear Louis Armstrong sing "It's a wonderful world" than hear certain opera singers sing anything at all. Armstrong expresses his mood and his overall gratefulness for being alive with simple words set to music. His inflexion and rythm are perfect. It does not matter if he has a voice like a rasp. Give him an opera singer's voice and you'd have another Gigli or Schipa or Chaliapin. You, however, have opera singers' voices. Imagine what you could do with such simple songs if you just used the right inflexion, emotion and rythm. That is precisely what Maggie Teyte did with hundreds of French art songs and why the French thought she was the greatest even though she wasn't French but English. Kathleen Ferrier did the same with English folk songs. Neither the latter two singers had voices that would sustain operatic roles. In short, they did not have voices to equal yours but they were great artists who could command great concert fees.

The way to artistic rendition lies very much in the way you approach your work, i.e. the way you learn your work. It is not by reading the song from manuscript until it is memorised. Such a song is easily forgotten under the tension of performance. On the other hand, a song which is felt as a whole experience is not easily forgotten at any time but reinforced each time you, yourself experience the overall emotion, mood, rythm, inflexion, etc.

Comment with regard to "Man and Mask.": As for Chaliapin's remarks on his teacher's advice on controlling the vocal chords, for the life of me, I cannot imagine how a singer can control the vocal chords other than by thinking the pitch to which stimulus the chords will automatically respond. The singer can control breath but no more so than when he speaks. With singers such as Mafalda Favero, Maria Caniglia, Gigli, Schipa, Tauber etc., breath comes upon the phrasing and is measured by the mind almost automatically and subconciously so that it lasts for that particular phrase much the same as it is measured by the mind, without our being concious of it, when we speak. That is what I think Chaliapin means when he says let the breath flow over the chords as a bow glides over the strings of a violin but that neither does nor should imply an imposed physical control of the vocal chords or, for that matter, the diaphram. Those organs, as do all parts of the singing mechansim, respond in the proper manner to the psychological stimulus of the song itself. Believe me, peasants stooped over the fields of Sicily, or marching Russian Soldiers of the Second World War, or the Welsh spectators at the Rugby matches at Cardiff are not even remotely conscious of their vocal chords or diaphrams and yet they make beautiful music in song and lift the roof off with the sheer volume of their sound.

As for breath, the more we sing, the better the breath, provided we don't try to impose a physical control upon our breathing. A swimmer does not waste time in breathing exercises or in imposing some sort of physical control. His breath improves as he swims more.