The Power of Words 1

Make sure you bring your music in two copies. As we missed last week, you have had plenty of time to learn any new piece. You should be off-book. If you are not, it means that your overall comprehension of the piece is wrong and that you are approaching it on a note-by-note and word-by-word basis. If so, it takes forever to learn the piece and you still, at the end of the day, haven't really come to grips with it. It's a little like the actor who learns his lines by rote. He hasn't yet understood the art of acting. He has only understood the act of regurgitating. Don't think you are alone. Most of the world learns by rote. How many students of foreign languages have you seen learning block vocabulary, with one hand covering the foreign word column and constantly being lifted to take a peek? That is not the way to learn and it's doubtful that they will ever remember the foreign words from one day to the next. If, however, they combine words into a phrase and act them out, either physically or in their minds, they learn the language quickly. For instance it is not enough to learn the word "seat" and the word "sit" unless you combine them into a phrase "I sit on a seat". Then go one step further and learn the words for “bench,” for “chair,” for a seat on a “bus” (generally a "place" on a bus in most European languages), and then substitute, “bed.” “ground,” “beach” etc., as the place where you sit.

For an actor and a singer, words must have an emotive content. I once looked after an little orphaned French girl for several months who could not speak a word of English, so I invented a story, partly told in French and partly told in English, so that both the little girl and my daughter could learn each other's language. Language without syntax and grammar is just a jumble of words. Both girls remember the story to this day because it not only taught them a new language but it taught them the rudiments of grammar. Above all, it had emotive content and it also stirred their imagination. But the approach to learning, either a language or a song, is strikingly similar. In my story, the girls' beds were floating on a sea of words, one word indistinguishable from another. So first they had to pull their own names from the sea and that introduced them to proper nouns. Then they had to invent their own world and that introduced them to common nouns, as they built an 'island" (île) and gave it a "beach" , (plage) sand, trees, pebbles, etc. Then they had to invent collective nouns, so they created a herd, a flock, and put herd and flocks on a "group" of ships. Then they combined groups into a few, then into several then into a flotilla and then into a navy etc. One would throw out a word and the other would automatically commit the foreign word to memory. And so the little girls embarked on an imaginary journey sailing from island to island, and on each of eight different islands there was a king of nouns, a king of adverbs, a king of adjectives, a king of verbs etc. At one stage, I toyed with the idea of turning the story into a book. When I was in Australia, recently, my daughter handed me a forgotten draft of a chapter. I haven't scanned it into the computer yet, but I will, and will send it to you in the hope that it will increase your awareness of the power of words. It worked for them, because they both went on to become authors.

Until the words of a song stir an emotive response in you, you will not arouse an emotive reaction in others. So first, don't look so much at the music. Look first at the words. All art songs, and all opera, are inspired by the emotive content of the words. Most Pop songs aren't. With pop songs the words are so often uninspiring , that we need to breathe a very special life into them. "Moon River" will never reach a place in literature. So we need to use imagination and take phrases like "wider than a dream, I'm crossing you in style some day," and set them in an emotional content inspired by own imagination. For instance, we can use "wider than a dream" to mean that we will always try harder to reach the object of our love, that it is a lifetime's journey and it's so broad and long that it's wider than a dream which has no borders. If we don't invent a meaning for an impoverished phrase, we cannot do the song justice. That is not the case with great poetry which is mostly the foundation of all great vocal music from Goethe's Ode to Joy (Beethoven's 9th) to Dante's inspiring of Giacosa and Puccini to produce Gianni Schichi. Take the words of Housemann's "Shropshire Lad" set to wonderful music by Nigel Butterworth:

In summertime on Bredon
The bells they sound so clear;
Round both the shires they ring them
In steeples far and near,
A happy noise to hear.
Here of a Sunday morning
My love and I would lie,
And see the coloured counties,
And hear the larks so high
About us in the sky.

If that does not convey an image to you, the song will be difficult to learn. But if it does convey an image to you, there is no need to learn it word by word and note by note. You drink in the song as a complete piece. The Artists of old could not have built up their enormous repertoire if they committed their songs to memory, word by word, and note by note. They felt the song as a whole piece. It had its own atmosphere for them. When I see you, over several weeks, holding your music in your hand, I know you are learning the piece the hardest possible way and that you have not absorbed the essentials of what you are singing. Put that music down and learn and reinforce your learning from the emotional content and your own imagination.

Here is a poem by Housemann. What image and life's journey does it conjure up in your mind?

Oh, when I was in love with you,
Then I was clean and brave,
And miles around the wonder grew
How well did I behave.
And now the fancy passes by
And nothing will remain,
And miles around they'll say that I
Am quite myself again.

Can you say it to move your audience to embark upon the journey that takes them through romantic idealism, one’s self growing nobler and clean and brave through love and the falling out of love and back to the reality of life? Or is it going to sound like scoobie ,doobie, doo? Do you want to be an artist or just a person who has a good voice who once in a while might connect with an audience?

If you want to become great artists, and believe me, you all have the voice and potential, you will need, perhaps first at a lower level, to increase your reading and your acceptance of the imagery of words. Reading and appreciation is something that comes in sequential stages. Each stage improves and grows upon the last. Your tastes broaden, not all at once, but gradually. Above all, you need to increase your feeling for poetry because it is the essence of song. So here's a simple test, because it brings imagination into play. You need to be transported back to the generation lost in the Great War. You need to feel what it was like to lay down your life for "king and country". You need to know what made a generation of young men believe they should even die for a king who was certainly not going to fire a single shot to save them. What was the powerful impetus that drove such men to rush to death without glory. It had to be a love of country, so great that it could not be erased by the horrors of war. As the first step of your becoming more aware of words, I will set this poem for you to recite individually over the year. Don't think I'm cruel. I'm trying to get you to use imagination and emotion as the most essential learning aides. If you try to learn this poem by memorising words, you will never learn it. If you examine the phrases and the deeply felt emotion behind each phrase, you can learn it within 15 minutes. Now that is the difference betwen learning your song slowly or quickly. In short, if you keep holding your music in your hand, you have not used the essential learning aides. If you can put your book down quickly, the emotional and imaginative content is working for you.

The poem is quite famous. It is called "The Soldier". Its author is Rupert Brookes who died during the Great War.

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner in a foreign field
That is forever England. There shall be
In that rich earth, a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blessed by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learned of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.

Now let’s see if you can convey the emotions intended by such words.