The Power of Words 2

Congratulations for a wonderful and extremely successful concert to a sold-out theater. you were marvelous.

I know that you know you were all marvellous. I don't have to tell you that. The audience said it all. And so, perhaps, we can take time out and discover a little bit about ourselves and what contributed to your success.

First, I'd like you to delete the word "Crossover" from your vocabulary and replace it with a brilliant word I just heard from Omar, "Popera." You proved that you could sing opera and "more than opera". That's precisely what the great voices of the "golden era" used to do. That is what endeared them to their public. That is what endeared you, yesterday, to your public. When you sang "more than opera" you sounded sincere and that sincerity thrilled your audience. When you sang "more than opera", you didn't sound like opera singers but like artists sharing your songs. That also endeared you to your public. When you sang opera, you brought the public to you. You involved them in opera sung by your wonderful voices. You weren't on some level above the public, but you made opera come alive for your public. You established a bond which is all too lacking today between the singer and the audience. You did what great artists like Vittoria di Los Angeles did in every concert. You shared human emotions, borne on your words and music, with your audience. You didn't "crossover." You did what your voice could always let you do, even if you didn't know it before now, you could sing anything.

Second, if you hadn't established that bond with your audience, the concert would not have been a success. Your audience doesn't know the term "crossover." Your audience knows a good melody but in order to thrill your audience, the melody must deliver a message and that message needs words. That is where the singer has an enormous advantage over the instrumentalist who, unless he is an eccentric like the great Chopin pianist, De Pachmann, cannot use words to assist him to bring a message to his audience. De Pachmann, would turn to his audience in the middle of a recital and say "Isn't it loff-elly? Cortot would like to play like this!" The singer needs no extraneous words. The singer needs only the words that inspired the song. Words spring from, and reflect, our emotions. Without a need to express emotion, words probably would never have found their way into the human evolutionary process. Thoughts transpire at a pace that far outstrip our ability to capture them instantaneously in words. Thoughts can pour in on themselves at the speed of light, in a split second, but emotion sits like a sombre cloud or a ray of sunlight for a much longer period of time, and the human psyche will search for words to express the emotion being felt. So our next task is to bring out the richness of words in our songs and in our opera so that they are sung with the sincerity that the emotions inspired.

Just remember, in nearly all art songs including lied, Napolitan songs, many operetta, pop, and operatic pieces, the poet, librettist, composer, would take enormous pains to bring out just the right word. He/she would not want it tossed away as if it was of no importance or consequence. As I have said once before, he/she didn't write down "scooby-dooby doo," so you don't sing the song’s well chosen words as if that's about all they convey. To give some idea of how words are so carefully chosen to convey special meaning, let me paraphrase Joseph Conrad's lament to his editor David Garnett (the latter wrote "The Lady and the Fox") who was complaining that Conrad's output was too slow. Conrad replied "Ah! You don't understand, I struggle to possess that language which, alas, possesses me." That phrase is so powerful and so poetic that it could be a verse of a song. Take James M Barrie's (the author of Peter Pan) "Sentimental Tommy":

"(Tommy) had brought himself to public scorn for lack of a word. What word? they asked testily, but even now he could not tell. He had wanted a Scotch word that would signify how many people were in church, and it was on the tip of his tongue but would come no further. Puckle was nearly the word, but it did not mean so many people as he meant. The hour had gone by just like winking; he had forgotten all about time while searching his mind for the word."

Tommy failed to win the prize because he would not choose a substitute word that would convey less than it should. Now let us assume that the elusive word was required for a line of song and that Tommy had found it. Should we toss it away as if it was of no importance? I don't think so.

Yesterday's concert showed that you were valuing the words you were singing and that you were not just singing notes. Now we need to take this further. Can you seriously imagine that Stephen Foster did not have a love of poetry? Can you imagine that Beethoven, Schumann or Schubert did not have a great love of German Poetry? Can you imagine that Fischer Dieschau did not have a passion for Schiller or Goethe? If he didn't, his recitals would have to be the best faking of all time. It's time for us to become aware of the essence of song. It is the words that bring the message and we must learn to bring the message upon the words and in the musical phrases that encompass those words. So, I am very serious about taking time to get you to recite a set piece. Once you have done so, you will find a new world opens up and you will bring a new dimension to your singing.