What's This? | Deborah Milledge

Crawling On

Tue, 20 Apr 2021 18:22:17 +0100

The longer we are deprived of normal music-making (substitute 'social interaction' if you like), the more we miss it, yet also the more accustomed we become to drawing on our personal resources. These vary hugely from individual to individual. Yours may be specific, in areas such as gardening, cookery, woodwork, painting and poetry, or more general, such as design, processes, and imagination. This pandemic is obliging us to focus on our individual skills. How have you been changing?

From my broad educational beginning in languages and the arts, my energies converged on expression through music. I find it revealing that I have spent the time I gained through lockdown in research and contemplation rather than making music truly solo.

As opportunities to make music again have appeared, at Christmas and Easter in church and in 6-person meetings with my brass band, I have participated with delight. Barrow Male Voice Choir planned to meet on 19 April for a short al fresco rehearsal, until clarification of government rules made it impossible. It’s been a struggle, with so much comfort and support stripped away. I imagine we who live through the pandemic will be forever changed, in all sorts of ways. Let’s hope that we will emerge into the post-pandemic world to appreciate its freedoms and make it a better place for all.

Isolation Solos

Mon, 27 Apr 2020 18:22:17 +0100

During the public health crisis caused by the Covid-19 virus, many of us have realised the importance of gathering to share music-making. We are really missing getting together and having a good bath in each other’s sound energies. Online meeting platforms simply do not cut the mustard.

How alone we always are, but now denied the diversion/consolation of social gathering, and that fullest, most splendid communion - choral singing.

What solitary confinement can offer, however, is a distraction-free opportunity to explore one’s own headspace. I have been looking at some compositions - it’s nice to do things which are not required urgently for a performance! It is also a joy to devote time to technical work! I’m surely not alone in doing this: I look forward to hearing new voices emerge, after solo gestation through these strange weeks.

RIP my dad, who sang in choirs and always sang the bass line of the hymns in church. xx

Artistic Aspirations

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:22:17 +0000

What are they, then? I'm still chewing over ideas which drifted into my head during the Florence Foster Jenkins film with Meryl Streep. It was interesting how reaction shots were essential to direct the cinema audience to find the appropriate bits of classical-style singing amusing. We later get a glimpse of the heroine's own imagination of her angelic singing and guess what? It's musical theatre style, not classical. However, back to Aspirations. A performance takes place when one or more people set out to communicate a thought/joke/idea/story to one or more others, right? If the audience considers the experience to have been worthwhile, it must have been a success. The performer needs to assess the audience’s expectations, so he/she can form a view as to the performance’s success. Of course we always do our best, but our best changes with circumstances, doesn’t it? My inner perfectionist is always surprised by the kind appreciation of audiences. Performers benefit from taking time to be audience for the live performances of others, experiencing the relaxed, recipient side of the exchange.

Grade exams - what for?

Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:22:17 +0000

Quite a question.

There are fine singers who have never taken an exam and there are also well-qualified singers who cannot be relied upon to turn in a satisfactory performance. It seems to me that whatever grade exams are measuring, it's not performing ability, nor is it technical prowess (discussion with one exam board is pending…). As the examiners only get a snapshot of a candidate's singing, consistency cannot be taken into account. After quite a chew, I've come to the following possible reasons for doing grade exams:

1. To meet the requirements of some other desired goal - e.g., college entrance

2. To provide a needed target/delivery date to stimulate work!

3. To stall independent learning and avoid taking more responsibility for one's singing development!

These are perfectly valid reasons, and for some singers, grade exams are helpful milestones along the way. Developing one's musical skills is much broader than passing exams, though - it is unfortunate when exams themselves become the goal.

Sing Safe, Lifelong!

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 15:22:17 +0000

It was wonderful to hear yesterday that a new Vera Lynn CD is being released , on the day she turns 97! It made a great headline, but I later discovered the new disc comprises tracks recorded years ago, including some dating from the 1950s which have never been released till now. There is no news of Dame Vera having recently been in the recording studio.

Singers in the pop field often move their songs to lower keys as the years go by. Joni Mitchell, Paul McCartney, Elton John, Billy Joel are examples I have noticed. Are you aware of others?

Many singers have continued their performing careers well beyond standard pensionable age. Operatic tenors Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, who continued singing into his 80s and Angelo Loforese into his 90s. Tenor Hugues Cuénod made his debut at the Metropolitan at 85 years of age! Baritone Lucien Fugère was still on the operatic stage at 85, after his debut 63 years before. Fugère is quoted as saying, "If a man doesn't sing well by the time he is 83, when will he, I'd like to know!" Bass Mark Reizen performed Prince Gremin's aria (Eugene Onegin) at the Bolshoi Theatre, Moscow in 1985 at the age of 90. Remarkable sisters Lata Mangeshkar (above) and Asha Bhosle who have each held the Guinness record for having recorded the most songs, numbering into thousands, mainly for Indian films) are both still active in their 80s, the beauty of their voices undimmed by age.

Innocent voices

Tue, 21 Jan 2014 15:22:17 +0000

Young performers are a delight: they are fresh and energetic, don't have to work at looking great, and they tend to bring audiences to shows in the form of mum and dad. They generally lack experience, so they don't challenge directors or refuse to do things.

I am concerned by the recent drive to license modern rock musicals for schools. At a recent conference on health and well-being for musicians (thanks Naomi!) I talked at length with a teacher colleague who shared this concern. I have had the experience of a wonderful 12-year-old singer's grade 4 performance being seriously compromised by the demands of a school show - a week's run performing the low-pitched female lead in the Disney Beauty and the Beast, with additional daytime performances to primary- school pupils, and the rehearsal demands of non-specialist teachers - at age 12! Singing Bernstein's 'I feel Pretty' in an exam just a few days after the show was not going to happen! I was horrified to hear my colleague's experience with a 13-year-old who was close to needing surgery for nodules. We compared notes and agreed on the most problematic shows. They were all written for adult professionals and licensed for school use with no adjustments in consideration of younger voices.

Trip to Mrs Wilson's

Sat, 02 Nov 2013 15:22:17 +0000

It was great to go up to Silloth for the opening of Mrs Wilson's Coffee House. The Mrs Wilson in question is 1930s Silloth resident contralto, Kathleen Ferrier, who started taking her singing seriously when she was living over the bank in Eden Street. There comes a point in most people's lives when they look around at their current life and realise it's not all perfect. At that point, what do you do? Shoulder a bit of depression and carry on as you are, or make some changes?

Things were changing for young Mrs Wilson - Silloth in 1935 was a little seaside town, bustling in the summer and quiet in the winter. Kath was sporty and must have known of local golfer Miss Cecil Leitch who won 3 British Ladies championships between 1914 and 1921. In Cecil Leitch, Silloth had already produced a brilliant talent and nurtured it to the top level.

When she won the Carlisle Festival singing prize in 1937, Mrs Wilson must have been encouraged to continue developing her singing. She made her first radio broadcast as a singer two years later. Another two years after that, she was touring nationally as a professional singer with CEMA.

La Scala or nothing - What is success?

Sun, 15 Jul 2012 15:22:17 +0100

I was thrilled to be able to get to Carlisle Cathedral last Friday to hear Christopher Fifield speak about contralto Kathleen Ferrier, having edited her letters. I can overlook his mockery of that fine artist Clara Butt, because his enthusiasm for the contralto voice and Ferrier in particular was charmingly evident. He observed that if Ferrier's marriage had worked out, we wouldn't have gathered there to hear him talk about her. Later on that same day I was talking to the mayor of the little town of Millom about my plans to celebrate Kathleen Ferrier's centenary in a couple of weeks' time. I was planning to mention to her how Ferrier had been successful at the Millom Festival in the 1930s, when Her Worship interrupted to tell me about the Millom contralto of that era who, she assured me, had been at least as accomplished as Ferrier, but had never got further than Millom because of other obligations. Full of enthusiasm for Ferrier, I was rather taken aback!

This is not a unique experience - I have been told of other contraltos of the 1930s and 1940s whose options were limited by social factors and whose beautiful voices and fine artistry therefore never travelled very far. One of these was my mother-in-law, Emily Bailey, whom, sadly, I never met. Her parents turned down the offer for her to remain in school at age 12, when she would have begun teaching(!) because family tradition required her to work in the local cotton mill. Her musical activities included the methodist chapel, Stockport Choral Union and singing lessons from a local choirmaster. As with Ferrier, marriage followed for my mother-in-law, but unlike Ferrier, so did children and the extra responsibilities of motherhood.

JUST SAY NO to backing tracks

Sat, 14 Apr 2012 18:22:17 +0100

OK I feel it's time for a rant: are you sitting comfortably?

Many of you will be aware that song books nowadays often come with a CD, either to help you learn the song or to serve as accompaniment when a pianist proves elusive. Even every singer's beloved 'yellow peril' now comes, at greater cost, with a CD. Producing backing tracks is a growth area among the big music publishers: Music Sales' website says while they are not recruiting composers or arrangers at this time, they may be interested in employing people to produce backing tracks.

Aaaarrgggghhh!

Pre-recorded tracks are NOT accompaniment - they do not adjust to fit the performance. Interpretation is then not an option: the performer is not free to make music. All the performer can do is accompany the unresponsive tempi and style of the CD. This is a travesty of real music, which happens in one place and one time, its transience being part of its value. Imagine actors going down the same route, with Hamlet or Portia fitting their lines into a pre-recorded play!

Ferrier centenary - contralto coverage

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 18:22:17 +0000

Thumbs up to Woman's Hour for another contralto-related feature on Friday 2 March, Kathleen Ferrier's centenary: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01cks49#p00pn7z6 and good luck to Kathryn Rudge & James Balieu with their Manchester centenary recital of Kindertotenlieder, which is happening as I write.

It is interesting that presenters on this mainstream radio channel and other commentators have expressed such interest in the relative absence of contralto singing from our concert platforms. I recall recent mentions in features on Karen Cargill; Clara Butt's diamond brooch was one of the 100 History of the World objects (click here for details); a recent Clara Butt tribute recital; a Times column in 2010 (see blog entry of 2 June 2010)... The contralto voice appears to be of great general interest!

Is the contralto voice really rare? Maybe. As a teacher I have in ten years worked with many soprano and mezzo voices but only one contralto serious enough to pursue her singing into higher education. My friends and family have experience of glorious contralto singers who have become just another mezzo on the advice of college and opera house experts, losing the sumptuous qualities of their contralto singing.

DIVERSITY, WHEN IT'S CONVENIENT

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 18:22:17 +0000

Having seen the lineup for Voices Now at London's Roundhouse on 4 March, I wonder how it is that the event lists itself as "a day showcasing some of the UK's best choirs", when the participating 12 ensembles are all based in England, one from Birmingham and the rest based in London or the home counties!

It'd surely be better to drop any reference to the UK, wouldn't it? It'd be only slightly more ridiculous to say Voices Now 2012 will showcase some of Europe's best choirs, or the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy's best choirs.

Voices Now has taken a practical route, using choirs based near to the Camden venue. There are school choirs from 4 schools around Harrow representing youth, a Georgian choir based in Highgate and a choir formed from outreach to homeless peaple, so the event organisers score points for social diversity. Maybe there was no interest in taking part from choirs further afield.

It is a tedious business to organise group trips, and many choirs don't tend to travel much. Most choral singers have busy lives and cannot often allocate extra time to their choir activities. This fact should not be taken to imply anything about their choral standards.

KARAOKE MUSICAL THEATRE

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:22:17 +0000

There seem to be more public performances using pre-recorded instrumentals nowadays. The arguments for this development are mainly economic, while the arguments against seem to me to be inescapable.

In the last two years, students of mine have participated in three different schools' productions of the same show. One had a live band, while the other two opted to use backing tracks. The live-accompanied show was a stonking success with stong individual performances in a dramatically compelling production, while the other two came over as a bit ho-hum, despite the cast doing their best.

The live band (in school shows this traditionally depends on the strength and availability of the ‘peris’ (specialist instrumental teachers)) can really lift the ensemble, right from the overture. Cautious student performers are given a real boost by having a band of musical experts striding boldly through the music, right then and there. Without human instrumentalists, a sterile void is left, which has a worse-than-zero effect on the total result..

THE FALSE FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:22:17 +0100

How come so many classical music concerts play on the youthfulness of the featured performers? The Lake District Summer Music festival programme this year seems to be stressing the festival’s aim to showcase emerging talent, rather than the other aim of engaging leading international artists. Is this simply because the visual artists doing the publicity materials zoom in on fresh, younger faces?

The potential audiences so sought by concert promoters, the interested non-expert, is not so daft as to imagine that a inexperienced musician can deliver a world-class performance. If however, only young artists are presented to the public, the public perception of classical musicians will be that of young, promising musicians. Don’t the public deserve to see finished, mature musicians, ready to present the most exciting performances?

This year’s Prom performance of Vaughan Williams’ sublime Serenade to Music featured student singers from Glasgow and well, it was a good effort, considering they were students. (I relished the fine conducting and orchestral playing.) Compare this to the line-up of singers that RVW wrote for: all at the absolute top of their game, aged 39 - 54 (mostly in their forties; the contraltos are pictured with my blog entry of 2nd June). The 16 singers include 2 Brunnhildes, a Siegfried and a Wotan. Listen to the recording if you haven’t already - wow!

THE WEIRDNESS OF RECORDINGS

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:22:14 +0100

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Music exists in time, as it is performed. The phenomenon of recording musical performances and replaying them later is therefore rather an oddity, to which we have become accustomed since the marketing of thephonograph and the home wireless set.

As a child I felt that listening to old recordings, particularly of the human voice, was something creepy, akin to calling up the dead! We are lucky to be able hear something of the art of such singers as Patti, Sembrich, Sobinov and Moreschi - thus gaining insight to develop our own readings of our own repertoire. Listening to recorded performances can also give us delight and inspire wonder, of course!

Recorded music has become almost omnipresent though, with the polished perfection of studio recordings sometimes leading to false expectations for live performance. A popular recording often has a much longer life than the same performance would have had live, thus prolonging the life of certain styles and mannerisms. If you have no access to new recordings, you will keep listening to your old ones. Maybe this is part of the reason for the longevity of certain styles, such as the plummy English treble sound, surely prolonged by the popularity of the Ernest Lough Hear My Prayer recording, broadcast as a Family Favourite for many decades after its 1927 release.

FALSETTISTS?

Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:22:09 +0100

Since the recordings of Alfred Deller the musical public has been able to enjoy the male falsetto voice, often termed counter-tenor. Since then, many artists have had professional success with this type of singing, which has acquired a small but not insignificant repertoire of its own. It found a place within the early music movement of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, when the delicacy of the falsetto tone suited intimate lute and harpsichord accompaniment. Deller’s first recordings in 1949 were, after all, of Dowland songs, with the lute part played on guitar.

The musical public was introduced to much of the earlier repertoire via the British early music groups, with their singers sourced from traditional Oxbridge college chapels, which tend to use falsettists. This does not mean that the voice has any particular historical authenticity. It is definitely not equivalent to the famed castrato; a modern falsettist shares only sex and musical pitch with the castrato. JS Bach wrote solos for boy altos, Handel for castrati and women. Yes, Purcell wrote novelty falsetto music to sing himself, but his employment was as a baritone.

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH CONTRALTOS?

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 15:45:03 +0100

When I was little, contralto was the normal classification for the woman singer delivering alto solos in oratorio or opera. This changed in the late 20th century to mezzo-soprano, even for eighteenth and nineteenth-century oratorio performances. Many people have commented on this; recently I enjoyed Richard Morrison’s piece in The Times of 28 May 2010. His piece mourns the rarity of the contralto,‘the bosomy bulwark of every choral society’, claiming that ‘the infinite variety of woman is much diminished without her’.

In this time of great mass-media influence, we are all encouraged to play the ingénue in life, making the mother earth, bawd or bosomy bulwark figure a less attractive rôle. Some professional solo singers perform under the contralto label sometimes, but then revert to mezzo-soprano for bigger, more prestigious performances. I can well understand this, as the operatic world, where a successful professional will find a good half of their work, offers a much wider range of opportunities under the mezzo-soprano label. Contralto has come to denote particular cameo rôles such as Wagner’s Erda, when it used to embrace such variety as Prince Orlofsky (Die Fledermaus), Bellini’s Romeo, Rosina (Rossini’s Barbiere), Azucena, Amneris and Ortrud.