Children, Animals, and High Cs

I'm not sure who said "Don't get on stage with children and animals because they'll steal the show." Maybe it was W.C. Fields.

He forgot to add "high sopranos". I don't think this is true in the real world of grand opera (yes, the soprano is usually the star, but it's not a given that the person with the highest voice always "wins"). But it's definitely the case in an avocational choir.

I mean why else would someone like me, a mezzo with "only" a solid high A (and that only when used sparingly and at close to full volume) usually end up in the soprano section in these scenarios?

Our choir sings a lot of Bach (which sometimes has a very high soprano part - I've sung both soprano and alto in SATB arrangements and second soprano when the choice is there - but which is not designed for "showing off" by one person) but we also sing a lot of African-American spirituals arranged for classically-trained voices.

(As an aside, I read in a recent edition of Opera News that spirituals are now considered "classical music" - as they should be.)

This hadn't really been borne in on me before, but the spiritual is a great venue for a high soprano of any ethnic background to show off. Most of these arrangements have some kind of solo line, or at least a descant. In the past, when our choir sang this sort of music, that line would be eliminated (the only time the choir director ever reprimanded me was for singing a high A at the end of one of those pieces so loud - so he said - that it drowned everyone else out). But now we have someone who can sing it.

So no matter how well everyone else sings, well - there's what I said about children and animals.

As there are twice as many women in the choir as men, and as, despite the traditional SATB format for choral music, the women's voices really do seem to fall into three groups, the choir director has started finding pieces with three women's parts, which is fine with me, as I'm on the middle part, which can often at least go up to an F, so I can get into my head voice. That's how this particular spiritual is arranged.

I spent this snowy afternoon (after working a large number of billable hours editing manuscripts) pounding away on my part, then pounding away on the top part and singing my part, and then singing my part with the recording. Did quite well. Knock on wood. Despite not knowing anything about music theory and not being a natural harmonizer, if I learn my part cold and can sing it with the recording (a test of whether the top part distracts me), I'm good to go.

As I was winding up the piece I felt wryly amused. If he lets all the second sopranos sing "the top line that's not the descant", this seconda donna will have a chance to yell her lungs out on a high F while the prima donna yells her lungs out on a high A. Anyone for a musical catfight? Now wait - the subject of this piece is God. But it sounds like a catfight to me, anyhow.

ETA: Apparently only the young coloratura will be singing the descant so as a second soprano I'm stuck on the middle part, which doesn't go above a D. Boooooooring. I mean I don't mind singing something in a limited range (eg, alto parts in Bach cantatas) if they have a lovely line, but doing this I might as well be singing rock music. So it's to be suffered through. If I want to focus on some choral music at home I'll look at the Haydn, where there is a nice alto part with a few Es in it and a nice melody.

P.S. The music for cantatas 74 and 83 just arrived. These are for "alto" and don't have much of a range but they sure have some fireworks. Must learn asap.

Weighty Matters

What woman, fat, thin, or in between, isn't obsessed with her weight? I know this is a blog about singing, but I'm mentioning this because I believe that my (largely misplaced) obsession with thinness was one of many things that undermined my singing, most notably starting to smoke (and becoming very quickly addicted) at the age of 13 because I was told it was an appetite suppressant.

Here is a photo of me when I was about 5. An old childhood friend, in a belated condolence letter, sent photos of a vacation our parents took together back in, I guess, 1955. (I cropped him out of this photo to protect privacy.)

At this age I already thought of myself as hugely fat, which I was not. I huffed and puffed a lot during any sort of physical exertion (there's another photo, which I can't bear to look at, of me at the same age, swinging from a bar, which most children thought was fun, with my face contorted in pain, and my feet only three inches off the ground), but that was because I needed my adenoids out, and also because I have scoliosis so running and similar forms of exercise are uncomfortable.

In any event, based on the demographics of my childhood, I definitely was fatter than other little girls my age, whose mothers only knew how to stick a tv dinner in the oven, and who were deprived of dessert as a punishment for misbehavior (not because anyone back then worried about the effects of sugar on the brain). But I certainly wasn't medically obese.

By the time I was 13, I was definitely no longer overweight in any medical sense. I was 5 foot 6 (ah, if I could still be that tall!) and my weight fluctuated between 140 and 155. But I was never a gangly ectomorph, which many girls that age are. I was built like Kim Novak, who, no longer an ideal, was now referred to as "husky" and everyone wanted to look like Twiggy or Mia Farrow.

At 13 (I have no pictures of myself at that age because I felt so fat and ugly I wouldn't let anyone take one) I was a very attractive young woman and if I had left myself alone, I might have really done something with the voice that everyone was starting to notice.

At that age I sounded like Julie Andrews and could actually sing staccato up to an E flat (I asked my teacher if I lost that range because of smoking - even though I haven't had a cigarette since 1982 - and he said no, often children with high voices lose that range, even girls.)

At the same time that my friend emailed me this photo, he also emailed one of my parents, sitting with some other adults outside our summer colony in the Adirondacks. My mother (although she wore a size 18 back then, and was 5 foot 2, 165 pounds) doesn't look hugely fat either although I remember being ashamed of her when I compared her to the other adult women and I notice in the photo she is wearing a long cotton skirt and the other women are wearing shorts.

Well, that's all water under the bridge.

When I started singing again at 54 I said that no matter what I was not going to starve myself to maintain a weight that is uncomfortably low. When I do that, yes, I look better, but I feel awful, get tired easily, have problems with blood sugar swings, and don't sing well.

This time I am giving myself the absolutely best shot at doing everything I can to sing well. Other than having to earn a living and care for my aging loved one, this is my number one priority. Needless to say, if I'm serious about my body-as-instrument, I'm not going to be stuffing myself with sugary junk food. But if the waistband on my size 10 skirt is too tight, so be it. I sing so much better now than when my waist was so small I looked like I would break in half.

Happy?

This past week I've felt "happy" about singing in a way I haven't for several months.

First of all I'm getting to sing "Schlafe Mein Liebster" at the 9 am service a week from Sunday. (I would prefer singing during communion at 11 because getting up at 6 is hard, especially as I work at home and rarely get up that early any more) but getting to sing it at all is a privilege. The choir director made some unusual cuts in it so I can get to sing part of the "B" section and then go back and sing some of the "A" section as well.

And he heartily approved my plan to work with the violinist.

In one of my earlier posts I referred to wanting a "gimmick" that would set me apart from the herd. Well, I would hardly call Bach a "gimmick"!! but it's a niche. Bach wrote tons of arias for alto and soprano 2, most of which don't go above an E (but don't go too far below the staff either) but which require excellent breath control, agility, and a trill, all of which I have. This field is not as crowded, say, as the Amneris field and it's a repertoire I can continue to sing indefinitely as it's mostly performed in concert and, leaving vocal issues aside, the fact that babelicious as I look, it's obvious that I have a very hard time with stairs, running, or high heels, is a strike against me in costume opera.

My teacher agrees with me that this is a good thing for me to focus on, as it's a repertoire I enjoy singing and it's less nerve-wracking than trying to sing phrases up to a B flat in numbers requiring a lot of stamina. I told him I was worried that I would lose my upper register if I don't use it and he said first of all, I should continue my vocal exercises that go up to a high C (he agrees I shouldn't sing above a B flat in public) and keep working now and again on my arias and other opera scenes so if there's an opportunity I can pull one out and showcase it in a concert. (And who knows about that Carmen? If the tenor is serious he can find me a venue. )

Hope Springs Eternal

Determined to do something musical this year, and finding opera to be a dead-end street at this point, I am looking to another genre that I sing really well that doesn't overtax my range or stamina - Bach, i.e. the pieces written for sop 2 or alto.

Another great thing about Bach is that I can sing a number of these with instrumental accompaniment.

At the church where I sing there's an elderly violinist who is retired from the New York City Opera orchestra. My partner pointed out that I must have something to offer, as he has accompanied me when I've done various solos, including the "Laudamus te" from the Bach B Minor Mass.

So this morning I approached him about doing some concert numbers together, perhaps in the new small venue I discovered on a side street in "Curry Hill" (I don't want to name it unless I get a gig there) that features string players.

He said it sounded great, and that I should start giving hiim 6-12 pieces and that we should start rehearsing them together.

So, so far I have the Laudamus te, "Erbarme Dich" from the St. Matthew Passion, and "Schliesse, mein Herze" from the Christmas Oratorio. Even though some of these are seasonal, my violinist thinks they would be perfectly acceptable as concert numbers. And, thanks to my owning a CD of Angelika Kirchschlager singing Bach arias, I am going to look into "Nichts Kann mich Erretten" from Cantata 74 and "Widerstehe doch der Sunde" from Cantata 54, both of which have violin accompaniments. And then google to find a few more.

I think I need to make a commitment to do one thing each day to get this rolling, which shouldn't be hard.

Turnaround

I hadn't expected to post again today but as I've shared a lot of angst, I want to share something nice.

This afternoon I got an email from someone from the cast of Carmelites saying she was sorry I had left and that people had talked about what a nice lady and lovely singer (italics mine) I was. I was stunned, and it made me want to cry.

I just think so little of myself (not of my voice itself, but of how I measure up holistically against other singers in a broad range of areas)that hearing something like this really blew me away.

I wrote back to her and explained why I left, that I simply was not up for feeling humiliated in front of a roomful of people less than half my age. It would have been different if I had been getting paid, had a large role, if everyone in the cast was subjected to the same treatment, if it had involved less of a time commitment...

In any event apparently this was just the push I needed to make me really feel like a singer again and this afternoon I sang through some Amneris excerpts and really sounded good. Those new exercises have made an enormous difference. Even the treacherous ascending phrase in the duet with Radames (which I still use as an exercise, and as a benchmark of how comfortable my voice is in that range) sounded glorious. I don't think I've ever sung a B flat like that. Now if I can just hang onto this new sound, and get my courage back up to look for something to do...

A Helpful Analogy - So Now What?

One of my idols, a real opera singer, is Cindy who writes the blog "The Next Hundred Pounds". This is primarily about her journey with weight, health, and fitness, but interestingly, although I started reading the blog to get vicarious pleasure from following a real working singer's life (I think until God invented the Internet I only knew about two types of singers - Met stars and talented amateurs like me and the people I sang with decades ago in the "Opera Underground"), I also find it inspirational in an unusual way. Cindy's journey with fitness is not all that different from my journey with singing. Work hard, things improve, then suddenly there's a setback. And you can either take the setback to heart and give up (she doesn't), or pick yourself up and start over.

Like Cindy, I am not a fan of New Year's Resolutions. As someone in AA, I know we only have "one day at a time" and that, if things are going particularly badly, we can start our day over.

This year I went into the New Year in a funk. This has been one of my hardest years. It was my first year in over three decades not working in an office (which makes me deliriously happy) on the other hand it was my first year in three decades without a regular paycheck. As I am blessed to get health insurance from my last employer (who considers me "retired") I decided to set myself up as a freelance copyeditor. It took about 10 months to get enough clients to support myself, and right as things were starting to take off my mother died. She was 94, and died in peace, but when someone first is in hospice, and then has died, there is a lot to do, and suddenly I found myself in a family crisis with no paid leave.

As for singing, despite my singing better and better, it has been borne in on me that I am so far down the food chain that there is really no climbing to be done. Which means, other than singing in this no-pay choir, where I get to be a soloist every few months, I can't look for any validation from outside. No one is going to "hire" me, even for no money. No matter how well I sing, there are always other people who are younger, can read music (yes, yes, I should teach myself to do that, I know), understand music theory, and have something to put on a resume besides self-produced concerts and performances with 30 year old opera companies that are now considered a joke.

My one experience "passing" an audition, where I ended up being the oldest person with the smallest role, where I came totally prepared and had my what? three pages of singing ripped to shreds and given conflicting instructions that made no sense? left me really scarred. I don't want something like that to happen again, certainly not after throwing down $400 for tickets I will never sell. (When I mentioned this to my therapist she said, well, these things happen. Suppose you spent that much on a vacation and something went terribly wrong and it was a nightmare?)

I deliberately didn't make any New Year's resolutions because I didn't know what kind to make. I already practice at least a half hour every day and probably spend three hours a week working on music (I have two Bach arias for choir solos, one new, that I'm working on, as well as the Amneris/Aida duet that someone might sing with me in a class). I go to Pilates, mostly to reverse my spinal stenosis, but don't think that I don't love how all those roll ups have given me abs of steel that help me sing better.

But I just don't have the heart to plan anything. I think my teacher's malaise is certainly a factor as well. Not that he isn't the best teacher on the planet. Just when I feel I've hit a plateau (like I did with my upper register) he comes up with a new exercise for me. But I mean his malaise about his own singing. That certainly doesn't help me pick myself up and start planning something.

I have really just felt like hibernating: sitting at my computer and working (which I'm just about to start doing) and spending evenings in front of the tv. And weekends with my partner, who is now mostly housebound.

So as Cindy so humorously said in this post how do I "divorce my buttocks from the couch" (or my recumbent body from the bed) and get my groove back?

Maybe I need to stop looking for validation from an outside source. So OK, my mother wasn't interested in my singing, she wanted me to be a writer. My partner and her friends wanted me to sing something "womyn centered" and not give my energy to a "patriarchal art form" like opera. No one "out there" cares about a 60-year-old who is just on the verge of having the kind of secure vocal technique that she can apply to a role like Amneris. (Too bad there isn't a tv program called "America's Seniors Got Talent". I do think I might have a shot at being a grandma Paul Potts)

I keep thinking that my new blog title will inspire me with something but so far, nada.

On the other hand, I can't give up now. I stopped singing for 23 years and have spent the past 6 regretting it. If I give up at 60 I will be toast.