CLASSICAL SINGER: You have said that it was important for singers to know three things about words: The relationship between forte and piano, properly aligned vowels and well-timed consonants. Can you elaborate on this with examples from Messiah?
RICHARD WESTENBURG: Take for example the tenor’s first aria, “Ev’ry valley…” Since ‘ley’ is the highest note, all too many tenors sing it the loudest of the four pitches; but it should be the softest! Just as when we speak. Music is supposed to ENHANCE words, not frustrate their meaning! There are a million examples just like that one — “despised,” “greatly,” “nations,” “Zion” — and ALL of the above (and the rest of the million) are very often sung with the final syllable as loud as the others. But there are other clues. In all these examples, if they were written, say, for an oboe (with no words at all), a kid auditioning for Juilliard who accented that last note would be sent away empty! Why? Because they fall on unaccented positions in the bar. Your first music teacher was right; don’t forget: “ONE-two-three-four, ONE….”
In solo singing, we should concentrate on purity of vowels, where in choral singing we need to worry about alignment of them. In the former, we note in many singers an impure “oo” vowel, for instance; and in choral singing, if some members of a section sing “ay” while the others sing “eh” the result sounds out-of-tune, even if it is perfectly on pitch.
Timing of consonants is equally important in solo and ensemble singing. Importantly, those that TAKE TIME (like m, n, s, sh, etc.) need to come BEFORE the beat; those that take almost no time (t, k, p, etc.) go where they seem they should. A singer (or choir) can demonstrate this: sing “Me, me, me” over and over again and listen for where the hearer thinks the beat is. Answer: on the vowel. Now sing two notes on “To me” with an emphasis on the “m” (like you’re saying “to ME and not to YOU.” The “m” must come before the beat and the pitch of the “m” must therefore go on the FIRST of the two notes. Example “a man” (as in “a man of sorrows”) is sung on an F. Moving up to a B-flat; the ‘m’ must be early, and must be on the pitch F.
CS: You have spoken of rhythm in terms of its context or framework. Could you tell me more about this?
RW: I began my organ study with Nadia Boulanger by playing a Bach Fantasia; I played it full of expression, rubato, freedom, etc. What she said to me then applies to recitative singers just as well: play it EXACTLY as it is on the page. (I couldn’t — just as most recitative singers can’t.) Boulanger said: “You are like a man who has been invited to meet with the Queen, and since I know all the royal protocols, you come to me to find out which hand to extend, what to say, where to stand, and the like. But when you arrive at my door for your protocol lesson, your hair is uncombed, your shoes untied, your pants in need of a press, and coat off your shoulder to one side. Do I tell you which hand to extend to the Queen, where to stand, and the like? No! First we need to clean you up! Or you are like the youth who asks if he can stay out late this coming Saturday night. But if the household has never had a curfew, if you’ve been able to come in any old time all week every week, the question is meaningless as would be the answer.”
So Bach Fantasias and singers’ recitatives need to begin by being cleaned up; they need a curfew. Unless they can be strict, they can’t be free, because freedom is free from something, and unless we know what the something is, we can’t be free from it. Nadia Boulanger insisted on this approach. In dotted rhythms, she wanted you to be able to play an exact 3:1 ratio in your dotted rhythm first; then you can talk about altering it — to be over-dotted, or doubly dotted.
CS: What is your favorite recording(s) of Messiah and why?
RW: My own recording is still my favorite, but I would do it a lot better today. (It was the first all-digital complete Messiah; RCA Red Seal, recorded in 1982; reissued on 2 CDs by BMG on the High Performance label in August, 1999.) I find wonderful things about many recorded performances, but none are totally satisfying. (If they were, I’d emulate them, and I don’t.) Here are the things I most often find lacking:
1. Continuity. The relationship of one movement to the adjacent ones is important to the drama, and these timing matters should never be routine or thoughtless. John Pfeiffer, the producer of our recording, asked me to give him a list of timings of the silences — 52 of them — down to the tenths of seconds! He knew!
2. Bad choral singing. No further comment necessary!
3. Too much legato in the solo singing. (See below)
4. Singing (both choral and solo) that does not recognize the value of English’s most important expressive component: the relationships of the strengths of the syllables.
CS: What can singers do to make the recitatives in Messiah come alive? Can you give some examples?
RW: One might try these things:
Get some recordings by acknowledged singers in Baroque style (like Emma Kirkby) and listen to them MANY times; and learn to imitate them.
2. Speak the words as slowly as one would dare on a large stage; and never go much slower than that.
3. Recognize that Handel used rests in lieu of dots; so when one sees a rest, one must decide WHICH it means.
4. Learn the recits with absolute metronomic exactness; THEN apply rubato and “expression” (little will be needed). (After all, “rubato” means “stolen” so one must steal FROM something, and that something is exactness.)
5. The Baroque singer must recognize that legato is Public Enemy Number One. And here I mean that legato where all the notes in a phrase are perfectly connected, and all of a similar volume. No Baroque instrument sounds good playing legato, and the Baroque strings cannot do so. What does this tell us? Since it is aesthetically untenable to have the instruments play one way in an introduction, while the singer sings the same notes utterly differently when the vocal part enters, we can safely say that what Baroque instruments cannot naturally do, the Baroque vocalist should not attempt! A clear and frequent example of abuse concerns the first two notes of “O thou that tellest.” When the violins begin the introduction, the first note — the pickup — is an upbow, and is naturally connected to the downbeat, and to have an orchestra play it any other way would be unnatural; yet many singers sing their first “O Thou” with a legato connection. Thus, the super-connections we often strive for in Romantic music, and from whch we derive direction and “line” are totally out of place in Baroque music.
6. More than anything else, the singer of words from any composer of any period, must believe that the most important element in expressive, understandable words is the relative strength of the language’s syllables. You can take away clear, well-timed consonants and you lose something; you can take away vowels of proper purity and you also lose something. But if you mash all the loud syllables down, and raise the volume of the soft syllables —so that you have a smooth, dynamically even string of notes — you have taken away the essence of language, and no music, no matter how eloquent, can survive this handicap.
CS: What about the practice of slowing down the end of each aria? On the topic of slowing down, actors are allowed to take a “beat” to make a point. Are singers bound only to take “beats” where the composer indicated, or can they take small stops here and there? An example would be a hint of a pause before the first of the two unaccompanied “He was despised”…. “rejected” Is that keeping the “curfew” or breaking it? What about the unusual cases of slowing down the end of “O thou that tellest” which leads right into the choral piece? Or the mezzo half of “He shall feed his flock”?
RW: Matters of speed changes such as you ask about are really personal. And situational. Some contexts — but not all — call for a slowing at the end, but it should not be done mindlessly nor habitually. And I never heard of slowing because something is written “piano.” Piano and forte do have two meanings in Bach and other Baroque composers, but neither has to do with speed. First, the obvious: soft and loud. The other: Piano (written in instrumental — not vocal — parts) means “the singer [soloist] is singing now;” and Forte means “the singer is out.” The other freedoms you refer to are, again, personal. In order to respond intelligently, I would have to know the context — that is, I would have to hear it. Don’t forget that the point about the curfew is — another way of putting it — knowing the benchmark. You can break a rule only if you know what the rule is; otherwise, you’re not “breaking” anything, and the “broken rule” then becomes the “rule.”
Richard Westenburg is founder and Music Director of Musica Sacra and Director of Music at New York’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church. He founded the Basically Bach Festival (Lincoln Center) in 1979 and led the Festival and its principal concerts until 1989. He was Head of the Choral Department at The Juilliard School for twelve years, 1977-89. In addition, he appears throughout the country as a guest conductor; as such he has led the Houston Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the New Jersey Symphony, Opera Omaha, the American Symphony Orchestra, the Bethlehem Bach Choir, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Vocal Arts of Cincinnati, and the Houston Concert Chorale.
He has led concerts at the Mostly Mozart Festival, the Hawaii Bach Festival, the Madeira Bach Festival, the Aspen Festival and the Blossom Festival, and has conducted concerts and seminars at Yale University, Southern Methodist University, Notre Dame University, Lawrence University, the College-Conservatory of the University of Cincinnati, the University of Minnesota, Stetson University, and Ithaca College, among others.
Dr. Westenburg studied at Lawrence University and University of Minnesota, and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, Pierre Cochereau, and Jean Langlais. He did post-graduate studies at Union Theological Seminary. During the ‘60’s, he appeared frequently as an organ recitalist throughout the country, including many recitals at regional and national conventions of the A.G.O.
Dr. Westenburg is also intensely interested in computers and synthesizers, and their interaction. He resides in Redding, Connecticut, where he enjoys raising his two children, Mario (12 years old) and Nadia (9).
