In my studio the Eleventh Commandment is, “Thou shalt not bore the audience!”
Text is the main thing that distinguishes vocal music from instrumental music, so it is extremely important for the singer to become intimate with the words themselves, apart from the music.
“The text presents at once the greatest glory for and the heaviest burden on the singer,” write Shirlee Emmons and Stanley Sonntag in The Art of the Song Recital (Emmons & Sonntag 1979, 111). It is the singer’s task “to search out the inner meanings of the text and to communicate these meanings to the audience.” (Emmons & Sonntag 1979, 112)
When performing arias or songs from opera or musical theatre works, singers can readily see that they are playing a character within a dramatic plot, and they understand that acting is involved. This idea is not always so clear to singers of art songs, folk songs, or other stand-alone vocal works. Composer Dominick Argento suggests that “an aria is part of a drama; a song is a whole drama, complete in itself.” (Argento 1977, 23) With that thought in mind, one might say that the purpose of singing is to portray to an audience the thoughts and feelings of a particular character in the musical drama known as a song.
For many years I have had students work with the concept of the dramatic monologue as a way of exploring the inner meanings of their song texts and getting in touch with the thoughts and feelings of the characters they are portraying. When singers can speak the words in a variety of ways, unimpeded by the constraints of the music, they can discover nuances of emotion that might otherwise go unnoticed. Add the music, and these discoveries can enhance the performance of the song. I have the students first learn the text alone, memorize it, and perform it as a spoken monologue. If they first learn the text with the music, it is much more difficult for them later to separate the two and allow the words to have their full autonomy.
I stress that the text is a script, filled with dramatic cues for the singer, and that the music is also a dramatic script. In my 1980 University of Mississippi doctoral essay, “Personification: A Concept in Vocal Pedagogy”, I developed study guides to assist singers in examining the text and music to discover these cues. In discussion of the text, I suggested that the singer must ask these kinds of questions about the character to be portrayed:
Who am I?
What are my personal characteristics? (Age, sex, physical characteristics, personality traits, education, economic background, etc.)
What other characters are involved, if any?
What are they like?
Where am I?
To whom am I speaking?
Is this person present with me now?
Why am I saying this? (What has happened that has brought me to this point?)
What are my thoughts (ideas) and feelings (emotions) throughout this song? (Trace the progression from beginning to end.)
What other factors have a bearing on this situation?
What will happen as a result of my having said this?
The answers to questions such as these can provide the singer with the dramatic context from which he or she can bring the song to life.
My friend and colleague David Alt, of the University of Miami voice faculty, suggests a similar set of questions in his NATS Journal of Singing article entitled “First the Words, Then the Music: Basic Acting Skills to Enhance the Projection of Song Texts for Beginning Singers.” He writes, “ . . . the student is encouraged to invent at least three possible answers for each question, and then to make a specific choice. Writing out the answer will guarantee that the student has made a concrete decision.” (Alt 1994, 19) Alt adds that he refuses to hear one note of the music until the student has completed the character/situation development paper for a song. (Alt 1994, 21)
For some time now it has been my practice to have students perform their dramatic monologues for one another before they perform the texts in their musical settings. Inevitably, the musical performances are much better as a result.
More recently I have begun to use a new tool that I have found tremendously helpful to me as a singer, and also to my students. We have been exploring the idea of subtext.
I define subtext simply as words that are underneath the surface. If I enter a room and say, “What a day!” the tone of my voice, my facial expression, and my body language will inform my hearers of my subtext, which might be “I am feeling great today!” or “I feel lousy today!” or “I don’t think I can cope with all that is facing me today.”
When Magda Sorrell, in the well known aria from Menotti’s The Consul, opens with the words, “To this we’ve come,” her subtext might be something like this: “I am completely and totally frustrated! I have been to this consulate every day for weeks, and I still have not gotten in to see the consul. Time is running out. My entire family is in danger, and I can’t get anyone here to treat me like a human being! When I appeal for help, I am handed a bunch of forms to fill out. I am treated as a number. I am choking to death on red tape! No one cares about his fellow human beings!”
These words express the complex collection of emotions that underlie the character’s opening statement, and exploring those emotions brings tremendous power and intensity to the delivery of that statement.
I had worked with the idea of subtext in the past, but had used it only as a mental exercise. Now I have started saying the subtext out loud. I find that as I actually say the words, I become much more caught up in what is happening, and as I improvise what the character is thinking, I make amazing discoveries! I also feel the character’s emotions strongly in my body—much more so than when I simply rehearse subtext in my mind.
The same has proved true for my students, and they have surprised and delighted themselves with their improvisations. If I hear a student sing a line that seems devoid of emotion or understanding, I stop him and say, “What is your subtext there?” As soon as he is able to articulate the subtext, the delivery of the line takes on meaning and power.
Another important function of subtext is to help delineate the emotional transitions that a character experiences during musical interludes. Many songs have several measures of musical introduction, and this is a time when subtext can set the stage for the opening text. Likewise subtext gives voice to the emotional transitions that occur in musical interludes or the resolution of the drama during the postlude. The use of subtext helps eliminate those dead moments that can occur when less experienced singers finish singing their words and then tune out until time for their next entrance.
Probably the supreme example of an interlude requiring strong subtext is the extended piano postlude of Robert Schumann’s beautiful song cycle, Frauenliebe und Leben. Following the moving expression in the final song of the woman’s grief over the death of her husband, the music returns to the theme of the first song in the cycle. The singer must be powerfully in character during this music so as not to destroy the intense mood that she has created with her singing of the eight songs.
Using subtext can help to keep the characterization strong. The subtext might be: “I can’t go on without him. I am lost. How can life hold meaning for me any longer? He was everything I lived for. But wait. There is our beautiful son—the one who is so like his father. I have him to live for, and he will always be my joy and will always remind me of my dearest love. Ah, what happiness we enjoyed! How fortunate we were to have found each other. Our love was so beautiful. I will never forget how special he made me feel. Perhaps he is looking down on me right now from heaven, sending me his precious love. Oh, my love, I shall miss you so!”
With such a subtext, the woman moves from shock and deepest grief to bittersweet nostalgia and memories of happier times, which are undergirded by the musical reminder of the couple’s first meeting (the theme of the first song). Speaking words like these—differently each time—in rehearsals establishes the emotional progression that the singer will depict silently/visually on stage in performance.
One of my favorite exercises for my students and for me involves a combination of monologue and subtext. I use two large cards labeled “S” and “T.” When I hold up T, the student recites the text of his or her monologue. When I change to S, the student completes the current text phrase and then begins to improvise subtext, continuing to improvise until I again hold up the T card. At that point, the student completes the improvised sentence and returns to reciting the text where he or she previously left off.
This exercise has many benefits, but three of the best are:
• It helps the singer be really sure of his text—both the memorization and the meaning.
• It breaks down inhibitions and builds confidence.
• It allows for amazing creativity on the part of the singer.
If the song’s text is in the singer’s native language, the goal of the S/T performance is to flow smoothly from text to subtext and back, so that the listener cannot tell which is which. If the song text is in a foreign language, interspersing improvised subtext in the singer’s native language enriches the singer’s understanding of the foreign words.
The work that my students have done with this exercise has powerfully enhanced their performances. Though the exercise is challenging, the students have found it extremely valuable. And, of course, eventually they can do it on their own without the flash cards. They simply recite text for a while, and then go to subtext, moving back and forth, varying the words they improvise with each recitation.
The ultimate fun comes in setting the S/T monologue to music. That is, the singer sings the song (text and music) for a bit, then improvises subtext and original music for a while, and continues to move back and forth. This is usually done a cappella, but can be even more interesting if you have a pianist who can improvise, so that you can do the whole process with accompaniment.
I was first exposed to the latter exercise many years ago in working with the late Wesley Balk, a world-renowned authority on training the singer/actor. This exercise certainly gives singers confidence about being able to improvise effectively when anything goes awry in performance.
One of the major tenets of Balk’s work is that the singer/actor must spend time in play in order to explore his or her capacity for creativity. It is only by playfully exploring the dramatic possibilities inherent in our song literature that we can discover the many options open to us and make wise choices from this array.
Reciting song texts as monologues offers the singer/actor a tool for exploring the drama he will perform and gives him the opportunity to experiment with vocal inflection, facial expression, and gesture as his tools of communication. Adding subtext to the monologue recitation allows the singer/actor to reach even deeper levels of exploration of a character’s thoughts and feelings.
As Balk often said, the playful process leads us to the practical product. Besides that, it’s fun! And the audience reaps the benefits.
REFERENCES
Alt, David. “First the Words, Then the Music: Basic Acting Skills to Enhance the Projection of Song Texts for Beginning Singers.” The NATS Journal of Singing (Jan./Feb. 1994): 19.
Argento, Dominick. “The Composer and the Singer.” The NATS Journal of Singing 33 (May 1977): 18.
Emmons, Shirlee, and Sonntag, Stanley. 1979. The Art of the Song Recital. New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Schirmer Books.
Editor’s Note: Another excellent book on the topic of knowing your subtext is available at the CS Bookshelf: The Third Line, The Opera Performer as Interpreter, by Daniel Helfgot and William Beeman.
Order here: http://www.classicalsinger.com/store/bookshelf.html or call the office at 801.254.1025
