In the past 30 years or so, some American teachers have developed a method of teaching voice to American singers that distinguishes itself from the well-established European schools of singing. It is controversial, but it is finding growing acceptance in the classical singing community, both in America and abroad, and is equated with the perception of an American sound. This article addresses the influences of language, native music, performance practice, audience preference, and the experience and training of today’s voice teachers.
The American sound—according to colleagues who are singers, teachers, pianists, artists’ agents and opera administrators—has clarity and perhaps more ring than other national sounds. It is athletic, based strongly on rhythmic perceptions of the use of breath (subdivisions of beat). It is self-indulgent, with a liberal use of sliding, portamento, diphthongs, and the occasional breathy or straight-tone “coloration” to indicate emotion. It can be generic or white in effect and often pressed, a result of exuberance overwhelming the prepared resonance space. The adjectives “rich,” “warm,” and “round” seem to apply with less frequency than they do in other national sounds.
As is always the case with the perception of the fine arts, these descriptions involve a great deal of subjectivity. The generalizations obviously do not apply to all singers. Certainly, though, most musicians in my acquaintance have commented on the effect of what I call the “digitization” of the American sound. The effect of mixing an orchestra’s sound by blending the recorded input of 20 microphones is, in the end, a homogenous, undifferentiated sound.
Some years ago, the Vienna Philharmonic rebelled in a recording session, insisting on only two microphones to capture the orchestra’s sound, producing a result they could mix very nicely on their own. Die-hard fans of LPs bemoan the loss of the round, some might even say slushy, sounds of orchestras and singers of Herbert von Karajan’s heyday. These days, even concert and recital halls are designed with white wood, making listeners more aware of the higher tweeter-type frequencies. We are now thoroughly programmed for a whiter, brighter sound.
My 35 years of professional singing, which took me to 15 foreign countries, enabled me to observe and hear differences in the vocal techniques of singers from those countries and others, where the language, history, and music influenced the style of singing. The English language as it has evolved in North America likewise has had a strong influence on the native singers. So has the music of the United States, from the early chants and rhythms of the Native Americans to the continuously imported music of immigrants over the course of two centuries. The most prominent musical influences on singing have been folk, jazz, musical theatre, country and western, rock ‘n’ roll with its spin-offs, and, as many of my interviews for this article made clear, the music of American churches.
The different techniques of singing for these types of music are unique to American singers. I believe that over time there has been a gradual but identifiable amalgam of inherited northern European and Italian Bel Canto styles with American musical styles and technique. This has coalesced into a new school of singing with a style all its own: the American School.
Languages are major contributors to how a singing voice sounds. My colleagues in Europe can easily describe what distinguishes singers who come from Sweden, Russia, Korea, the Baltic region, or England. All agree that the native language spoken by the singer is the most relevant, if not the deciding factor, in the vocal sound. The second factor might be the shape of the head, and facial structure that affects resonance; the third might be the vocal technique that holds sway in the singer’s land of origin.
People who hear the purported African-American sound, says spinto soprano Martina Arroyo, are hearing a singing voice influenced by speech or dialect inflection. On the other hand, a young African-American bass at Indiana University says he can always tell a Caucasian from an African-American: it’s the color of the voice.
Most voice teachers I know try to teach a version of the Bel Canto method. The Italian School’s two main pillars, fioritura and sostenuto, “comprise an aesthetic ideal in which the singing voice remains preeminent over all other parts of dramatic performance … they are the chief requirements of vocal skill,” writes Richard Miller, author of many books on singing. It follows that proper placement (in maschera) and breathing (appoggio) are two essentials of the method. Vowels carry the tone, and we American teachers have our hands full training students to keep a steady vowel shape. Since Italian vowels are essentially without diphthongs—or pure—the work of teaching singing in that language is infinitely easier, just as it is in German and French. People of those countries, when imitating American speech, usually move their jaws in a chewing motion, which of course constantly changes the vowels.
This takes us to what I believe is the major contributor in the recent evolution of the American sound, and thereby its teaching: the position of the soft palate and back of tongue in speech. The popularization in the media and movies of the “valley girl” dialect in the America of the ‘80s (such as in the film Clueless, with Alicia Silverstone) brought about in the youth of the day a clipped and lazy nasal speech, with a lowered palate and the tongue in the “NG” position. As often happens with fads, this speech affectation grew until it established a foothold in popular culture.
In the last five years, teachers of my generation have given up trying to correct the speech patterns of young singers, because the syntax is ingrained. To change it would be to alienate the speaker from her “Friends.” Even if students could manage to say “she said” and “he said” instead of the colloquial “she was like” and “he went,” they are still influenced by what they hear in daily conversation, on television and in movies.
As they listen to pop music on iPods, CDs, radios, and MTV, young singers have the sound and phrasing drilled quite literally into their ears. When they reach college at age 18 and announce happily that they have come to music school to learn to be opera singers, teachers give them mostly songs in English, since their study of foreign languages in high school is limited. This is self-defeating, if teachers want students to sing in a classical way rather than continue affirming the American English position of singing.
Classical technique seeks to instill the use of a lifted palate, an open or relaxed throat, a focused tone, and a method of breath control that enables long phrases of smoothly connected sound. All these characteristics are the opposite of, say, musical theatre singing. The belting blare of today’s high school “show choir” has virtually replaced the lilting harmonies of school choruses of the ‘60s.
This show-choir concept draws a blank with big city voice teachers, who are unaware of the pervasiveness of belting and pop crooning as singing techniques.
I must add that the use of microphones in pop singing is totally different than projecting the voice in concert or opera by means of balanced breath support. Technically speaking, with a microphone, singers prefer the raised and manipulated larynx to the stable vocal tract. In classical singing, the unstable larynx confuses the support mechanism—but in pop singing, the microphone serves as support system, so the idea of support from the body becomes moot.
All of these factors contribute substantially to a current American sound ideal. There is little else to compete with it, and it is a rare thing in the early years of this century to find singers with a firm idea of a classical vocal ideal. It is a disturbing aspect of young vocal students that they have no artistic or stylistic context for the sounds they are singing. They have no “sound opinion,” as Neil Semer, international voice teacher and coach, put it. We teachers and singers of classical music who grew up hearing recordings of the Golden Age of singing and listening to Met broadcasts on Saturday afternoons simply cannot understand the indifference of singers who don’t find time to listen and model their singing after the great interpreters. Listening is an essential of learning how to sing.
On his website, the great bass Thomas Hampson says in an interview, “I vehemently disagree with those who say that students of voice shouldn’t listen to recordings of yesteryear … you cannot make vocal sounds you cannot imagine and you cannot imagine sounds to which you have not been exposed.”
The idea is to listen analytically to what a given singer does in a performance, and then try it for yourself. There is no more danger of imitating that singer than there is when you listen to your own teacher demonstrating a phrase in the studio. But in the mania for attaining a personal and recognizable sound, some singers believe that listening for style and phrasing could compromise their own uniqueness. And perhaps the rigors of a music school’s grad program, or the numbing hours spent at a day job, take up too much time.
Adding to the problem of young singers’ naturally nasal placement of both speech and popular singing, teachers of the old school of pure and open vowels have continued teaching what they think is meant by “putting the sound in the mask.” Because the American language has a different placement than stage Italian, confusion between “mask” and “nose” has developed, and American singers assume that more nose in the sound means more carrying power. Indeed, the effect is a laser-like projection of the voice, but the increased nose, or “nasalized,” sound robs the voice of the rounder resonance provided by the hard surfaces: the palate and teeth of the buccal cavity. It has the effect as well of cutting the overtones of the upper partials, elements that contribute to the overall quality of a singing voice.
The old school “lascia un po’ dell’aria scapare dal naso” [let a little air escape through the nose] becomes, in America, the over-nasal sound young tenors make when they try to negotiate the passaggio healthily. Allowing some air to go through the nasal passage is a healthy way to sing because it takes the pressure off the vocal folds. But again, in thus allowing the soft palate to lower, space is lost for the resonance to develop, and the beauty of tone may suffer.
Some would argue that it’s a lazy way of singing. The singer loses quality and quantity as the power and duration of the support leaks away through the nose. In the admonition to “let a little air escape through the nose,” little should be the operative word. Teachers in America have begun to lose the ability to hear the subtle difference.
Big halls in America seem to evoke big acting (as opposed to smaller European houses, where low-key histrionics prevail), and Americans sometimes have a tendency to go for the large gesture, instinctively seeking to overcome the distance to the last row. Americans also have to worry a lot about their voices carrying in big halls. The consensus of those interviewed seems to be that nuance is lost when singers feel the need to sing louder to be heard. Not only does the voice need to fill the auditorium, but the singer has the added psychological challenge of singing over a large orchestra seated in a pit that today is raised considerably higher than in the old days. Vocal flexibility (a prerequisite for the lighter mechanism needed for coloratura and staccato) is sacrificed to achieve volume, and pushing is always a danger.
When asked if the quality of scuro, or darkness, is desirable in voices, an American opera administrator said: “Not much scuro allowed; big, bright and forward is preferred.” The Italian word for it is squillo (think squeal). The beautifying element of scuro, or rounding the tone, inhibits the carrying power of the voice, some say.
Not so long ago, the voices of classical singers were allowed to reside in bodies with big frames. Does size count when we think of how large sounds are produced? A slight body can produce a very large sound, but the rule of thumb would seem to be that substance comes from substance. Audiences of today, however, like their baritones buff and their sopranos svelte. What was American pedagogy’s solution to the problem of believable-looking opera heroes and heroines whose voices carry? The American School of singing, armed with methods to send the sound out into the hall with less pushing.
Since the number of Young Artist Programs in the United States has exploded in the past 10 years, and the opportunities for singing have dwindled in an economically straightened Europe, singers no longer feel the pressure to go abroad to study and audition.
So the American sound stays home and becomes more American. Ruth Falcon, a busy teacher who has also performed extensively abroad, says that the American sound is: “‘masky’ and stuck forward, without the beauty of the head resonance. The primary goal of American teaching is proficiency. I don’t think most American teachers cultivate beauty of sound or style.”
Falcon believes—along with Gayletha Nichols, director of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions—that good support is woefully lacking in American singers. The depth of sound from a good concept of breath support leads to a better spectrum of resonance.
“When you are on the surface of your being,” says Neil Semer, “you’ve got the high larynx and flat, nasal projection. This brings arch and calculated and not heartfelt singing.” Here we have, by default, a description of the highly stylized “wah wah” sound of musical theatre, a sound made to catch your eye, as it were.
Is there an American School of singing? I heard a very firm “yes” from 80 percent of teachers and singers I polled—and a 100 percent agreement about the existence of an American sound.
Do teachers have to adhere to a strict set of ideas about vocal placement and support to belong to one school or another? Apparently not. I found that even in Italy, there are many different methods or ways of interpreting the so-called Bel Canto school, the ancient, much vaunted, and wide-open-to-interpretation Italian School of singing to which most American teachers, including myself, proudly refer. I heard many people describe with nostalgia the missing elements in today’s American voices: the “domed sound,” the “deep column,” the “release,” the legato, the evenness of vowels.
The beauty of the American sound has been compromised, perhaps by teachers teaching as fast as they can—but I think we are all after a beautiful sound that is connected with a deep part of the being. As long as that is a prerequisite of the American School, I will happily ascribe to it.
