Industrious singers who don’t need to be spoon fed by a teacher at $120 an hour can find a wealth of information on the printed page! The second featured author in our series on classic books for the classical singer is the late Dr. Barbara Doscher.
More and more college and university undergraduate voice programs require at least one semester in a vocal pedagogy class, in which students learn in a practical way the fundamentals of how the voice works. The classes usually introduce students to various prominent American pedagogues, including William Vennard, Ralph Appelman, Richard Miller, Berton Coffin, and Barbara Doscher, the empress of vocal pedagogy in the United States.
The late Dr. Doscher’s wrote her classic book, The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice, primarily for use as a college textbook, but it is also suitable for “private voice teachers, for public school vocal music teachers, for directors of church choirs and community choral organizations, and for singers who want to learn about the ‘nuts and bolts.’” The book’s purpose, as Doscher explains in the preface, is to provide a text describing the voice’s anatomy and physiology, phonatory mechanisms, and acoustical laws of resonation, in order to establish their functional unity within the singing instrument.
Barbara Doscher was a protégé of and inspired by the mid-20th century pedagogue Berton Coffin, to whom she dedicates the book. Both were on the faculty of the University of Colorado, where Doscher chaired the voice faculty for several years before her death in 1996. In her introduction, Doscher quotes Herbert Witherspoon’s 1925 book Singing: “The object of art is expression. The essence of expression is imagination. The control of imagination is form. The ‘medium’ for all three is technique.” To Doscher, form and expression are an inseparable unit, and to work for one without the other is an “exercise in futility.”
It is always interesting to note the ordering of chapters in any vocal pedagogy book, because the first chapter usually shows the most important element in the mind of the author. Like Richard Miller’s The Structure of Singing, Doscher begins with respiration.
Her sentence structure is declamatory and straightforward, which makes the book easy to follow and a delight to read. The opening chapter covers every conceivable aspect of respiration, including skeletal structure, the respiratory system itself, the inspiratory and expiratory muscles, and the breathing cycle. Doscher seems to agree with Miller’s concept of the term “breath support”: it is a phrase fraught with negative semantic connotations. Doscher favors the expression “breath energy”—it seems to come closer to conveying her respiration model: freedom combined with balanced control.
Doscher’s research shows that normal lung capacity during quiet breathing is about one pint, but during very deep breathing it can increase eightfold, to as much as four quarts. Singing even the longest musical phrases—15 to 25 seconds—require only some two to three pints of air! Obviously, optimal use of air doesn’t depend on lung capacity but on how efficiently the vocal folds and resonators function within the breath stream.
The second chapter features a highly detailed yet very readable description of laryngeal anatomy. Doscher admits that her use of so many unfamiliar anatomical names may produce “terminal jargonitis,” yet justifies the necessity of including them by giving several examples of why it’s important to understand the functioning of the larynx.
Even the most musical singer cannot sing a flowing line if the vocal mechanism is poorly coordinated. Doscher suggests that until this coordination is appropriately developed and balanced, it’s impossible to classify a voice accurately. This helps explain why so many very young singers don’t know for sure whether they are lyric baritones or tenors, sopranos or mezzos, until their voices are properly aligned. More about that later.
Chapters on phonation and posture follow in similarly detailed treatment, including a discussion on the Alexander Technique. Doscher’s ideal postural stance is the anticipatory, expectant stance of a gymnast, body poised and mind focused. Her experiences as a teacher led her to assert that many beginning voice students oversing, using as much as 10 times the amount of muscle energy actually needed. This attitude of “maximum effort is the key to success,” a hallmark of the American work ethic, can actually be detrimental for singers where muscle use or misuse is concerned. Doscher suggests that a relaxed awareness is best, and that this kind of relaxation can be learned kinesthetically.
Chapter 5, “The Physical Nature of Sound,” considers the pure physics of sound production from a vocal standpoint, and demands a great deal of concentration from the reader. Doscher describes the characteristics of a sound wave, including frequency and amplitude, sine wave phase, the harmonic overtone series, and acoustical laws—more than most Figaros, Violettas, and Carmens probably want to know! But those who truly allow themselves to learn are rewarded with a practical understanding of vocal resonance and how best to use it to their advantage.
A basic principle of physics says that every resonating body has a natural frequency of vibration that it tends to amplify to the greatest extent. The acoustical laws governing resonance properties are volume, size of the aperture, texture of the walls, and conductivity factors—all of which can be controlled to some extent by the singer producing the sound.
The chapter on vocal resonance explains how singers can learn to change the acoustical spaces in our bodies to conform to acoustical laws, maximizing our sound production without overbalancing the delicate mechanisms involved in the process. The nasal pharynx, the tongue, the palate, the jaw, and the lips are all considered for the role they play in achieving the best timbre or tone quality.
The exercises Doscher gives to help the tongue respond loosely and naturally are particularly useful: Put out your tongue as far as it will comfortably go, then draw it back in quickly so the tip lies loosely against the lower front teeth. With the tip of the tongue in this position, push gently forward, allowing the tongue to roll forward and upward. (Be careful not to move the lower jaw.) Finally, do any simple vocalise by preceding the vowels with the unvoiced th as in “thigh”. Using this consonant loosens the back area of the tongue and prevents unnecessary retraction. A retracted tongue forces the larynx and hyoid bone into an excessively low position, which results in a heavy, dark tone and muddy diction.
In Chapter 7, Doscher uses the acoustical information from previous chapters as support for vowel modification, making us aware that even small changes in vowel placement yield large differences in timbre. From an empirical standpoint, it is universally understood among singers that small, bright voices with high tessituras generally need less resonator cavity adjustment by means of vowel modification than bigger, darker voices.
One excellent paragraph explains how operatic composers from before the age of acoustical research understood this instinctively, and used the knowledge they had gained from careful listening to singers. When Pagliacci sings “ridi, Pagliacci” with the high /i/ vowels, he has successfully joined the vowel’s own intense concentration of energy, or formant, with the acoustical properties of the resonance tract. When these elements match the fundamental frequency of the G4 and F#4, it is no wonder that the tenor’s despairing cry has thrilled audiences for a century! At this point, writes Doscher, “the Italian concept of chiaroscuro is well-served, and the sound has what is commonly called ‘cover,’…characterized by a comfortably low laryngeal position, a strong fundamental, appropriate vowel modification and a rich spectrum of higher harmonies.”
Doscher also discusses the implications for the higher ranges of female voices. Since only /a/, /a/, /æ/, and /L/ have first formant frequencies above F5, a satisfactory /u/ or /i/ is quite difficult for a soprano or a mezzo to achieve above this pitch, because the overtone frequencies necessary for a ringing, carrying tone are missing The higher she sings the more instrumental her tone tends to become (i.e., a “straight” tone) as the resonators reinforce only the fundamental (or the lowest partials of the tone), not the overtones or harmonics.
It’s no coincidence that a composers have written preponderance of /a/ vowels for coloratura passages. Mozart and Handel, according to Doscher, were masters at writing for specific voice classifications; and when Schubert set male texts, he knew how to use appropriate vowels on high pitches, as in “Auf dem Strom.” Doscher cautions sopranos not to try to sing Britten’s Winter Words; it was written for a tenor, whose voice by nature is not tuned the same as a clarinet, a piano, or a soprano!
The final chapters concern vocal registers and Doscher’s summation. Her section on voice classification is pithy and right on the mark. She identifies the basic components of voice classification—timbre, tessitura, and range—with the latter being the least reliable tool. Range is often a “sometime thing,” particularly in young voices. Timbre is a better estimator of classification, but can be deceiving because of its aural nature and subjective perception.
A young female who has a naturally darker singing voice than her peers is generally classified as a mezzo. In fact, many a big-voiced soprano has been trained as a mezzo into her mid-20s, only to find that her voice was misclassified. The retraining period can be long and frustrating, because the upper third of her voice has been inactive for such a long period.
Doscher says the sad thing about classifying by timbre alone is that it is usually the rare voices, such as the spinto soprano and the dramatic tenor, who are most often misclassified. Tessitura and where the registration events occur (i.e., where the voice changes from lower to middle register, or middle to upper register) is the most reliable way to classify young voices. But it should always remain a tentative rather than a definitive conclusion, subject to change when circumstances demand it.
Mature singers know that tessitura can change with training and age. Doscher states unequivocally that laryngeal development is not complete until the late 20s or early 30s, and that fluidity and ease of production should be the important goals during the formative years.
Most singers profit from training as a lyric voice, regardless of future dramatic potential, since “big” voices do not mature until 30-35 years of age. On the flip side, a “small” voice, not matter how beautiful it sounds in a smaller room, also must be allowed to develop at its own pace. Sometimes it grows, and sometimes it does not, and any attempt to make it bigger than it really is can ruin it.
Doscher’s conclusion is that the three major functions—respiration, phonation, and resonation—are an inseparable unit. Weakness or excessive tension in any individual muscle will throw the entire system out of balance, and each muscle must be trained to maintain whatever tension or relaxation is needed at any given moment. Learning how to achieve this equilibrium with a minimum of effort is the principal goal of voice training.
Two outstanding appendices follow, the first concerning vocal abuse and misuse and the second, vocal hygiene. The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice is an excellent book, though more exercises geared towards bringing about the end result would have been welcome.
Still, the information is invaluable, and the book explains a difficult body of knowledge in a straightforward way. Should you read the book? Yes, especially if you’re curious about what really makes the voice tick physiologically and acoustically, or if you’re considering teaching and want to beef up your technical arsenal. It’s a classic definitely worth studying.
