On Studying Singing (Dover Books on Music) by Sergius Kagen

Author:Sergius Kagen [Kagen, Sergius]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2014-05-12T03:00:00+00:00

V. The Vocal Student and the Teaching of Vocal Technic

The procedures employed in the teaching of vocal technic are so many and so varied that even a most cursory description of those most frequently encountered would fill a very large volume. The concepts or approaches, however, upon which most procedures employed in the teaching of vocal technic seem to be based fall into four main categories.

The approach which I should like to discuss first may be termed mechanistic or if one wishes, scientific. This concept rests largely upon the following assumptions: i) That accurate reproduction of certain physical conditions which have been observed during the emission of any desirable sound will automatically produce this desirable sound. 2) That the assimilation of accurate knowledge of physiological processes involved in the production of a desirable sound will enable the student to reproduce accurately such processes at will, thus reproducing the sound at will.

The teaching of vocal technic in this fashion rests primarily upon the teacher's knowledge of the physiology of singing or, as it sometimes happens, upon his knowledge of some singular lore which often employs physiological nomenclature.

I have argued at length against such mechanistic or scientific approach to the study of vocal technic. I fail to see how the most accurate knowledge of physiological processes involved in the production of a sound can enable one to reproduce such processes at will and so accurately as to allow one to produce the identical sound. In my opinion, all educational procedures resting upon that theory or any similar approach to the study of vocal technic can be dismissed as not valid.

Such training tends to impair a student's natural coordination, destroys whatever musicality he may possess, tends to promote the most sterile kind of self-analysis, and usually results in an abnormally self-conscious and, because of this, inefficient manner of singing.

If a scientifically accurate knowledge of the physiology of singing is used as a basis in any such teaching, the student's vocal apparatus will suffer no obvious physical damage. When, however, a poorly digested physiological terminology forms the sole basis of such an approach to the teaching of vocal technic, as unfortunately often happens, severe physical damage to the vocal apparatus of the student may be the result of such training.

It is true that a considerable body of scientifically acceptable data concerning the physiology of a human sound-producing apparatus has been assembled since the invention of the laryngoscope and other similar instruments. This data, however, has not yet been correlated with either the aesthetics or acoustics of singing nor with its psychology or its pedagogics. Our knowledge of the psychological processes involved in singing and in the teaching of singing is as yet simply inadequate. We may know accurately enough the positions assumed by the vocal cords, the uvula, the tongue and the other muscles while an aesthetically desirable sound of specified pitch and vowel is being produced. But this knowledge cannot enable a student to compel his vocal apparatus to assume this position so accurately as to produce a like sound.

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