Lisa's Music Opinions



I'm trying to consolidate information on contralto repertoire here

COUNTERTENOR AFFICIANADOS

One of the career hazards of being a contralto is countertenor afficianados. Not countertenors themselves, the guy altos are fine (some are finer than others!). I'm talking about windbags who go on and on about countertenors, how unusual they are, what a wonderful thing it must have been to have lots of castrated guys hanging around to sing in the medieval choirs, etc. Actually, there is a very effective solution to dealing with these overweening name-droppers: just get up and walk out. Usually, they are so in love with the sound of their own voice that they won't even notice you've left! Unless you're standing in the back row of a choir and have to climb over other singers in your desperation to escape...

HIDEBOUND OLD PEOPLE

In the music world, you often meet people who declare that things must be done the conventional way. For example, a contralto can sing songs that were written for a mezzo-soprano (and I've been asked to do this numerous times). A mezzo-soprano is a person with a voice one category "higher" in pitch than a contralto, so apparently, it's ok to tackle a song that's one category higher. However, it's verboten to try an aria that's one category lower (a tenor aria): it's just never done. It occurs to me that this is much like the oilfield expression "that's the way we've always done it!" There might be another way to do it, but sometimes hidebound old people just don't want to consider it, regardless of the potential improvements that could result. Ironically, the hidebound old people of the music world consider themselves far more cultured than the tobacco spitting, hairy sumbitches of the oilfield. And no respectable rig hand would be caught dead hanging out with my hoity-toity friends. But sometimes I think I'm dealing with the same people, they just change their bodies and show up in a new place!

Now, age is a state of mind...so you might wonder where I get off calling people "old." Ummm...the expression "age is a state of mind" is not always a compliment. I have met old people who are as young as, say, 15 years. It's really a shame.

AUTHENTIC BAROQUE STYLE

We hear so much criticism of "Handel's Messiah done in the Romantic, rather than Baroque style," but you really have a search these days to find a recording of it that is not taking pains to be Baroque. People falling over themselves to appear authentic is the rule rather than the exception. One fellow I met harshly criticized the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for their rendition. However, I own the CD of the Mormons, and they don't sing a legato phrase one in the entire work. Moreover, they are an all volunteer choir. I also belong to an all volunteer choir, and I think maybe the Mormons should be our inspiration. These people have nothing that we don't also have: they kick butt because of their tradition of hard work. The good news is, hard work is a tool available to all of us.

BEING A CONTRALTO RATHER THAN A COUNTERTENOR

Sometimes in a volunteer choir, you have trouble filling one particular section. Recently, I saw a situation where they actually had trouble getting enough altos. Usually, there are more than enough girls generally, and plenty of altos in particular. However, I think that girls are sick and tired of being told to try to make our rich, chocolatey voices sound like the castrated priests of the Renaissance: after a while, female altos feel we are not wanted. For Baroque authenticity's sake, I hope a lot of countertenors appear, and soon. If women's voices are not authentic enough, we may have to go back to castrating little boys!

I read a review in which somebody described Hilary Summer's voice as "sexless," and not in a nice way, either. Now, it would not be politically correct to describe a countertenor's voice as "sexless:" in fact, people would just assume that you were some coarse, uncultured type who just doesn't know good, authentic baroque music when they hear it, and a lot of people would get really upset. But strangely enough, we accept the same treatment of women!

HOLES

I am one of those people who keeps their keys on a carabiner (although I've never climbed rocks with ropes and such). Well, after getting several looks from people...apparently, it's not so feminine to keep one's keys on a chain...and being told by a teenage girl that "your keyring is bling-challenged," I set about trying to improve the looks of the thing. Now, what has that got to do with music? Nothing, but keep reading...

I decided I would string beads on the carabiner to make it more decorative. Trouble is, the thing has a slick finish, so I couldn't get the beads to stay in one spot. It has to be durable, because keys take quite a beating. And, one advantage of a carabiner is that it's easier to deal with a keyring that has become bulky...bulk is already a problem, so you wouldn't be inclined to add a "fob" just to take up more space in your life. So, I decided to drill holes thru the flat part, and put the beads on a wire, round and round the 'biner.

You can't just drill directly on the kitchen table, you have to put something underneath to prevent holes in the table. A paperback book is handy, and it doesn't really hurt the book (unless you drill, say, quarter-inch holes). So I grabbed the copy of one of those yellow "Dummies" books that I had just purchased and set to work. I drilled five holes and happily commenced to string beads (to rather stunning effect, I might add!).

I furtively purchased a copy of the book "Singing for Dummies," which I'm sure I shouldn't admit to having. After all, it's not something one studies at the college level, is it? I realized that the book had a CD in it, and that it would be a handy warm-up to sing along while driving to Cal State to my singing lesson. So I climbed in my jeep, and stuck the CD in. I've been asked to do some very weird singing exercises in the past, so it didn't surprise me too much when the singer began to sing "T-K-aaaahhh"...until about the 10th repetition on the same pitch level, when I realized that the CD was stuck for some reason. I began to curse, as the CD was, after all, brand new. I ejected it, and tried my hand at a quality control inspection, while driving down Ming Avenue in heavy traffic, in a stick shift (ever try to talk on the cell phone while driving a stick shift? No? Of course YOU wouldn't do that, YOU have common sense, but being sort of stupid, and stupid enough to admit it, I have of course attempted this). Well, driving and peering at the silvery CD got sort of hazardous, so I threw the CD on the passenger seat and resolved to ask for a refund later.

It wasn't until I got to the music building and collected my stuff from the passenger seat that I realized the weird exercise was a result of the little hole I had drilled thru that paperback book..."Singing for Dummies."

MODERN JAZZ MUSIC

I used to feel intimidated by kids in band who could play really fast things on ad lib solos. Not anymore. I have almost quit listening to recent recordings of "jazz." I don't want to listen to a sax player practice his/her scales in lieu of an ad lib solo.

Jazz solos are not this thing like "wow, that's difficult to play, but it's worth it because it's so beautiful." It's just some guy playing difficult scales, and it sounds like shit.

HOW "AUTHENTIC BAROQUE" MUSICIANS ARE JUST LIKE DAMN LAWYERS


You know how lawyers and judges always look for a precedent before they can rule on anything? It's as if they don't have any mind of their own, so they are looking to see what the last guy did.

Some of the worst decision making in the world comes from just doing what the last guy did.

Before I bag on the lawyers too much tho, I've got to look at little closer to home. A person might be tempted to think that only "non-creative" types would suffer from copying what the last guy did. After all, creativity is about expressing yourself, not about channelling the prior decisions of others. So it's not surprising to find that engineers can't get much done without having a "go-by" drawing of how the last guy did it.

What's amazing is the convergence of engineering with Baroque music. Now, a contralto and a countertenor are basically the same: a person who is comfortable singing pitches between, say, F below middle C, and top line F. The difference between a contralto and a countertenor is gender: a contralto is a woman and a countertenor is a man. But, some people think that particular opera (or oratorio) roles HAVE to be done by a contralto, or a countertenor, depending on "what the last guy did."

Some people don't want to consider a song by a composer they "never heard of" because they think it will be less good than a famous composer. This sounds a lot like the oilfield habit of using, for example, Brand X transmitters rather than Brand Y transmitters, because "Brand X is the most prevalent in our operations now." Who knows, Brand Y may be more reliable, easier to install and maintain, or may give a more accurate signal. And who knows if a composer is any good until someone listens to his or her songs?

One thing I can say for the oilfield is, at least people are aware we have this problem in the oilfield. In classical music, people wear this snobbery like it's a point of pride!

I'm also seeing a lot of convergence between the fields of geology and music. This is something we need to encourage. For instance, musicians should borrow the "end member" and "middle member" terminology of musicians. We could then replace the moralistic-sounding phrase "true contralto," "true mezzo," "true countertenor," etc, with something a little less snotty sounding. After all, if Eva Podles is a "true contralto," does that make everybody else a "fake contralto?" A person's voice is what it is: it's not "true" or "fake," it just "is what it is."

What we could do is graph the voices out on a continuum like we do with minerals.

Here's an example of a "ternary diagram" showing the amount of sand, silt or clay in a soil or rock.


For the sandstone, we have three "end members", sand, silt and clay. Any mixture of the three, such as "loam" is a "middle member."

People often classify voice types in two dimensions, like this:



I have put Janet Jackson in quotes, because when we think of a coloratura, we usually think of somebody who has a "good voice." Jackson was not naturally blessed with a good voice, but she's become a good singer thru lots of practice and hard work. Her voice is "end member" in tone color tho, because her voice is so light textured, almost to the point of disappearing. Sometimes we use the word "coloratura" to mean a high, light woman's voice, but sometimes we use it to mean that the person is singing fancy runs and twiddly bits: Jackson does neither. But her voice is too light to call her a mezzo!

SCHIRMER'S OPERATIC ANTHOLOGY, VOLUME II, COMMENTS AND RANGES OF SONGS
I drove to Wyoming this summer (2004) with my sister and family. Since California to Wyoming is sort of a long drive (3 days) I took the opportunity to become familiar with the contents of the Schirmer "Operatic Anthology". I bought this book in 1986, for junior college voice lessons, but hadn't bothered to familiarize myself with it for, um, 2 decades. I downloaded recordings of most of the songs that I didn't already own (from I-pod) and put them on 3 CD's, in the same order as in the book. Now, I can honestly say that I've enjoyed or survived listening to each song, but the book has less to offer a contralto that you might think.

The lowest note in the book is a piddly G3 (G below middle C, 196 Hertz if you're an engineer) - no challenge there. There's only one song where a girl would get to show off her low register: Verdi's Condotta ell'era in ceppi, from "Il Trovatore" (and it has a high B-flat; now that wouldn't sound good if I sang it!).

For the most part, the book has mezzo-soprano arias. Nothing against mezzos, but not so useful to me.

A contralto's range is usually about F below middle C ("F3" or 175 Hz) to top line F ("F5" or 698 Hz). Now, that considers only the notes you'd actually want to hear: as far as Double-High C ("C6" or 1046 Hz), the engineer in me thinks I can produce that frequency , but the singer in me would rather not try to sing that note! And the audience member in me wants no part of this exercise whatsoever...Gray's anatomy refers to this as "emitting" a high note. If all you want to do is emit notes, it increases your range considerably. However, my teacher, Peggy Sears, would expect me to actually sing , not just emit.

Of the 40 songs in the Schirmer Anthology, 10 of them are in the contralto range. These 10 are:

Realio-Trulio Contralto Songs in Schirmer Anthology
Composer Aria Opera
Bizet Près des ramparts de Sèville Carmen
Thomas Connais-tu le pays Mignon
Thomas Me voici dans son boudoir Mignon - I've sung this one
Mozart Voi che sapete - I did this one at U of Wyoming Figaro
Gluck Che farò senza Euridice - I did this one Orfeo
Wagner Gerechter Gott Rienzi
Handel Cara sposa, amante cara Rinaldo
Saint-Saëns Printemps qui commence Sampson et Dalila
Handel Ombra mai fu - I did this one Serse
Massenet Va! laisse couler mes larmes Werther...is this the same as those good little candies?

I was surprised that this list didn't contain more Wagner and Verdi. People tell you that Wagner and Verdi wrote a lot of songs for low-voiced women. I think maybe what people mean is that they wrote a lot of songs for dark-voiced women. There are, for instance, nice arias for a soprano and a mezzo in Verdi's Requiem - and dark soprano voices like Angela Gheorghiu and mezzos like Daniela Barcellona sound great. But, the solos are for a mezzo, not a contralto, unless she has a high A-flat ("A-flat 5"). Here are the ranges of the "mezzo" solos and ensemble numbers in the Verdi Requiem. A person could make the argument that Barcellona is actually a contralto who's marketing herself as a mezzo (because there are more opera parts for mezzos than for contraltos), and this would illustrate the point that a contralto would do well to try to gain a few notes above top line F ("F5").

Now, as far as the Schirmer book, if you've got a pleasant sounding G5, an additional 13 songs become accessible to you:

Songs in the Schirmer book that top out at high G ("G5")
Composer Aria Opera
Bizet L'amour est un oiseau rebelle Carmen (this is the famous aria from Carmen)
Bizet En vain pour èvitar (Card Scene) Carmen
Purcell Dido's Lament - When I am laid in earth Dido & Aeneas - I did this one when I was about 19. (I thought, "when I am laid in earth? Please God, I'm awfully young for this sort of thing!" Another slow alto song about death...)
Mussorgsky Khivria's Song and Hopak The Fair of Sorochinsk - I couldn't find a recording of this
Gounod Faites-lui mes aveux Faust
Ponchielli Voce di donna La Gioconda
Wagner Höre mit Sinn Die Götterdämmerung
Mozart Non so più cosa son Le Nozze di Figaro
Meyerbeer Donnez, Donnez Le Prophète
Saint-Saëns Amour, viens aider Samson et Dalila
Saint-Saëns Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix Samson et Dalila
Rossini In sì barbara Semiramide
Verdi Stride la vampa Il Trovatore


A legit question a student might have is, "if I have to study a foreign language, which one should I take?" It appears that if you're a contralto, the logical language to study (at least from this limited data set!) is French. Of course I studied Japanese (um...Spanish was full!). Here's how the languages break down.


In my abundant spare time, I might take on another study of this language thing: it would be interesting to compile a list recordings by famous contraltos - say, Stutzmann, Summers, Podles, Mingardo - and make pie charts. It might be biased in favor of French (and Polish), and a person could argue that it's because of the choice of singers. But, a person could also argue that it could be that there's an apparent "bias" in the numbers because those countries have historically had more contraltos. Composers often wrote to utilize the voices/instruments locally available, so if French women have tended to have lower voices thru the centuries, French repertoire would tend to have more to offer a contralto. Of course, it could be that French opera houses are smaller, so they were more able to utilize darker voices (higher notes "project" better: that's why so many opera parts are for high sopranos), or maybe the French orchestration has favored altos (by not covering the soloist up with the viola part...think about it, there's gotta be a reason viola parts are written in alto clef...try writing an alto part in alto clef and see if it doesn't reduce the number of ledger lines!).

AVOIDING WAGNER

It's such a relief to realize that it's a myth about dark-voiced women wearing the helmet with horns! I've avoided learning anything about Wagner all these years because

  1. You have to buy a $50 CD (or, back in the dark ages, 20 pounds of vinyl albums..."The Compleat Wagner"). Ugh, who actually wants to hear the whole thing?
  2. You can't find the solos by buying a "highlights" album: these albums only have "Ride of the Valkyries" and insipid liner notes about "Apocalypse Now," which I haven't seen!
  3. The ring mythology is too similar to the cult movies of our day - I'm afraid that some Trekkie-gamer-loser-geek boy will fall in loooove with me if I sing Wagner! Now, I went to engineering school, and I have a healthy fear of goober boys. These nerds think that since I'm smart, I must be like them. Wrong. If I don't discourage them, they will follow me around like skinny Holstien steers (Angus bulls are so much more manly!) These fools cannot carry on a conversation about anything but the latest in 12-sided dice (oh, sorry, I meant to say "die," which is the proper plural form). And I don't care about how many of those packs of fantasy game cards he has bought at Walmart! Ick!

Now that I've suffered thru the Wagner songs in this book, I'm pretty sure I don't like Wagner. He didn't seem to write proper arias, but just sort of glorified recitative. There's no theme for the audience to recognize, so they are sure to feel left out, just like if you get up in front of an audience to give a talk, and start blathering on about something that they don't understand. It's unfair to do that to people. It might work if you did the songs in English (or in Spanish, here in California's Central Valley...I think Spanish might actually be the majority language around here!). And you'd need to explain the plot ahead of time.

YOU REALLY SHOULDN'T LISTEN TO SONGS YOU'RE WORKING ON, IT WILL AFFECT YOUR INTERPRETATION
Gosh, I sure hope so...my taste is so awful that I should conciously work at stealing other people's interpretations!

I was about halfway to Wyoming when it occurred to me that I was sinning, big time, by listening to all these songs in the Schirmer book! It's just verboten to listen to songs that you plan to perform, and I'm actively looking for some songs I can do!

If I were a "real musician," I supposed that I should have sight-read the works of them - but I don't think the other passengers would have put up with the howling. Besides, I can't actually pronounce French without a semester's work.

I'm amazed that there aren't more audiobooks for musicians. We don't live in an age of endless leisure time - audiobooks would make good use of all the time spent in cars. One of my personal favorite study techniques is to put stuff on a tape (or, these days, a CD) and listen to it while driving to the oilfield. You're "supposed to" re-copy your notes the same day that you take them, in order to
  • Fill in the gaps where you couldn't write as fast as the teacher was talking (before you forget what your cryptic scribblings mean!)
  • Fix the information in your mind while it's still fresh
  • Actually look up stuff in the text that the teacher mentioned in lecture, and mentally attach this information to what you learned in lecture
    • Not that I always accomplish this! But you can do the same thing by reading back the notes onto a tape, while keeping the textbook handy.

    It's all very good for opera snobs to claim that we shouldn't listen to songs we're working on - but this advice worked against me - and I mean it worked hard against me as a student. I grew up near Pavillion, Wyoming and I was a bit of a hayseed (still am!). I hadn't seen any operas (still haven't), even on videos, so I didn't have any clue about the appropriate style to use in my voice lessons. It seems to me that a kid from, say, Watts, would have the same trouble. Opera (and oratorio, etc) is "an aquired taste." And it's a lot easier to swallow if you listen to songs that are familiar to you. This must be why the authors of "Opera for Dummies" say
    The trick is to become acquainted with one opera at a time. That way, you can become very familiar with a particular opera - including all the characters, the story, the music, and the composer's style - before moving on to the next...The more you listen, the more you'll enjoy.

    If you are a neophyte, and you are going to "become aquainted with one opera at a time," by definition, it's going to have to be the one you're working on...otherwise, you'd be listening to one opera, but studying arias from some other opera!

    BECOMING A HOITY TOITY SNOB

    At one point in my life, I had become a hoity toity snob myself. I first ever learned about poly-tonality at Central Wyoming College in Riverton, Wyoming. The piano prof, Carole Dahlberg, had a reputation for assigning a lot of "modern" pieces. She protested at this characterization, saying that she assigned a balanced repertoire - and it's true. She merely assigned a better variety of songs than the run of the mill piano teacher. I've come to realize that she was really creative in pedagogy. Numerous hayseeds like me fell in her lap - taking piano because we had to as music majors. She assigned me the Anna Magdelena Notebook, but rather than a steady diet of Bach and Mozart, she also had us work on stuff like Bartok's "Ten Easy Pieces." I got so used to this weird sounding stuff that it became normal to me.

    One day, at my part-time job at a country-western radio station, I was pleasantly surprised to hear polytonality pouring from my monitors. Who knew that country-western musicians were sophisticated enough to employ polytonality! I let this go on for a full one minute and thirty-four seconds before I realize that I had Crystal Gayle on one turntable, and Dolly on the other...

    MUSIC CRITIC BOOKS ON TAPE

    It aggravates me that music critics make audiobooks where they blather on about music, but never play any examples. I realize it would be a pain to put the examples in, and you'd have to get copyright permissions. But it would be so informative. Ordinary sloth like myself could learn to pronounce all those foreign words that make opera snobs sound so cultured.