A “Method” based on sheer MADNESS!

Having new physiological information about the way the human voice works was a temptation for many who believed that they could also dissect and cut into separate pieces the way that the art of singing works. In so doing, they only managed to cheapen the art. Whenever mere human beings try to outsmart nature, they always run into trouble. Nature will always be a far better teacher than technology.

Throughout all of history the craft of singing was passed down from singer to singer through personal contact between teacher and student. No textbooks, no diagrams, no impersonal lectures or videos could take the place of a true and personal lineage of authentic teaching in the art of singing. And this manner of personal study with a teacher over the course of several years managed to produce the greatest singers that the world has ever known. The traditional way of teaching wasn’t broken. It didn’t need to be “fixed.”

The traditional singing teachers were called professori. They patiently guided their students to VOCAL FREEDOM– to the point where the student was freely and effectively expressing the true art of singing with his or her own unique, unadulterated and healthy voice. However, this was done in a holistic, natural way that was designed to draw out the true artistry within each singer.

The physical facts were indeed present: When a singer had true VOCAL FREEDOM, the singer’s breath, vocal cords and resonators were operating in effortless synchronicity with one another and the singer could move about the full register of his or her true and natural voice without stumbling at the “bridge” (in Italian “passagio”). But because the singer achieved his or her own VOCAL FREEDOM through a patient, balanced and holistic study guided by a professori, the physiology never got in the way of the artistry.

It was a grave mistake to believe that a contrived artificial technology forced upon the physiology of the singer’s body could provide a quicker and easier way to become an accomplished singer. The harbingers of this “scientific” approach to singing called themselves maestros (masters) and their teaching was called “method teaching.” They invented separate “exercises” purportedly aimed at the breathing, the vocal cords, the vocal range, and so forth, and they became so anxious to “produce results” in a short amount of time that they trained young singers to push and force their voices in unnatural ways.

A Misguided Response to New Technology

The 1800's were a time when all of Western society was having “growing pains.” Nations, businesses, schools and everyday people were adjusting gradually and sometimes bitterly to the radical changes that had begun in the previous century, not the least of which were the Industrial Revolution and the advent of a scientifically based medical system (sometimes called “Western allopathic” medicine). These two developments had a profound effect on the way that human beings perceived themselves and the world around them.

The Industrial Revolution brought with it a drive to manufacture things in a way that was increasingly bigger and more “efficient.” The artisan’s workshop was replaced by the factory. People in the workplace were replaced with machines, and many human beings were killed or injured while operating those machines. The focus of the factories was to get as many products as possible in the hands of as many customers as possible as quickly as possible, rather than concentrating efforts on doing a good job at something. An urgent drive to produce, produce, produce became more important than human life, good health or the meaning of being a person.

And that’s what happened to singing, slowly and steadily. In a time when artists and composers were no longer receiving constant support from one monarch or another, singing and music fell into the hands of industry as well, and in particular charlatans.

New opera houses were built throughout Europe that housed bigger and bigger audiences. Singers were expected to force the sounds of their voices to fill larger auditoriums so that more tickets could be sold and, with the advent of the phonograph, more records could be promoted and marketed to the public. The new music industry drove singers to produce, produce, produce rather than allowing the singers to serve their art in an effective way.

How My Singing School Follows McCormack’s Bel Canto Tradition

I teach my students at the Bel Canto House School of Singing to work for the goal of VOCAL FREEDOM. Each student’s voice is unique and the task of Bel Canto training is to open up that unique and unrepeatable natural voice to reach its fullest potential, and never to force the voice to imitate another person’s sound. Students of authentic Bel Canto learn the expressiveness and beauty of singing through telling the story rather than getting lost in a series of mechanical exercises that only serve to distract students from their own individuality. Other “methods” of teaching singing are only an attempt at merely physical singing to produce a sequence of tones and sounds, but true Bel Canto teaches students to communicate the human spirit clearly with true art.