Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Road Report #3: The Composer’s Guide to Singers

In an orange-and-brown high school classroom in Richmond, Virginia, my first choral composition was sung for the first time. It was 1999, and I was a keen, bright-eyed 15-year-old beginner. The piece was entitled Silence of the Night (on a poem written by my piano teacher), and I passed out handwritten copies. My generous choir director, Dwight Graham, played the piano as my fellow choristers sang.

About ten bars into the piece, the sopranos were told to sing a high B-flat on the word “see.” Where I had hoped for a glorious, ringing tone, a primordial squawk emerged.

We finished singing, and I walked around the room to collect my copies. I approached the soprano section expecting florid apologies for the fumbled high note, but was instead met with silence. In their eyes was a white-hot rage that communicated a single phrase: “Never again.”

Luckily, despite these initial fumbles, much of my compositional career thus far has been spent writing music for singers. And my travels for the past year as a Douglas Moore Fellow have added to my appreciation for the finer points of vocal composition. Here are a few of the lessons I’ve picked up along the way:

  1. Write for a real voice, and pick the right singer.

    No one would expect Emma Kirkby to sing in Parsifal, just as no one would have expected Luciano Pavarotti to sing with the Academy of Ancient Music. So if we, as composers, write music that requires Kirkby in one bar and Pavarotti in the next, we’re writing impossible music.

    To avoid this, we have to learn about the wonderfully variegated world of voice types. While, of course, no two voices are alike, studying the Fach system (and cross-referencing it with as many recordings as you can find) is a good place to start. But ultimately, nothing can beat working with real singers.
     
  2. Learn their limits.

    Can she trill? What is his lowest note? How long can she sing above the staff?

    A singer’s instrument is part of their body, and unreasonable demands can result in permanent physical harm. But the definition of “unreasonable” varies widely from person to person. Ask a singer to tell you their limits (especially relating to range, tessitura, and coloratura) before you start composing in order to avoid confrontation later on. And rest assured that if one singer can do it, others can as well.
     
  3. Feel free to challenge them.

    Hopefully the first two tips haven’t made you too gun-shy. Singers love to be challenged and will work to make the most superhuman musical tasks seem effortless. It’s simply a matter of making sure that difficulty is reasonable and meaningful. Just look at Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” – the role is virtuosic beyond belief, but it still operates within a clearly defined Fach, and it includes lengthy resting periods for the singer.
     
  4. Know when to let the singer take over.

    While the composer’s job can often be to fill space, it can also be to empty it; by stripping away detail and complexity, the composer can allow for a performer to shape the operatic moment. And some of the most powerful scenes in all of opera do just that.

    In “Now the Great Bear and Pleiades” from Peter Grimes, for example, Benjamin Britten gives the title character long reciting tones and three simple, descending scales to sing. On the page, it looks terribly static. But on the stage, these descending scales add up to much more than the sum of their parts.

    It takes trust, and it takes careful preparation, but composers could experiment more with this freedom of musical space. Singers know how to make the most of these moments (see also: Mozart’s “Ach, ich fühl's,” Puccini’s “Vissi d’arte,” and John Adams’ “Batter my heart”).
     
  5. Justify their silences
    My great friend and collaborator, soprano Annamarie Zmolek, taught me this one

    In opera and art song, singers are still hard at work even when they’re not singing. These vocal breaks are often dramatically vital; think of Salome’s “Dance of the Seven Veils,” the end of Act II of Tosca, or Tadzio’s dances in Death in Venice.

    But, whether the break lasts eight bars or fifty, composers have to be sure that they are there for a reason, and that singers will have something to do (even if that means standing perfectly still) while they’re not singing. Nothing can break dramatic flow more quickly than an extended, extraneous vocal silence.

These are only five of countless little lessons learned over a lifetime (many of which, surely, I have yet to learn). The only way to master vocal composition, just like any other kind of composition, is to try, to fail, to learn, and to try again.

And while the composer’s relationship with the singer is the most central in the production of a new work, contemporary opera is also powerfully shaped by stage directors, and by the opera companies themselves. Come back next week for the final post in this blog series, covering the business of opera.


Composer and pianist Zachary Wadsworth is the 2012-2013 Fellow of the Douglas Moore Fund for American Opera. For more information about him and his music, visit zacharywadsworth.com

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for this Zach. Not only can the Fach system help composers write for certain voice types, if understood by composers, it can be the simplest avenue to characterization, allowing the audience to hear and understand each character even in large ensembles. Too often we hear new works where the characters are in the same pitch set, mode, range, rhythmic structure or melodic contour. Rather than being given a character, the singer must create a character and fight(dynamically) with the other voices on stage. The audience struggles to understand who all the women or men are. Isn't it wonderful when all you have to do is listen and know?! Why is it that we can always hear the individual characters in Mozart or Verdi operas? Even in the ensemble numbers!!!!! Isn't that why audiences still want to hear this music?
    As a lover of new music I want composers to understand the difference between orchestrating and voicing because there really are an infinite number of personalities that can be portrayed by a singer. Play with them and give them a distinct voice!
    I look forward, with great anticipation, to your future successes Zach.

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