charting emotional content

It seems as if my thoughts on emotional indicators have been
answered scientifically long before I started thinking them.
Not surprising - the trick for a layman is of course to find all
the research. Much of it is not available via the web, unless
you belong to a participating research institution. If I were
to park myself in a library, I might have better luck...

However, I did find this:
Emotional Expression Code in Opera and Lied Singing

(Presented by Dr. Eliezer Rapoport at the 1996 Israel
Musicological Society Annual Meeting)

The author has run computer analyses of recordings
of great artists: Callas, Caballe, Margaret Price, Pavarotti,
Kraus, et al, and has performed a systematic breakdown
of how these singers vary their voice and musical expression
in order to express appropriate emotions. The article lists
some 50 different indicators. I have yet to read it thoroughly,
but here is an extract:

A higher degree in excitement than in the C or R modes is achieved by introducing a third element: pitch transition; a gradual increase in pitch in one or two stages from the onset to the sustained stage, mostly practiced by tenors. This is not singing off-tune but is a deliberate way of shaping the tone, endowing it with some extra qualities: openness, brightness, life, timbre embellishment, and expressive­ness. These are the qualities that bel canto tenors use in expressing love, exhilara­tion and happiness. (The tenor is the hero and the lover in Italian operas). T modes are perceived as a timbre effect. After becoming aware of it the trained listener can discern this gradual transition as a pitch effect. Figure 5 displays an example of the T1 mode taken from the aria "La rivedra nell'estasi..." from Un Ballo in Maschera by Verdi, sung by Luciano Pavarotti, expressing love (marked in Performance

[...]

Score No. 3). The aria "De miei bollenti spiriti" from La Traviata by Verdi, and the preceding recitative, express great happiness. Pavarotti and Alfredo Kraus use the T1 and T2 modes extensively in this aria. Further on in the aria at the climax of happiness, the phrase "io vivo quasi in ciel" is repeated five times, each time leading to a climax - sung by Kraus in the T1 mode.

This sort of thing appeals to my engineering brain. (-:

A technocratic, optimistic spin on this might be that, given
such wonderful analysis tools, and the ability to describe
exactly what is going on in these wonderful performances,
we should be able to resurrect, and perhaps even improve
the old magic.

The only remaining problem is of course to attract singers
that are talented enough, and devoted enough, to subject
themselves to the years of training that will still be required.

(Actually, I think that isn't a problem, because lots of talented
and devoted singers do this today. As with many other fields,
the trick is to integrate research into the teaching and wide
practice of the art. Most singers I know will probably be
slightly put off by discussions on Fast Fourier Transforms,
vowel formants, vibrato periods and unit pulses...)

apologies to RSS subscribers

I've been republishing the last posts several times.
If anyone is subscribing to this blog, I apologize.

I've switched to the new Blogger version, and it
was playing tricks on me. The word wrap wasn't
working right, and while the preview looked okay,
the published version looked horrible.

... at least using the Opera web browser, but honestly,
when writing a blog on Bel canto, using another browser
is surely blasphemy?

neural response

I've been out fishing lately.

I started thinking when listening to a concert recently. It was
 an accomplished opera singer, who performed, by all accounts,
 very well. I was quite pleased that I could actually enjoy myself, 
and not just analyse her singing to death. (:

However, there was time for some analysis too. I couldn't help
noticing how she sang with basically the same timbre
throughout. This is not unusual. It is what most singers seem to 
do.

She used a fairly wide range of "indicators" to signal emotion, 
and we, attentive listeners, were eager to comply and respond
with the appropriate emotion.  I wouldn't have reacted to this 
a few years ago, but having realised how much a singer can 
actually vary his/her vocal colour, you can't help not longing
to hear that on stage. 

Actually, the thinking started long before this. A couple of years 
ago, I listened to a live rendition of "Nessun dorma", with a 
reasonably skilled tenor. His middle range was uninteresting,
though, which obviously becomes problematic in "Nessun
dorma". To exaggerate a bit, he stumbled through the aria and
made a nice recovery on the high notes. To my surprise, my
friends hadn't noticed his relative failure in the 90% of the
aria that doesn't consist of "money notes". I guess that's why
they call them "money notes" - if a tenor can only deliver the
high Cs, all is forgiven (in Nessun dorma, it's a H).

So here's the theory. Nessun dorma is all about anticipation,
but since everyone in the audience is so full of anticipation of
that last high H, the singer can probably get away with just
indicating the rest of the song. After all, none of it is real.
The artist builds an illusion, and we, the audience fill in the
blanks.

So why go through all that trouble to deliver real emotion,
when it's obviously possible to just indicate, and let the
audience do the work? Shouldn't there be a difference, after all?

I started googling for neurological papers to find out if we are
actually able to detect what goes on in the brain when e.g.
listening to singing.

I turns out that we can - almost.

Robert Zatorre in Montrëal seems to be on the forefront of
neurological studies related to music. One paper has the
impressive title

"Emotional responses to pleasant and unpleasant music correlate with activity in paralimbic brain regions".

Unfortunately for me, trying to prove my theory, we seem to
have some way to go before we fully understand how the brain
processes emotional content in music.

It turns out that listening to music triggers a lot more brain 
activity than does e.g. speech. Several different parts of the 
brain (even the "reptile brain") are engaged, and the result 
is collated into a unified experience.

This paper does claim to support the hypothesis that "there
may be a dissociation between perceptual and emotional
responses to music".

Furthermore, the paper states that "it is possible that music
that induces different types of emotions would recruit
different neural substrates. This may be especially likely
if emotion is elicited through memory or association,
rather than spontaneously."

That last bit seemed to relate to what I was digging for. I was
thinking that if an artist uses physical or vocal "gestures"
to indicate to the audience what they should feel, this may
have the effect that the audience relates to the music in a
slightly more intellectual way, having to draw on their
memory for the proper understanding of the gestures. 

Perhaps other components in the music speak directly to 
our more intuitive systems, triggering a direct emotional 
response which we will have great difficulty suppressing?

Of course, tons of complications arise if one would try to
measure this in a scientific study.

Of course, it could be that our willingness to be swept away by
the artist is the most important factor in enjoying a musical
performance. Perhaps our brains are clever enough to
provide us with the necessary emotions if we just don't get
in its way? Call me stubborn, but I don't think that's the
whole truth.

Something to look forward to

My beloved wife chastised me for writing that I didn't have much
to look forward to (here). I admit that that was only partly true.
I meant that I didn't have anything like a full-scale production in
front of me.

A few fun things have happened, though.

Katarina and I were engaged to sing on a Tallinn cruise. I was
really supposed to ride along, but since we enjoy singing, we
promptly decided that I should be part of the program. Such
"coups" are always a bit scary, since they can backfire if the
customer ends up thinking that I didn't contribute to the
enjoyment. Or maybe that's just me thinking that I'm still
not good enough for professional engagements... As it was,
I only participated in a duet ("Rosen in Tirol" by Zeller) and
one aria ("O Paradis", by Meyerbeer). It went quite well,
though, and I felt like a real pro... almost.

The next occasion was our traditional Christmas concert,
now in a new church (since we have moved). It was well
visited, and people seemed pleased. I sang some Christmas
hymns, and some arias from Händel's Messiah (Comfort ye
and Every Valley). We recorded it, and listening to the
tape, I was horrified! I was singing out of tune on several
occasions. My wife insisted that I wasn't, and she has a
good ear...

Enter Lucy Manén's Bel canto book. She observes (pg 50) that

The high harmonics of the imposto mechanism, not only
give to all the vocal registers the beauty and brilliance
of Bel Canto; they also ensure that the voice will sound
in tune to a distant listener (without adequate brilliance,
a distant voice will often sound flat even when, heard
from near by, the notes seem correctly pitched).

When I checked the parts of the tape where I recalled emphasizing
the higher harmonics, the voice didn't sound flat. I had focused too
much on creating a full voice, and forgetting about the brilliance.
Oh, well. Let's hope the one's in the back didn't have such good
ears...

(If you want to know what imposto is, read the book, or go see
your local Bel Canto teacher.)

Later, Katarina and I gave a recital in Oxelösund - Church coffee
for the senior members of the congregation. Katarina grew up in
Oxelösund, so she has a tendency to sell out when she visits. So
it was this time too. The church was full and we had a great
time. I sang Ah, fuyez... from Manon - a terribly difficult aria,
but I never did have the good sense to go for the easy wins.
The challenge with Ah, Fuyez is that you have to be able to
express several different and conflicting emotions. De Grieux
prays to be rid of the obsession with Manon, and curses the
world and his misfortune, but really, he doesn't want anything
other than to be with her - but he does sincerely long for the
peace of God too, and he keeps shifting in and out of these
emotions. To add some complexity, it's in French, which I
don't know, and the tessitura is terribly high.

Bel canto to the rescue. If you're able to produce the sound
with a lowered larynx, whatever you feel will be strangely
amplified (because the emotional colorings of the voice
emanate from there.) So if you take the time to really
understand what you're singing, you will be able to portray
the proper emotions (obviously there is more to a great
interpretation than that, but just the basics will get you
surprisingly far). The 'imposto' thingy helps anchor the high
voice especially, which saves you when De Grieux first
utters his "ah fuyez" in a piano G. Also, you can bring on
the crying in the ff exclamations - as long as you keep your
position and let the body provide (as Bengt keeps telling me).

The truly amazing feeling is that you can go all out, both with voice and emotion, as long as you keep directing the force the right way.

For fun, I later decided to try singing it unsupported (actually,
still much more supported than I ever sang before I went to
Bengt three years ago). I found that I could produce a cool-
sounding timbre, and sing loudly enough, but when trying to
convey emotions, the voice suddenly felt like a wall between
me and the (imaginary) audience. I started realising why many
singers are left with just varying the volume, phrasing and
attack. What else can you do?

I decided to quit experimenting and return to practising the
real thing. I don't master it well enough to goof around.

Then we did some Nemorino/Adina, "Caro Elisir". Fun stuff.
I need to find more opportunities to sing on stage.

Corelli

Re-reading my posts, I felt that I should give more credit to Franco Corelli. I will admit that I hadn't listened to him much, except for an old recording of "La Forza del destino", which is unfortunately of such poor technical quality that it is difficult to judge the man's voice (the wild cheers from the audience do give an indication that there was something there that got lost in the recording...)

Enter youtube.com. This sesspool of copyright violations is heaven for opera lovers who look for inspiration. I searched on Corelli and found gold. The man was unbelievable! Those rumours I had heard about him ruining his voice with the "lowered larynx technique"... Hah! Some clips from 1973, with a 52 year-old Corelli singing Andrea Chenier should certainly put those rumours to rest.

Here are some of the clips I found:

Come un bel di di maggio (Andrea Chenier - Correlli 52 years old)

Un dì all'azurro spazio (Andrea Chenier)

Non piangere Liu (Turandot)

Ch'ella mi creda (La fanciulla del West, Tokyo in 1971, I think)

Forza del destino, act 4, duet with Ettore Bastianini

Forza del destino, act 1, duet with Renata Tebaldi

Torna il Sorrento (looks like a 70s TV production)

O paese d' 'o sole (old TV show, it seems. A young Corelli)

Enjoy.

The 78s ping

Being a tenor and trying to learn proper (as in Bel Canto) singing, brings its own special challenges.

The tenor sound was pretty much defined by the giants of old: Caruso, Gigli, Corelli, Björling (for us Swedes), but do we really know now what they sounded like?

I've developed my own little theory called "the 78s ping". Many of the recordings of Caruso were made with him singing straight into a wodden funnel, the sound being engraved through mechanical coupling onto a wax-coated cylinder. It goes without saying that the frequency response was less than stellar. It's no accident that tenors were popular in those early years of recordings, because the "singer's formant" at ca 3 KHz, so pronounced in high operatic voices, came through nice and clear. It's tempting to think that that's all there was to the great tenor voice. Yet we know that Caruso could even sing basso repertoire (legend has it he even did it impromptu during a performance, when the basso lost his voice.) Clearly, the man must have had a huge voice. (update: listen to a 78s recording of Sollene in quest'ora from La Forza del Destino - it gives you a hint as to why baritones where not the great recording stars of this era.)

Jussi Björling was a lyrical tenor, but his recordings span a fairly wide range of technology. Compare e.g. "Säv, säv, susa" from 1940 with the same song from 1959. Jussi's voice was considered to have pretty much reached maturity around 1940, so the most dramatic difference between the two samples is the recording technology. "Sånger på svenska" from 1959 was one of the first Hi-fi stereo recordings in Sweden, and it gives the startling revelation that Jussi's voice was really much fuller than earlier recordings were able to portray.

Now we have a whole generation of singers trying to sound like the great tenors did on the 78s (ok, exaggerating a little...) The easy way to do this is to rely heavily on head voice, emphasizing the resonance of the nasal cavities. This also gives the best feedback. The sound can also be significantly amplified using various tricks. The problem with this is that the "singer's formant" is generated by the larynx, as the result of significant "sub-glottal" pressure - not in the nasal cavities. The way to get there is to push the diaphragm roughly as far as it will go, lower the larynx, raising the soft palate, etc. etc.

Sound hard? Well it is, and it isn't. Anyone can do this - it's pretty much exactly what we do when we throw up. It's doing it in a controlled way while singing that requires some practice. It's also difficult to do it on your own, because while practising, you will not necessarily feel that your voice is improving. You will feel more like a baritone than a tenor, or like an alto rather than a soprano.

Once you learn how to produce a tone with a fully lowered diaphragm (etc), you will be able to find your way to a powerful singer's formant. It will sound to you as a loud "ringing noice". You may not find this pleasant ("Forget all about taking pleasure in your own voice", Bengt Nordfors told me.) To others, it may sound like a silver lining on an otherwise full voice.

So why go through all the trouble if a tenor sound can be faked? Well, for one thing, it's a healthier way to sing, and your vocal cords will thank you for it. But also, you will be able to make use of "exclamatory vowels" - sounds that are also shaped in the larynx, and which convey emotions in a primitive and universally understood way. In short, your voice will become more interesting, more moving, and able to portray real emotions.

So can you tell who's faking it? In tenors, you usually can. Watch the larynx. It should be lowered while singing, and it should pretty much stay there. Now, "faking" may be a bit harsh. The vast majority of singers are certainly most cincere and try their best to express something. What I mean is that they have not learned to properly ground their voices. No surprise - it takes about 5 years to learn proper singing technique, and in our day and age, that's too long.

Also, a warning: if you start searching for true Bel Canto, chances are that you will be disappointed with many singers that you previously thought were great. You may be better off not caring about it and continue to enjoy the art of opera such as it is, today.

Several of the great tenors were initially barytones. Today, if we hear someone singing tenor repertoire with a decidedly baritonal quality, we will be confused. "He's not a tenor", we will exclaim (even if he's hitting the high Cs effortlessly.) We want that "78s ping", and we want to be able to label people.

Giuseppe Giacomini is a tenor with an amazingly baritonal voice. So much so that it becomes problematic. I've heard productions were he sounds more baritonal than the barytone he's playing against (update: here's one where it actually works out - Giacomini is the one lying down). It is simply difficult to find a whole cast of such singers. While I think Giacomini is great, he's not my own ideal (I'm more of a lyrical tenor.) I tend to listen to Fritz Wunderlich for inspiration (update: F.W. as Tamino).

The road to Bel Canto

This is my main hobby - passion, even. Some might call it an obsession.

My parents were latent musicians, but didn't do much do develop their talent, but they did sing, play the guitar and piano quite a lot when we were kids.

My grandfather was a shoemaker and a fiddler (playing the fiddle in that part of the country back then seems to have been what Nintendo is for today's youngsters.) He is "famous" for having written "Skomakar Wigers polska", which is on the standard folk music repertoire today.

My brother, Torbjörn, started playing the guitar, and became quite good at it. He eventually had to choose between playing professionally and going for an MSEE, and chose engineering. At the time, he played in the band Joy's Toys and had just landed a record contract. Among the other members of the band were drummer/singer Jan Johansen and keyboardist/singer Göran Eliasson, who both went on to rather successful careers.

I spent a very short time in the Stockholm Boy's Choir in 2nd grade, sang in the High School choir, and later joined Nicolai Chamber Choir, where I stayed some 13 years. I sang in the Royal Philharmonic Choir for a year, just before it was closed down. After that, I decided to focus on singing solo.

My first singing teacher was actually Siw Hellgren in High School. The most memorable advice she gave me was: "if you don't think it's beautiful, noone else will either." Siw is quite a character, and did a great job conveying the wonders of classical music and opera to her students.

My second teacher was Margareta Ljunggren. She was very down to earth and helped me realise that singing wasn't such a big deal. Unfortunately, I had also started realising that my real passion was opera, and that wasn't Margareta's thing. All in all, though, it was a very fruitful couple of years.

In 1998, I met Katarina Pilotti. We were engaged two weeks later, and married in 1999. We found that we much enjoyed singing together, and I suddenly had an opportunity to meet professional singers and musicians on a fairly regular basis. Bengt Nordfors, Peter Kajlinger, Bo Wannefors, Michael Engström, and others, became household names and taught me a great deal. We arranged musical evenings at our house, and invited friends and relatives.

When Katarina turned 40, she gave a concert together with friends and colleagues in our local church. The singers were Katarina, Kristina Hammarström, Ann Charlotte Merhammar, Thomas Lander, Bengt Gustafsson... and I. Katarina and I did the whole scene from La Boheme where Rodolpho meets Mimi. I thought Bo Wannefors and I were in agreement to lower the aria "Che gelida manina" a seminote in order to avoid the high C, but for one reason or other, it didn't happen. As I approached the H (or so I thought), I thought to myself "it's a good thing we lowered it". All went well. "The only thing you have to fear is fear itself", as I later came to learn. I also got to sing a duet with Thomas Lander - I have a tendency to agree to things and only later consider what I'm getting myself into. But Thomas is a very relaxed and generous person, and it all went well. I felt that I had stepped up to a higher level.

Bengt Nordfors sat in the audience and afterwards murmured that I should come to his place at Ingarö and learn a thing or two. It took a few years before I took him up on the offer. I guess I wasn't ready...

Bengt Nordfors is an outstanding teacher. He opened my eyes to Bel Canto, and after three years of hard work (Bengt would say "goofing around"), I think I'm beginning to grasp the basics of voice production. Bengt studied with Berle Rosenberg, who studied with Carlo Bergonzi. Such is the genealogy.

The first project with Bengt was in 2003-4, preparing for The Barber of Seville, with OperaVox (where I had previously had small parts in Die Fledermaus and Carmen.) In fact, I went to Bengt two weeks before the auditions, when I realized I didn't have the technique necessary to sing the part of Count Almaviva. After a two-week crash course, I was able to fight my way through "Ecco ridente", and actually got the part. The following year was spent in intense preparations, trying to develop the technique and stamina required to get through the whole opera (actually, all five performances). Again, it went well. I visited Bengt hours before each performance to get hold of my voice. Each visit turned into a singing lesson, the result of which was to reveal itself on stage. A bit scary, but extremely productive. As Count Almaviva is on stage singing and acting for the better part of the opera, I also had to learn a lot about how to conduct myself on stage.

That was the starting point. I had begun to suspect what "connection" was really about. In the years since then, I feel that I have begun to develop a healthy "basic sound", to the point where I can at least begin to work on nuances without losing my technique. This may not seem as much, but I'll give my interpretation of what's involved in later posts.

Currently, I have no production or concert to look forward to. I will just keep singing to myself, and visit Bengt every now and then.