Ornamentation or, the Timeline of a Song

Last week I wrote about Bel Canto. An important part of that style is ornamentation, taking the melodic line written by the composer and embellishing it. In the Baroque period, ornamentation was expected; almost a way of life. In the Da Capo arias you sang through the "A" section, went into the "B" section, and then went da capo (Italian for "to the head"), back to the beginning. Here was the chance for the singer to put their own stamp on the aria. Ornamentation was highly personal and was what set the mediocre talent from a stellar performer.

Then the world changed and musical tastes changed with it. In order to full larger opera houses and be heard over the newly enlarged orchestras, singers began to use more of the chest voice, gaining volume, but losing flexibility.

The Da Capo format fell out of style as new forms for arias came to be used. Composers began to expect the singer to sing the music as written. No variations, no ornamentation.

Bel Canto operas fell out of fashion as well, to be rediscovered in the late 1950s. Here is where I'm going out on a limb. I have no idea if there is any documentation to back up what I'm about to write.

I said last week that I thought the Bel Canto era: 1800-1840, grew out of a reaction to the tumult of the times. If you think about it, beginning in the late 1950s (let's round up) and say 1960-2000, another 40 year span, was also a time of tumult and change. Fashion, art, architecture, politics, music, everything was in flux. And at the beginning of it all came a revival of a classical, more restrained type of opera and the singing to go along with it.

Coincidence? I don't think so. I think that the same fears of losing control that gave us the Bel Canto era brought it back 120 years later.

And - this baroque love of ornamentation has crept into popular music. No longer is the composer's intention sacred. Now every singer, or worse, every singer wannabe, ornaments.

In listening to various songs on Youtube, this blog has changed. I had intended to give you examples from a number of songs, including a duet with Barbara Streisand and Celine Dion. It's quite lovely (if we overlook the amazingly clichéd lyrics), they are both singing what I assume to be the music as written. Then building up to the Barry-Manilow-key-change come in the ornaments. It's here, if you want to hear it: Celine Dion, Barbara Streisand: Tell Him.

Then I was going to play for you Dolly Parton singing I Will Always Love You from 1975. Its a very different song from the Whitney Houston hit. By the way, Dolly wrote it. Here's Dolly, big-hair and all:I will always love you: Dolly Parton  and here's Whitney: Whitney Houston (Whitney's, by the way, is from a performance where the applause seriously interrupts the song, and the ornamentation gets WAY overdone - and yes, I know that a lot of Whitney's ornaments come from gospel music which is very, very far away from the Western influences of Bel Canto, but that's another show.)

But then, I found this: I've always loved the song Without You. All these years, though, I thought Nilsson wrote it. He didn't. Pete Ham and Tom Evans, of the group Badfinger, did. Apparently Paul McCartney has called this "the killer song of all time." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but it is a gorgeous, sometimes gut-wrenching ballad. I wonder if he was referring to their version.

Sometimes ornamentation can be good. Normally, I'm a purist: I like music to be performed the way the composer intended. I'm reminded of the plot of the movie That Thing You Do, where if they had done the song as the composer intended, it would never have been a hit. Because in the hands of Badfinger, this song is really lacking... something. Don't feel you need to go all the way to the end. The song is pretty much over before they hit the 2 minute mark. There's a guitar solo, and then the vocals just repeat. No change, no emotion, nothing. (This song, by the way, does follow the A-B-A format of a Da Capo aria. See, I'm tying this into the opening premise!)


Then along came a man named Harry Nilsson. He took this little ditty and ran with it. The verse is essentially what Ham and Evans wrote. Then he took the first part of the chorus down an octave (just because he could, I guess), and that gave him the jumping off point to take the repeat up where it was originally written. But now, it gives added emotion, sounding like his heart is being ripped out. 

This has become THE version of the song that everyone else works from. (Trust me on this. After literal hours of research this morning, I've heard Heart, Hall & Oates, Air Supply, TG Sheppard, 2 different Spanish versions, an Italian version, a Japanese version, a reggae version, a salsa version, versions with guitar solos, sax solos, and many, many American Idol/X-factor, talentless versions.)

This is where my beef with a lot of popular music comes in. We are never given the opportunity to hear what the melody is before the flourishes start. I know lots of people love Mariah Carey's version. But, I think that the ornamentation overpowers the song. And when you get people with even less talent, training or restraint trying to do her version, the melody gets completely lost in the pyrotechnics (or, what I call the "I-know-there's-a-note-in-there-somewhere syndrome") Here's Mariah, if you must. Her version also gives us a problem with the lyrics - I just can't give anymore. Because they always can.

There used to be a saying: Sometimes less is more. I love watching craft shows on TV, and now the feeling seems to be that more is never enough. There are always more embellishments to put on your handcrafted CD cover/purse/scrapbook page. And it seems, you can always pile more notes onto an otherwise unassuming song. People will go wild. Oh, and throw in a scrunch (crouching down as if the high note is causing you physical pain), and that's guaranteed to make them scream. (Donny Osmond added a scrunch to what was otherwise a pretty good version - based on Nilsson, but with some of Carey's additions.)

We've left the ornamentations of the Baroque period far behind. Is this in reaction to the changing times we live in? I have no idea.

There is a movement for groups that popularize the operatic style. They are trying to make operatic training more approachable and I support that. Amici, Il Divo: there may be others, but those are the one I know, and I like them, for the most part.

But, then I found this version. Someone needs to be punished. They've been very, very bad. Oh, and don't think that you can only listen to a short bit of it. You don't realize just how truly horrendous it is until near the end, when the Barry-Manilow-key-change hits.

Somewhere along the line in the last few years, we've lost melodies. The vocal pyrotechnics have taken over. It's become not enough to sing a beautiful note, now that note has to go up and down several scales. We have become all style and no substance. But, I must agree with all these other singers on one thing. The definitive version of Without You does not belong to Badfinger but to Harry Nilsson. Sometimes less is more, and sometimes it can be just enough.

P.S. This may be one of the only different takes on the song, but even he returns to Nilsson at the end: Bonnie Prince Billy - Babylon System/Without You

Beautiful singing

A few years ago, I was performing with two other people in a school. At the end of our show, we took questions from the kids. One bright 5th grader wanted to know how we could sing so loudly. (We'd been singing in the multi-purpose room, with a fair bit of background noise, and lousy acoustics.) Before either myself or the bass had a chance to say anything, the other woman had launched into this long explanation of Bel Canto, which she was kind enough to tell this child, is Italian: Bel (beautiful) canto (singing). She explained how we all had studied this way and it was the only way to produce such beautiful sounds. . .yada, yada, and yada. I whispered to the other singer, "She shouldn't speak for all of us. I prefer the 'can belto' style." Which made him laugh, and as soon as we could, we took over the explanation, before she could bore the children to death.


Recently, I've been looking at the bel canto style for a student of mine, trying to find words to explain what bel canto singing is and isn't. And I've found out that doing that is a bit more complicated than I'd originally thought.


There are a lot of different schools of vocal thought; ways of teaching voice, ways of creating the sounds that we want. And this can all become amazingly technical, lowering the larynx, whether to use the chest voice at all, whether certain vocal types even exist. It can become mind-boggling.


Silly me, I thought that with a little research, I could come in and write a coherent, possibly entertaining blog on what is and isn't bel canto. After hours of research into many different aspects of the question, I still don't have a better answer than to say that I can tell a bel canto aria simply by listening to it. 



For example: here is Sumi Jo singing Handel's Where'er you walk. Her voice is light, and soft. The focus is very tight (not her throat, but her focus). It's very carefully placed, probably in a very specific spot on the bridge of her nose, and never wavers. The vibrato is slight, and the dynamics are also slight, never too loud. The words are hard to understand. The beauty of the voice, not the text is important. (You don't need to listen to all of each of these. Just enough to hear the differences.)

Next follows Julie Andrews on the same aria. Much easier to understand, but not bel canto. The focus is just wrong; it's too open and diffuse. The words are too clear and crisp. A lovely voice, but wrong for the style.

And finally - Leontyne Price. She's doing a very admirable job of containing her voice, but, her instrument is just wrong for the style. You can hear her over-enunciating the words - she almost scoops into notes in an effort to be understood. The words in this case interfere with the beauty of the tone. And the vibrato is too wide, the focus too far back in her throat, giving her voice a hollow sound that is not bel canto.


If you made it through all three versions, you might have noticed something about this style of aria. It has a form that has come to be called a "da capo" aria. You sing through the first verse, we'll call this "A". Then you sing the middle section, which is always different, we'll call that "B". Then you go back to the beginning -  'da capo' (it's a musical term, meaning to the head, or beginning.) When you return to the top, there are variations that are allowed, even expected. Ornamentations that are supposed to show off the singer's voice. I'm not a big fan of ornamentations, I feel that very often they can distract from the beauty of the melody.


So, I'm still coming back to what is bel canto. Here's what I've got. Many people specifically think of operas written by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti as bel canto. But it can also refer to a way of singing that emphasizes control and tone over emotion. The dynamics tend to be subtle. The orchestras at the time tended to be smaller, and so the voices didn't need to be as big to carry over the instruments. There is far less use of the chest tones, as they weren't needed for volume. Handel and other Baroque composers lend themselves to the bel canto style.


Here is Cecilia Bartoli singing La voce poco fa from Rossini's Barber of Seville. Bartoli is a mezzo-soprano. Rosina, the female lead, is today usually sung by a coloratura soprano. Rossini, however wrote the role for Geltrude Righetti, a coloratura contralto. (I couldn't find a coloratura contralto, but I found this mezzo.)


What is thought of as the Bel Canto Era, 1800 - 1840, had a lot going on, politically, socially, and artistically: Napoleon; the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution; the term "scientist" was used for the first time in 1833. It must have been an amazing time to been alive. Old forms were dying out and new ones quickly rising to prominence. There had always been advancements, but in this period changes were affecting everyone. Because the war caused shortages, fashions changed drastically to adapt. Technology was becoming a force that could not be stopped. Advances in farming and manufacturing were changing the way the lower classes lived and worked. Countries were appearing and disappearing at an alarming rate.


We have become accustomed to a world in flux. People at the beginning of the 19th century were not. There had been warning signs that change was on the horizon: a couple of notable revolutions, some scientific discoveries. But nothing to prepare them for what was to happen at the turn of the century.


I think that bel canto was a holdout from an older style. Opera was growing and changing. Orchestras were becoming larger, the castrati were being replaced by tenors and women. In order to be heard over the instruments, more chest voice was required in the upper registers. The stories around which operas were being written were becoming grittier, more realistic. Bel canto reminded everyone of a world that was known, predictable and safe.


Bel canto was largely forgotten except for a few of the operas: the best known is the Barber of Seville (which was notably performed both by Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker - but their versions were also not in the bel canto style, so I won't include them here). 


In the 1960s, another era of vast change, bel canto was revived, with more and more of the operas being produced. Perhaps, this too, was a longing for safe and  secure. A world that no longer existed, and probably never really had. Stories are absurd, words are unrecognizable, but none of that matters. What matters is the beauty of the human voice. Controlled and glorious in its perfection. Bel canto.

Stiff neck

For those of you who may not know; I was cruelly and viciously attacked by our porch swing last week. It has never acted out before, and always been peaceable and friendly. We are now watching it closely for further signs of aggression, but it will be quite a while before I am willing to trust its seeming compliant attitude.


OK, what really happened, I sat on it, a chain broke, and it threw me over the back, landing on my head, neck and shoulder in a weird side/back tumble. 


It's been a week, and I'm still whimpering and in pain. Feeling sorry for myself, and making life miserable for those around me. But that damned swing really threw me for a loop - quite literally. My body no longer bends in those directions willingly.


But, here's why I'm writing about it. My neck hurts. Moving it is painful. By mid-afternoon, this has translated into pain in my jaw, which makes opening my mouth difficult. So, what have I been doing? I've been trying to really concentrate on support. But, my back hurts too, and standing in the correct position for very long is difficult. The sensible thing would be to take some time off, and let my body recuperate.


Except that I had two performances of Cinderella last week, (just days after the attack), a performance of Hansel & Gretel this week, followed by a recital where I'll be performing Schubert's Der Hirt auf dem Felsen. (Here is Christa Ludwig singing with Gervase de Peyer on clarinet, if you are curious. There isn't any video, so you can listen while you read.) So, taking time off really isn't an option.


Not terribly long ago, I tried to explain to my doctor that when you make your living through singing, a note to your employer really doesn't help anything. I don't think he understood just what it is that I do.


So anyway, what to do? I realized this morning that I'm going about it badly. I've been concentrating on support - the abdominal muscles, thighs, butt cheeks. When what I need to be working on is relaxation of the vocal mechanism. My problem isn't support or breath. It's simply that Second Basic Element - Relaxation of the Vocal Mechanism. I've been fighting that. Trying to force those muscles to relax. Talk about oxymoronic - using force and relax in the same sentence! Every time I try that, I can feel the muscles in my neck respond by getting tighter and tighter. All I can think of is that picture I posted of Diana Ross.  Really focus on her neck. You can see the tension there. That's not good.


Is doing this properly easy? No. I understand that it goes against everything that you think you should be doing. Even after all these years, when my focus is turned away from what I usually do, to something deceptively simple because of a stupid accident and tension and pain. It all comes down to this: if singing hurts, you're doing something wrong. 


I'd like to tell you that this realization has made everything fall into place, and that I'm now singing effortlessly again. I'd be lying. The loose-jawed submissive look is very difficult right now. But, I'm working on it, trying to relax and not not force it. 


I tell my students to work from their strengths, and then stretch into new ground. While the Schubert isn't new ground, its not necessarily my strength. At the moment, the aria from Boito's opera, Mefistofele, L'altra notte is my strength. (Here's Regine Crespin singing L'altra notte) And this can change from time to time. Last year Vissi d'arte from Puccini's Faust was it. This year, not so much. If I start with L'altra notte, and work into Mozart's Alleluia, I'm giving myself a much better chance on everything, even the Witch in Hansel & Gretel.


This post has been all about me and my current struggle. And I've included the music I have because it's important to me, at the moment. If O Danny Boy or Yellow Submarine is your strength, then start there. Start and end each practice session with a strength, whatever that may be. My point, and I do have one, is that all of us struggle with some of the most basic elements of singing from time to time. I have seen terror in the eyes of some highly paid singers as they weren't sure if that high note was going to be where they expected it to be. But, we all keep going, and learning, and sometimes re-learning how to sing. No one person ever knows everything about singing, and studying the art can take a lifetime.


And, finally, just because I can ~