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It’s all in the breath

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Liz Garnett talks about changing your vocabulary regarding dynamics so that your singers don’t get that unsupported, airy sound when singing soft.

I have been developing a vocabulary of expression to substitute for words like ‘loud’ and ‘soft’ for some time, depending on the repertoire I’ve been working with: intimate, conspiratorial, introspective versus joyful, triumphant, devil-may-care. But the discussion with singers this weekend finally helped me actually articulate the point of this vocabulary.

The reason we like to have a variety of dynamics in a musical performance is because it enhances the expressive impact. The change in volume level is there to create an effect that evokes an emotional response, not merely to change the strength of the sound signal. So, it is a more direct route to an effective performance if we talk in terms of the expressive purpose of the music rather than the techniques we might use to make it happen.

That is, if we want a passge to sound intimate, it makes more sense to ask people to sing something intimately than to ask them to sing quietly in the hope that the result would be to sound intimate.

Of course, this is what instrumentalists hate about choir directors: that we use these metaphors instead of simple musical terms like loud and soft.


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  1. Singing in a number of professional choirs, I’ve heard imagery that is both silly and imagery that is profound. I’ve heard the opening of the Bach Magnificat described as “young girls frolicking through the meadow”  (not helpful) and I’ve heard the Randall Thompson war horse Alleluia described as “the heart-cramping and all but silent “Alleluia” that rises from the soul at the moment of its deepest despair,” referring to its composition during one of the darkest hours of World War II. (very helpful and transforming) Not all metaphors are created equal.

  3. Well,  I don’t have that many words, but will refer to a demonstration of dynamics by a junior college choir.
    Please go to: YouTube.com.  Tag   Rossini  Stabat Mater, St. Pete J C, Dr Edward Palmer  1/2 ,   and 2/2.  You will hear a wonderful organ introduction on 1/2 (2 mins. long)  and exchange between choir and soloists. 2/2 will demonstrate remarkable control by people just out of high school, or out one year.
    We only attempted to keep the same quality when singing f or p.  Imagery fails as a mature tool. Above, someone suggested that the text can be a source for indication of energy. Right on!
    Being a great believer in the “unity of opposites,” I suggest: for loud, think soft. For soft:, think loud. This stabilizes the vocal mechanism and helps maintain a uniform sound, color, if you wish.
     
    You will not find a more meaningful performance of the Rossini anywhere on YouTube, or any web site or commercial CD. I am objective about this. A couple little pitch inaccuracies, sure!
     
    It all begins with well phonated thoughts, in our opinion!
     
    Edward Pallmer

  4. As John suggests, from a particular viewpoint all expression and related dynamics emanate from the text.
     
    I like the way Liz thinks, and would add one thought: The more we tie everything we sing to an authentic process of human connection rather than attempting to “create an effect that evokes an emotional response,” the greater our ultimate impact will be. In other words, if we are singing Ave Maria as a poignant and heartfelt plea for Mary to bring peace and healing to specific people/s, the more we connect our audience members to our authentic humanness/expression, and the more deeply we are likely to move them. But if each singer’s goal is to evoke an emotional response in the audience, their connection to text and music will be one step removed from authenticity … and the audience will be less powerfully–and less genuinely–moved.
     
    Not that Liz is suggesting this, but to illustrate the difference between the two related but significantly different processes, here’s an anecdote: I was having an after-session discussion with a number of choral directors, and we were discussing the various permutations of singing with expression. One director shared her high school choir’s goal–to emotionally affect as many audience members as possible. To that end, they would go out and count the kleenex under the seats after every performance, and calibrate their impact accordingly. I tried to suggest to this director that their goal actually sabotaged their authentic expressivity; the audience had now become their “other.”  So, instead of genuinely connecting their text and music to a specific and personally authentic desire to seek healing from Mother Mary, for example, their objective had now become “to make the audience cry.”
     
    Getting back to Liz’s point, using adjectives such as “triumphant” rather than fortissimo will move a singer closer to authenticity, but I would invite all to consider that such adjectives are still result-oriented and, as such, they still result in inauthentic expression and less genuine impact than we might hope for. And again, I don’t know Liz’s exact position from that short blurb, but would suggest a simple tweak to the formula: Empower the singers to connect to their objectives and their purpose for singing, and help them find reasons within that context for their different dynamic levels. For example, “triumphant” might shift just a little to “celebrate your victory with your peers” or “get your other to realize how amazing their victory was.”
     
    Grammatically, it’s really just a minor shift from adjectives to verbs, but that simple shift can make a HUGE difference.
     
    There’s much more on my website and in by book about all of this, should anyone want to delve deeper.
     
    All my best,
     
    Tom

  5. Liz makes some interesting points, but as both an historian and a dual vocalist/instrumentalist I have to take a slightly different view.
     
    First, the reason we have different dynamics is simply that it is a musical variable over which we have some control.  The question is how that control is actually — USED, and historically its use for “expressive” or emotional impact is very recent, with exploration in the late 18th century and the full development during (what else?!!) the romantic period.  The North German “Emfindsamer Stile” (sensitive style) turned into blatant emotionalism during the 19th century.  Most (and I’m tempted to say ALL) renaissance vocal and choral music never had dynamics indicated, although too many modern editions–especially those from the early 20th century–labor under the weight of detailed editorial “suggestions” that many conductors treat as if they came from the composers.
     
    The reason dynamic markings were not needed is not, in my opionion, that they were not used, but that their use was so very obvious that nobody felt it necessary to put them in the music.  Composers started with the text–ALWAYS!  The texts carried not only the meanings of the words but the moods and emotions they represented.  A good composer set those words to music in such a way that the natural declamation, varying from high-pitched to low-pitched phrases, expressed the moods or emotions of the words.  One has only to look at and listen to the ending of “Absalom, fili mi” by Josquin (or de la Rue or whoever) to see this in action.  Tone painting rather primitive by romantic standards, but enormously effective by renaissance standards. 
     
    We all know that Gabrielli’s “Sonata pian’ e forte” was the first example of the use of dynamic markings in instrumental music, but do we ever ask why he used them?  To me it’s obvious.  We know that the performances at St. Mark’s were usually mixed vocal/instrumental, and in those cases the instrumentalists had the texts in front of them and knew how to interpret them.  But purely instrumental music had no texts, and thus no clues.  In dance music it didn’t matter.  In instrumental church music he obviously felt that it did.  Q.E.D.
     
    But Liz is correct that all too often singing quietly for intimacy results in unsupported and non-energetic tone.  Being both soft and intense is a real challenge!  One trick that I discovered in the recording studio is to have my singers sing as quietly as possible, but give accents to all the syllables.  That automatically calls up the necessary breath support, and energizes the intimate sound.  For some reason I’ve not usually asked for the same thing in live performance, and now I’m wondering why!
     
    But to my mind, this is very much lke the old idea, repeated over and over until people start believing it, that “major is happy and minor is sad.”  That’s again one available variable that composers have used since the 18th century, but more effectively since the 19th, in the service of emotional impact, but it was CERTAINLY not in the minds of the composers or singers of medieval chant, and the thousands of works based on that chant, who used both major and minor modes interchangeably without any attribution of emotion to the modes.  (The ancient Greek theories of Ethos notwithstanding!)  I’ll admit to having a problem dealing with the “happy, major” music Pergolesi used to set his “Stabat Mater”–surely one of the most heart-wrenching texts in the repertoire–since it goes directly against the 19th century emotional connotations!
     
    And to Allen:  I’ve never known instrumentalists to object to the use of metaphors.  I use them all the time, and my ensembles have more often than not been mixed vocal/instrumental ensembles.  Most often my students are playing all the notes but none of the music, so I’ll ask them to make it dance, but I AM capable of also giving them very specific technical instructions on how to make that happen.  What instrumentalists WILL object to, with good and sufficient reason, is conducting that looks like interpretive dance and ignores the downbeats that are absolutely essential to counting rests!  Robert Shaw, Fiora Contino, and many others have successfully worked choral-orchestral performances and managed to give EVERYONE what they needed, so it isn’t an either/or situation unless one chooses to make it so.
     
    All the best,
    John

  6. As a music ed student, I have experienced all that in choir, but never really gave too much thought to it. Thank you for posting this, it was very insightful and helpful.

  7. In my experience, untrained singers (or those I’ve trained myself) have no trouble with expressive rather than dynamic directions, and it’s very effective. The more professional the singers, the more they want dynamics and don’t find metaphors useful.

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