I recently attended a recital with Carrie Hennessey and John Cozza at the Crocker Art Museum celebrating a current exhibit about Toulouse-Lautrec. The song selections were marvelous: Satie, Poulenc, Schoenberg and Gustave Charpentier. All had something to do with night club singing. The Charpentier was the aria from Louise.
The Schoenberg group included a song "Arie aus dem Spiegel" on a text by Emanuel Schikaneder, the librettist for the Magic Flute. Carrie thought it sounded like something Papageno would sing. It is necessary at this point to remember that Schikaneder was the original Papageno and not just the librettist of Magic Flute.
Styles of singing split into two branches in the twentieth century.
The heavy style of Wagner and Puccini continued throughout the century, tapering off only toward the end. Evidence of this can be found in the concerts hosted by the Richard Tucker Music Foundation which always feature heavy singers. (Curiously, this is this evening and features James Valenti as the 2010 Richard Tucker Award Winner. From San Francisco Leah Crocetto is a grant recipient. She is by far the heaviest woman’s voice among the Adler Fellows.)
Then came Expressionism and Arnold Schoenberg. Here is a bit from Erwartung (1909).
There is a lot of shouting in this short example. Schoenberg is sort of the anti-Wagner. Where Wagner is a sea of tonality with almost constant modulating, Schoenberg carefully avoids establishing a key, and therefore cannot modulate away from it. Wagner is still about singing. His roots are firmly in the operatic world. In Schoenberg we have returned to the world of the monodists. The singing is there solely to support the drama. This is the attitude of all the modernists.
This is a nice bit from Lulu (1979 version) "O Freiheit."
The goal for the singer is to get out of it alive. It may be important to know that Anna Netrebko's manager won't let her sing Lulu, though she would like to.
Modernism requires a narrow piercing sound rather than a large round one. Because established singers are reluctant to perform this repertoire, it can provide an opportunity for young singers. Marilyn Horne made her San Francisco Opera debut as Marie in Wozzeck.
With heavy Wagner/verismo singing the danger lies in over-singing, in pushing the voice to produce beyond its natural capacity. The danger in modern singing lies in never really establishing a proper legato. I must say Marilyn produced the most legato Marie I've ever heard. It is possible to sing Berg and not destroy yourself.
Here is a personal favorite from Nixon in China (1987) "I am the wife of Mao Zedong."
How can you not love this? Kathleen Kim who sang in Tales of Hoffmann is doing it on this season's simulcast.
It is important to know that there is no particular style associated with modern music. Stravinsky for one deeply resented even the suggestion that there was more in the music than was written on the page. Any singer will tell you there is always much much more.
I have heard a bit of Sprechstimme by now--that's Schoenberg's invention of speaking set to music. I think if memory serves that it first appears in Gurrelieder (1901/11 [I think written around 1901 and orchestrated closer to 1911--He's supposed to have forgotten how to orchestrate in Mahler's style by then and had to revive a long abandoned technique.]), the orchestrated song cycle that Schoenberg wrote while he was still in his Mahler phase. In the performance of Gurrelieder I heard at the San Francisco Symphony Hans Hotter performed the Sprechstimme. His was very speech-like.
Sprechstimme is notated like normal vocal music, except where the note heads would normally appear are X's. This leaves the performer with a wide range of options, extending from normal speech set to music, sometimes called melodrama, to something that sounds a lot like singing. Hotter was like a magnificent old actor. His motivation in performing the part seemed rather like mine--voice is shot, but I can still do Sprechstimme. He was the best I've heard.
The main later examples are Pierrot Lunaire (1912) and Moses und Aron (1930/32). My theory is that Schoenberg was as bored by Moses as we are listening to it, and this is why it was never finished. He turned out to be not as high minded as he thought he was. According to this article in Wikipedia there is Sprechstimme in Wozzeck and Lulu. So I missed that as a texture.
I think Pierrot Lunaire is the only one that is regularly performed by sopranos who seem to want to sing. The Christine Schaefer Pierrot Lunaire quite often sounds like out of tune singing. Deliberately out of tune--it's clear this isn't an accident. I would be curious to hear a female perform this in a more talky style. Maybe they are trying too hard to come close to the notated pitches. I think only the general contour is required.
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I have decided this article would be far better with a few examples. First we have Hans Hotter's wonderful example from Gurrelieder.
Here is a very nice clip from Moses und Aron. One sings, the other doesn't. The two brothers alternate, thus giving a very clear idea of the difference between Sprechstimme and singing.
I openly admit to a mania for this film of Pierrot Lunaire with Christine Schaefer.
I have a relationship to Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. I decided years ago in my synthesizer phase that if my voice was gone I could still do Sprechstimme. I would record midi files of the songs and perform them to my own accompaniment. I got pretty far along with this project and thought they sounded good. I couldn't get the waltz to sound like a waltz, but I notice they don't either. This project was fun. Pierrot Lunaire sounded good on synthesizer.
This DVD is a film with Pierrot Lunaire as the sound track. The visuals are of New York City around Times Square. Christine walks down a hall in a seedy building; she shakes a doorknob and a lion roars; she goes to her apartment, and it's filled with giant cockroaches. I've been in New York apartments and this is not unrealistic. The real cockroaches are maybe not quite this big. She brushes one off her neck.
Christine is both subject and object in this film. She has a life and observes it at the same time. At one point she repeatedly pushes herself off the top of one of the tall buildings. This is completely wacko and I love it. Her rendition of the piece is fabulous. I am beginning to understand Christine. It's conducted by Pierre Boulez.
Here is the bit I saw on TV that led me to buy this.
I suppose a girl baritone would not be right in the part. Girls, if you are a lyric soprano with good German diction, it would not hurt your career prospects to try your hand at Pierrot Lunaire or Lulu. #ad
I have bought a DVD of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron from the Vienna State Opera, and it is definitely not a chick flick. It reminds me a little of Anna I who sings and Anna II who dances by Kurt Weill. In this case it's Moses, Franz Grundheber, baritone, who talks and brother Aron, Thomas Moser, tenor, who sings. These two are the only real characters. They are set against the chorus and occasional individuals who break out from the crowd of Jews.
They argue over the nature of God who Moses sees as invisible unimaginable, eternal, omnipresent and omnipotent. It is as if Abraham had never existed. This image of God is presented as the invention of Moses who relies on his brother to present his vision to the crowd. The people have turned to the Egyptian vision of God and cannot believe in this abstraction, but when Aron turns the rod into a serpent, they believe.
The main argument is between the two brothers who appear intertwined both together and in opposition. Aron doesn't seem completely convinced.
The production is minimalist black on black. Each individual in the crowd carries a large photograph of himself and the word ICH [German for I] is drawn on the walls. Worshiping idols is the worship of self. It is unrelentingly abstract and modernist.
They agree to flee into the desert, turn their pictures to the floor and erase all the ICHs from the walls. This doesn't last. When Moses goes up onto Mount Sinai, doubt emerges in a whispered singing and talking fugue from the chorus. They complain loudly that without their old gods there is no law and order.
Aron relents and agrees to give them back their old gods by putting up a giant word ICH. They put on gold outfits and go back to worshiping themselves. Some men commit suicide. Moses comes back with the ten commandments and is pissed.
I'm not high minded enough to like this. The pagans seem to be having more fun, but even they are pretty boring. Remind me--why exactly is it that people like Schoenberg? I rather like Pierot Lunaire and have created midi files for it [the idea was that Sprechstimme is probably as close to actual singing as I could get now], but this is dense and square like blocks of wood. I feel my idea that opera is a chick flick is validated by this.
