Wednesday woes
11:08 p.m.
Today was long and sad, sort of. I had a fantasy that today would be the first Wednesday where all my students show up for their lessons. Alas it was not to be. Several minutes before the first one was due, a sweet young fellow showed up at my door to inform me that my baritone was ill with some sort of respiratory ailment and would not be in. So I used that time to practise my own stuff.
Then I proceeded to experience singing-teacher frustration at the hands of my next two students. The first one is a very sweet girl, totally untutored in the technicalities of music. She is just now learning how to read in one of her courses, although rudiments doesn�t get taught until next term. She�s a natural. That doesn�t mean that she is not in need of instruction, just that she sings rather well without having a single idea of how she does it. My job, as I see it, is to teach her how to fish so that she can always put food on her table, rather than to just hand her technique on a platter. I want my students to think, and I want them to be able to leave my studio and work on their own without constantly needing me to push them in the right direction. My nefarious plot is to make myself dispensable.
This sweet girl, this �natural�, is now experiencing paralysis of a sort. It is as though I were to explain to you exactly how you walk, what muscles do what, and you are so burdened with the knowledge that you cannot now move one foot in front of the other. She has always sung easily, she does not appreciate having to think about what she does. As a result, she is starting to experience a bit of tension. I warned her that this might happen, but now that it is actually happening, she is upset. I am the object of her frustration because I am the one putting her through this exercise.
After lunch I saw another first-year student, but this is the one whose voice is overly developed and whom I am trying to �deconstruct� so that we find the pure core underneath. I explained this to her. My analogy was that I want to wash off the makeup and take off the pretty clothes, and find out what the real beauty is underneath all that. This sounds all fine and well in theory, but in practice it means that she has to forget all the training she has had for the past several years and revert to singing like a little girl, or more like a boy soprano. Imagine King�s C0llege or a similar boys� choir sound. So she is frustrated that I am insisting on this step �backward�, and feels a little stupid at being made to sing this way. In my opinion, if she were to follow my directions for a week or two solid, we could dispense with the exercise and go back to building up the voice. But it is hard to break bad habits, and let�s face it folks, she�s only 18!
At least my student after her was a little more willing to try new things. She is also a natural, and I find that they are the hardest to teach. They have to hit a brick wall before they realize that they can�t progress on their own. My final student for the day is one who has been with me for three years and has actually graduated from the programme. She is paying me privately to prepare her for an audition for a music therapy programme at a different university, and today we had a major breakthrough with her technique. For three years I have been telling her to relax her face when she sings, and for three years she has never done so. So today, she brought up the business of working on old repertoire, but really getting to the bottom of certain technical problems, to which I replied Hallelujah! So I told her she would have to do what I told her to do, and then I let out an evil laugh, which must have been rather disconcerting. We went through St0rchenbotschaft by Hug0 W0lf, a piece she sang on her recital last spring, and I insisted that she relax her face, stopping her every time the three lines in her forehead showed up. For the first time ever she sang in tune, had less trouble with long phrases and breath control, and produced a better tone than I have ever heard before. She was quite frankly amazed. All this we could have done years ago, but she just wouldn�t do what I told her to do. Damn I know my stuff!
There was a reception afterwards to launch the new book of Dr. M. I even bought a copy. There was a spread of little sandwiches, cheese, veggies and dip, and chocolate truffles, of which I snarfed quite a few. I also had a glass of red wine with which to toast Dr. M�s accomplishment. I am very pleased to call her my friend.
Writing group was fun. Bruce was back, our token male, and it put me in a rather giddy mood. Everything I came up with struck me as amusing, and I had a great deal of trouble reading my last piece out loud with a straight face. I actually broke down laughing a couple of times. Interestingly enough, I didn�t think it was funny when I was writing it. In the rereading, though, it took on a whole different shade of meaning. I drove Patsy home and had a heart-to-heart about the goings-on in our department which have made life less joyful than it should be. She was very sympathetic, having gone through years of association with the fine arts department and their various rifts and abysses. University politics are crazy, and a small university has it especially bad. There is nowhere to run, no place to hide.
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