Soprano ditziness dispelled.
12:33 p.m.
I have a funny story about said soprano. I was recently having tea and a scone with a piano student who is also studying composition, a mature student (meaning over the age of 21) who has already completed one degree in Fine Arts at a different university and who happens to sing in the choir and is seriously considering taking voice as a second instrument in the fall, and we got to talking about the annoying clarinettist who is also in the choir. This girl is a fairly sharp indicator of what other people are thinking, because she will blurt it out when others remain tacit. So, the story that the pianist told me is that this girl approached the soprano, dressed as she is wont to with most of her creamy breasts on display, and said, �Soprano, why does your shirt stop here and your boobs stop here?� Whereupon Soprano replied in her best Mae West style, �Well, honey, if you don�t overstate it, you may as well not state it at all.�
Also, during our collation in the cafeteria, we were joined briefly by my former student for whom I won�t write a recommendation for officer school, who encouraged the pianist strongly that if she was going to study voice, she should do so with �mom� here, who is a fabulous teacher. The pianist had already asked around and heard from some of my other students that I was �awesome�. Of course, this is very flattering, but you must remember that these kids have never studied with anyone else, and would think anyone was great. But the girl in question, the pianist that is, had been informed by her fellow students, upon enquiring about taking voice lessons not for credit, that only the assistant conductor of the choir--a woman whose pedagogy and methodology I question, considering the way she sings herself and the results I have heard from her other students--gave lessons to non-music students. This, of course, is totally bogus. Any singing teacher can and will teach privately. I have done so on numerous occasions. This girl was also under the impression that I only taught voice majors and not second-instrument study. I quickly dispelled these misconceptions and assured her that she could study with me privately if she could come up with the funds and as a second-instrument study come fall. Sheepishly she admitted that she had already set up lessons with this other woman, and had even had one. I told her that it wasn�t a big deal, she could and should continue with her if she was happy, but just to keep in mind that she didn�t have to, as her colleagues seemed to believe. I even told her she should start spreading it around that their original belief was erroneous.
What this woman has done is guarantee herself a pool of would-be singing students from which to draw upon by associating herself so closely with the choir. Many of these kids would like to learn to sing better, and she is there, ready, willing and able to provide them with what they think they need. I think for the most part she is probably not doing too much harm, except in the fostering of better-than-thou attitudes among many of the kids. But the soprano of the massive mammaries had studied with her for several months before becoming a music student (she is not one of mine) and I noticed a sharp difference in her before and after voice. Before she had a huge sound, beautiful and untamed. After she was holding it all inside. It sounded choked. Even after being with Gail for a year, she has not lost that �strangled� quality.
Wow, all this from defending the intelligence of sopranos last night!
from Dr. Geek
Though coming a little late to the party, I was fascinated by your descriptions of "Soprano Ditziness". Episodes like this make me wonder if we have not taken the politically correct reverence for relativism a little bit too far (e.g. I can do what I want because I�m just being �me�). Is the desire for a shared sense of manners and decorum inherently Fattist? I hope not. I hark back to the words of a wonderfully Rubenesque woman I briefly dated who said �If you�re large and don�t look FINE, you�re doing something wrong.�
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