In Their Own Words

One of the great things about doing something a few times is that you have a chance to improve your process. Could you imagine only doing some things once in a lifetime? I can't imagine the failure rate of a musician if he or she only played something once! (This is different from improvisation, and I will discuss that in a later post). 

On this list of being able to improve (or, in some cases, redeem oneself) is the opportunity to teach several years in a row. I remember my first years as a coach, or as a piano teacher. 

I should probably give all of those students their money back. 

At Crescendo, it has taken me three years to figure out how to teach more effectively. I have also learned not to fill every minute from the beginning. Both instincts were right. I was able to navigate my own schedule more during the Institute. I was also given more leeway in constructing song (or vocal arts) courses that seemed to be applicable and interesting. 

On the docket this summer were two:

Schumann, "Frauenliebe und Leben" via specifics of German Diction 

songs by Nicolae Bretan, with words by Hungarian poet Ady Endre

I stole an idea from Laura Brooks Rice and Christopher Arneson (my supervisors at the CoOPERAtive program) in that they split song cycles amongst students for complete performances. That way, each student performs one (maybe two) song(s), yet the audience can hear the whole cycle. All of the students focus on polishing their assigned pieces, but they have an excellent overview of a larger whole. When they go back to their universities, conservatories or recital programs, they are armed with something incredibly valuable.

The Schumann was a more popular course. I was joined by my brilliant colleague and native German speaker, mezzo-soprano Uta Runne. She handled the most specific issues with text declamation, vowel quality, clarity. I took care of the musical coaching, phrasing, timing, leading. I performed the cycle with the students in concert this past Friday.

The Ady-Hungarian songs were a gift to do this summer. This was the topic of my doctoral treatise and lecture-recital, and I plan on fleshing this project out someday into a book. Several of the Hungarian vocalists were eager to learn this music. They looked through the table of contents of the score I had brought, and they chose the pieces based on the poetry. They said that they had to memorize a lot of these poems in school. 

Usually, I am the one in vocal coachings correcting language. Not in the case with the Ady-Hungarian-Bretan! The students were all native speakers in a language that I can barely handle, so I gave them the reins in terms of "diction." We had a lot of other things to work on! 

Of specific interest to me is the nature of the Hungarian language to use "word paintings." The grammar in Hungarian is not like any of the other Germanic, Slavic, or Romance languages spoken by Hungary's surrounding countries. This language is literally in a class by itself. The grammar has gender and case. It is through an obstacle course of suffixes and letters (42 letters!) that this language paints things so vividly. 

One of the poems was about a moon, as a metaphor for a person destroyed by love. The student working on this piece had excellent English, so we got into an interesting discussion one day:

BD: This means that the moon is not whole.

KD: Does that mean that the moon is a crescent, like we see in the sky, or is it deformed?

BD: I don't know. This word means more "deformed" than "eclipsed." 

KD: Okay. So we need to color the word that way.

PHOTOS: These are from the song course. One is a picture that I drew (my long-time students have come to appreciate my "art." Let's hope they never write a book!), and the other is a photo with Uta of some of the Schumann and Ady course students.