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Something that continually flabbergasts me—and I mean this as neutrally as possible, without any hint of condescension—is the fact that so many otherwise earnest and capable students of singing seem to be 100% alright with bringing to the table a level of text comprehension which is somewhere between hazy and non-existent. I encounter this all the time. It’s mind-boggling, particularly when their teachers and mentors don’t seem particularly concerned about it, either. 

It’s mind-boggling chiefly because I myself would never find the motivation to sing something at all, without the meaning first fixed firmly in mind. 

Without this bedrock, the singer’s worldview is only this:

And I get that: there’s a relentless orientation toward the “final product,” and in my experience singers are rather more susceptible to this than instrumentalists, on the whole. Many of them will get all the way through the studio class or the recital without having the faintest notion that the poet has turned a subjunctive phrase in irony, or that a wry allusion is being drawn, if they can. And they can, so they do. 

The choice of shoes, carriage of the hands and arms, and the clarity of the vowel must be minded closely, but not the poetry. Teacher smiles approvingly. Nice performance. 

One of the surest signs that the actual, you know, substance and content of the piece are being glossed over a tad is when a singer, whether in his native language or another, gets the stanzas all crossed up: “♫In einem Bächlein helle, da schoss in froher Eil’ / und sah’s mit kaltem … Blu-…-te… ♫ 

…Ruh-roh. May we begin again?” 

This happens because the act of performance has been rehearsed without the meaning having been completely internalized first. 

For me, it’s entirely natural for the absorption and rumination of the text to be well underway long before groundbreaking has begun with the music itself. That’s the process I’m comfortable with and enjoy the most—and it’s exactly the same when I’m accompanying. 

I’m beginning to make peace with the idea that it’s not so for everyone, though. 

With the singers I coach, I try as far as time permits to be as much language and literature tutor as repetiteur—the goal being to get the students to see that the “final product” they’re after must, if it is to be genuine and secure, emanate from their own personal relationship with the material and not from sheer rehearsal.