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RECENTLY, AFTER THE CONCLUSION of a master class, a young teacher approached me with a question that I suspect numerous other teachers (young and older) have grappled with. She wanted to know how to answer her young students who frequently ask, "Why do I have to sing art songs?" The underlying but unspoken premise behind this question is, of course, "Why can't I sing opera arias right away? That's the really important repertoire."
There are many reasons we sing art songs. First and foremost is that we learn from any vocal repertoire we sing, and singing songs gives us a unique chance to work with words as poetry. Singers are wordsmiths; words are our stock in trade. Art songs (or classical songs) were poems before a composer was inspired by their words and images to set them in a musical context as a song. When we sing art songs, we are singing poems. Not unlike the ancient bards, as storytellers, we share these poems with our listening audience.
Singing all vocal repertoire-arias, art songs, oratorio solos, chamber works-demands that we pay attention to words and how they interact in their musical settings. To paraphrase author Ernest Hemingway, these details are a "moveable feast"; they work for preparing every piece of vocal music we sing, no matter the genre. One word by itself has only its own literal meaning, but when juxtaposed with other words, images are created. Trying to capture and understand the interaction of words with the musical setting is part of good performance preparation.
This particular column is not meant to be a criticism or indictment against opera, a music genre that I truly love. But opera is a very different art form from song. As with all other vocal forms, opera has its own identity, structure, and performance practices. Preparing for an operatic performance (or indeed, any vocal performance form) takes no less thought on the singer's part than preparation for a song recital, but the details and nuances are quite different.
Because art songs are a smaller vocal form than operatic arias, the textual images and interpretive requirements tend to be much more compressed than in arias. Including songs in our repertoire offers an opportunity to experience and work with...