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IN SEARCH OF THE ONE, TRUE VOCAL METHOD Christopher Leo King Sitting in rapt awe, clutching my wife’s hand in a viselike grasp, unaware of anything except the artist on the stage. His bass-baritone voice so high in overtones, richly colored with the shades of the entire vocal palette, he tastefully acted with his instrument, making Boris Godunov quite literally come alive sans scenery and other stage accoutrement. When he was finished with his monologue, telling of the love of his country and the love for his children, the auditorium exploded in applause so appreciative, that I believed tears formed in the singer’s eyes. There were tears in mine. At the concert’s end, my wife, Mary and myself pushed our way through the throng and made our supplications to the singer, lauding him with just praise for the thrilling performance we had witnessed. During our conversation we came to find he was just “one of the guys” and he asked us out to have an “adult beverage” with he and some guests. Tagging along is not my thing, but we followed anyway and as the evening progressed and the crowd thinned out, we spoke to the man with ever increasing trust and friendliness. As most conversations among singers do, the topic eventually turned to singing. (Remarkable!) Cocksure that he was of the same technical mind set as myself, I let fly with much of the technical jargon I used at that particular moment in time, thinking he would agree wholeheartedly with me. I had, after all, just seen him perform an entire opera at close quarters and had an excellent view of his vocal mechanics. But, I was wrong; dead wrong. That was ten years ago and the artist to which I refer is now my best friend. He is my teacher and he is also one of the finest singers on the world’s stages (if being rehired by the major houses of the world and being paid enormous fees are any indication as to his talent and his artistry). And, he has taught me one very important thing, if he has taught me nothing else, which is certainly not the case; Everything I “knew” was wrong! I had read all the books… Brodnitz, Applebaum, Miller, Herbert-Cesari, Lehman, Garcia, Baker, Bernac, Schiotz, Lamperti, Vennard, Coffin, Reid, Frissel, and even Shakespeare! I had even translated articles from German, Italian and French newspapers and magazines by singers the likes of Caruso, Thill, Melchior and Gigli. I had read and studied all the Otolaryngology manuals that the doctors use and learned all the small, fine points of vocal anatomy. I even sat in on lectures about the voice and vocal therapy at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. I thought I “knew” how to sing. There was a lot of “I” in that last paragraph, now, wasn't there?. My first teacher (and we have all had one of those!) was a remarkable singer and teacher. A beautiful voice that was in excellent condition and a list of accomplishments that read like the liner notes on the back of a Jussi Bjoerling album. The amazing thing, though, was that for a coloratura soprano she didn't squeak or squawk, as her tonal coloration and fluidity of scale were extremely well equalized. The voice was smooth and dark in the right places and the upper register was brilliant, shimmering like the planet Venus in the cold, dark sky. My fondest remembrance of her voice and this technical facility was her singing of “O Luce di Quest’anima” from Donizetti’s Linda di Chamonix with a one minute and 30 second unaccompanied cadenza full of all types of tricky scales and diatonic melisma. When the orchestra entered for the final 4 measures, she was sustaining a high C, riding it to a tasteful crescendo, in tune. It was absolutely hair raising to the listener. I heard her perform this many times always resulting pandemonium in the audience. As a teacher, she had a stable of successful singers. She could teach all day long and never tire of the impositions and the improprieties of her students. Understanding and insightful, she loved what she was doing and was highly successful. I studied for about four years before I had a degree of success with my basically lyric instrument and was able to carry out the assigned roles with rather a good deal of panache. (Even if I do say so myself!) I was taught to sing “darkly” through the D and G area of my passaggio and being a pushed up baritone, this worked rather well. Most importantly though, I was taught to “Hum” on a single pitch. Then, humming into an open “ah”. Then, humming into a vowel exercise of a, e, i, o, u, and returning to ah, all on a single note. Messa di Voce, coloratura, and high notes were added as my facility grew. Trust me, a basic amount of “singing intelligence” went a long way to comprehending and solidifying what I was being taught. How else would a 20 year old former rock singer (albeit, with an unusual upbringing in music) understand legato, coloratura, languages, etc., without this unknown, unnamable intelligence? That I was on the right path was obvious, as by the time I was 25, I was cast in every part for which I auditioned. The next few years were heady indeed and I loved what I was doing. I loved to sing. To explain to you the extent to which I trusted my voice, I would sing the “Flower Song” from Carmen up a whole tone. It was nothing to walk into a rehearsal and sing “Daughter of the Regiment” at 10:00 A.M. not warmed up except for a little humming and one set of scales. My upper register was easy and it was quite easy to sustain "E"s and "F"s above the staff. In succession and practically simultaneously, I performed “Cosi”, “Showboat” and Beethoven’s “Christus an Oelberge”… three totally different styles, tessituras and fachs. Perhaps, what happened next was unavoidable. Then, the inevitable occurred. I ran into a part I did not understand how to sing and it was beyond my years as an artist (Please allow the use of the word “artist” as I still consider myself an entertainer). Whether it was a change of voice, an increase or decrease of hormones or a change of heart I will never be sure. The only thing I am sure of is that I endured and survived it! I often joked, saying I had my midlife crisis at 27. I should have been so lucky! How could this happen to me? I struggled not just with the ignominy involved with being a singer who was having vocal problems, but I was Christopher Leo King! The discomfiture was unnerving to say the very least. My ego was deflated to the point that I was running on my rims and a dark cloud followed me around as I searched in vain for the cause or causes of my downfall. I couldn't seem to get “out of myself”. The cold rain fell and my psyche’s umbrella didn't work anymore. My “technique” was in shambles and my next few years as a tenor were fraught with mistaken choices and an internal fracas that caused me to loose sleep. Great harm came to relationships, both musical and in amities. I was never really sure whether my voice would respond or if some other demon would appear and wreak havoc on my performance. Some performances went extremely well and others not… but I kept singing, believing that my technique would carry the day. Some choices as far as vocal styles and in my technique were not as immediately harmful to my singing, but in the long run caused my voice to turn almost schwer (hard, heavy, weighty, ponderous). This only added to the misconceptions about my “self” and my “voice” (After all, which is which?). One thing, in particular, that helped in this vocal disguise was that I was told by a person (who should have known better) if you open your mouth more, that it is more likely that your throat, (i.e., your voice) is also open. After a few months of this idea, it felt as if my voice was anchored to my chest by my jaw but I kept on, believing that the sound that was coming out of me was correct. My once leggero instrument sought to mask itself in a framework of hard steeliness. I went to sleep at night with a throat that felt tied in knots and would throb from the vigorous workout it received. I sang louder and louder thinking this was also correct, probably in an effort to be “heard”. In essence I was crying out for help. I had little idea that this technique could have been the problem. Not the technique itself, but the keeping intact of the technique. By keeping, I mean, I trusted it and was unknowingly keeping the root of my problem close to my heart. It was like being fed a small amount of poison so, like Rappaccini’s Daughter, I was able to stand more poison and more poison, until the withdraw of the slightest amount of poison would kill me. Or so I thought. The ensuing years brought changes, some good, some not so good. But my edificial mountain of technical “knowledge” grew and pretty soon I had an Everest of things I thought were singing. Façade upon façade, much like the da Vinci portrait where he painted over the Mona Lisa four times. (Only I was the one with the mustache!) More paint! That's the answer! It barricaded me from the uncertainty of my insecurities and I was generally a happy singer. My performances were good enough for me to continue on. I met my future wife and straightened out a lot of the emotional baggage that had been weighing me down. My upper register flourished and I sang a high tessitura once more. (Amazing how that happens?) Which brings us back to the beginning of this story. Almost immediately, upon studying with this remarkable singer, I began to prosper from the ministrations of my “new teacher”. I tried my best to combine my old ideas with his new ideas and for a time I got away with it. Roles came with increasing frequency and the reviews were always favorable as were the audience’s ovations. But there were new “gifts” in store for Yours Truly. Then, my “new teacher” took a contract with a large house in Germany and I came down with a roaring case of Lyme Disease and had to quit singing altogether… due mainly to a one year malaise caused by sustaining a 106 degree fever for over an hour. Then came the headaches and the arthritis in my knees. I took a job with a large automobile company in Parts Logistics and was totally unhappy. As I felt better and it seemed my voice had been unaffected by the Lyme, my wife talked me into quitting my well paying job (It didn't take much convincing!) and return to the stage and singing. This was just two years ago and all is going well. My new teacher has since returned to the United States from his contractual obligations in Germany and we work frequently (often 3 times a week or more) and I have given myself over to singing this new way. But, I have begun to question and search again. No, not for a new teacher or technique, but for a possible cause or causes for the things that occurred earlier in my life so that I may be of help to myself in the future and to be of help to others. The technique that my first teacher taught me was the technique her teacher had tailored specifically to her voice and her needs. This included a rounding of the voice in certain areas to take away or mask the acidity that most high, smaller-voiced sopranos demonstrate or the smoothing of the words to allow her an ability to negotiate the almost absurd fioratura and scales of a Philene, Lakmé or Astralfiammante. My needs and voice were of a different caliber and I “brought to the table” (Don't you just hate this phrase?) different conceptions and problems that needed to be overcome. Because her voice was basically a lyric coloratura soprano, was it proper for her to teach me to sing as she had been taught? Where does it say that Joe Blow has to sing like Little Sally Smuckendorf? Are we in our never ending search for perfection in others trying to make everyone sound like the tenor or “soprano du jour” (God Forbid!) or the tenor and soprano of yesterday? Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote this in his essay, Self-Reliance: "Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakespeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles." It is somewhat like the Mobius, a single, unbroken wholeness in flowing movement. A willingness to move with the constantly changing cycles of our life process, transforming our challenges into useful solutions. Creating a state of Oneness with your voice, joining the whole and the part, the masculine and the feminine, the expansion and contraction, spirit and matter, all control and no control, yin and yang, black and white, organized chaos…CHIAROSCURO? But…always returning to yourself and the beginning! Perhaps, there is no one, true technique…it is just you and this beast you have called a voice, an unruly child who reacts to its own whims and desires. It is indeed the lucky singer who believes they have some control over it. Or perhaps the best and most fortunate singers are the ones that go a little deeper and loose a little more control. The ones that are not afraid to try something new and different…to be what only they can be. Like the Mobius, the voice of the artist is constantly turning inside out and outside in throughout our entire existence here on this earth. A kind of balancing act, a tightrope act amongst humanity. For without balance, there is no artistry. Go with the flow. ©2001 Christopher Leo King All rights reserved

I'm fairly sure that Christopher's story will ring bells of recognition for many singers. The extent to which we are victims of our own desire to sing and of our human foibles often lead singers to create similar paths. The moment I hear the expression *vocal method* you've already lost me. The whole process of singing has been analyzed to death and that isn't bad. I mean, that isn't bad, as long as the analyzing doesn't become the process. Let's just get our breathing practiced, ye ole yawn position in place and some clear vowels going. Come on, that happens in the first few years of lessons. The rest is subtile mind work. Even the muscle training is mind work. Singing is 90% mind work. Imagination. Creation. Every voice teacher is at a disadvantage because they are striving for the impossible. Only the basics of singing can be taught. Glorious singing cannot be taught, though singers can be guided. (Language, phrasing, movement, etc. can be taught to a great degree) And then, having a singing career is not just another animal, it's a whole new zoo, in another country, .....on some other planet. Lets be realistic. No matter how you try to explain it, two little vocal chords are not able to produce sound which carries over a 150 piece opera orchestra ...were it not a phenomenon. Can physics measure the thought waves which support our singing? What makes a voice that one single frequency higher than the blaring trumpets? Who can explain the sensation and the result of simultaneously doing and not doing? Controlling and not controlling? Observing and Allowing? What do singers really need to learn? Respect, Wonder, Gratefulness, and Awe for that which we experience when we allow our bodies and minds to host the phenomenon called singing. To listen less and to hear more. To do less and allow more. Tenor Christopher Leo King has enjoyed a varied career in opera, operetta, concert and music theater. Known for his brilliant upper register and vivid portrayals of such protagonists as Hoffmann, Don Jose, Cavaradossi, Pinkerton, and Rodolfo, he is equally at home in the roles of Eisenstein from Die Fledermaus, Danilo and Camille from Die Lustige Witwe and Sou Chong from Das Land Des Lächelns. His forays into American music theater have been equally successful in the roles of Carl Magnus in A Little Night Music, Ravenal in Showboat, The Caliph in Kismet and Sid El Kar in Romberg's The Desert Song. Mr. King is a nationally published outdoor writer, poet and translator of opera and operetta. He resides in New Jersey with his wife and friend, Mary Finucane. Chip, as he is otherwise known, is now preparing the roles of Apollo in Daphne and Herod in Salome, both of Richard Strauss and Raoul In Meyerbeer's Les Hugenots.                     Join our mailing list Back to the top << Back