Reflecting on Past Pedagogy, Raising All Vocal Ships

Vocal pedagogy as we know it is a relatively new phenomenon in human history.  Among those who trained voices prior to the late 20th century, several stand out as unique because of their employment of the scientific method to help define their practice.  Each in their own way compared previous study, devised theories, and created systems for their students that included printed exercises and explicit orders of operations.  Among them, Giambasttisti Mancini (Practical Reflections one the Figurative Art of Singing), Manuel Garcia I (Exercises Pour La Voix), Manuel Garcia II (Hints on Singing), Mathilde Marchesi (Theoretical and Practical Vocal Method, and Ten Singing Lessons), and Francesco Lamberti (A Treatise on the Art of Singing) created reputations and ideas about the voice that still heavily influence voice instruction today. 

While reading an informative survey of each of these works in Leborgne's and Rosenberg’s The Vocal Athlete, I was struck by something that I had overlooked in previous examinations of these older works.  The teachers, like today’s vocologists,  responded to their surroundings as if they were isolated within a vibrant, powerful vocal industry.  Their approaches were unique, and as such, they had to prove themselves against the contemporary practices of their day.  Just like today’s vocologist, they drew on others' work as they created their own understanding, but they also had something new to offer, and promoted themselves as such.  It hit me that today’s voice innovators have as much to learn from the way that these giants related to their community as we do from the results of their vocal practice.  

In general, they tended to have very rigid procedures for their students. 

They isolated themselves from others by requiring their singers to spend years with them prior to performance.

They promoted themselves as masters, hoping to distance themselves from other instructors of their day. 

They insisted on very specific orders of operations that all people were to follow. 


They flat out refused to let vocalists sing repertoire that they didn’t find suitable, in some cases, designating the exact repertoire sequence that all singers should follow. 

For all intents and purposes, their angle worked.  They gained reputation, had some commercially successful students, published widely-read treatises, and have influenced singers and teachers for decades, even centuries, after their death. 

However, they also left a legacy of isolationism, privacy, judgment, perfectionism, and ultimate confusion based on the rigidness of their approaches.  In fact, one could easily attribute a century of vocal instruction confusion across the board to the intense, unyielding specificity that these very influential pedagogues communicated to their progeny.  When we take a minute to scan today’s voice world, we quickly find their imitators. Individualized methods with specialized (even rigid) procedures that are taught within the secrecy of long-term mentor/disciple relationships abound. Even though today’s vocologist finds themselves far less isolated than the initiates of old, there is always the temptation to feel as if we alone have the necessary answers for all voice users, and to isolate ourselves accordingly.

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I’m encouraged by the continually increasing collegiality that has developed in the voice learning community across my lifetime.  I’m also excited by the number of people who seem to recognize the great benefits of our predecessors, while acknowledging that there are other ways to relate to one another.  We have the capacity to create our own approach regarding both the information we know about the voice, and how we present ourselves to people who want to learn.  Perhaps future vocalists will look upon these years as a time when the voice community learned to share more easily, to ask more questions in contrast to providing rigid answers, to strive for inclusion by promoting vocal options, to create clarity for every voice user, and to work together to raise all the vocal ships out there.  After all, if we’ve learned anything, it’s that all people have voices, and they have the right to use them in the ways that they want to.

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Who is better equipped to help than the veritable army of voice teachers alive today? 
How better to help than by working together to build a bright future?

~David