While I haven't exhausted the topic of voice and vowel, another
area that intersects with intonation is that of rhythm/ensemble. As I
mentioned early on, poor (or excellent) intonation has many potential
causes. That's why we have to diagnose correctly what the underlying
problem is and help the singers solve it, rather than just saying,
"You're out of tune!"
Because of the way that unified vowels affects intonation (see this earlier post), chords won't tune as well if the rhythm of the choir
isn't crisp and together--because the vowels happen at different times
and don't "line up" in such a way that all the overtones/partials line
up as well.
There are two parts to this: understanding diction and that we don't really deal (technically) with words, but the sounds
that make up words. "My country 'tis of thee" has five words, six
syllables, but seven vowel sounds. The diphthong in the word, "my" means
there are two vowels--if those vowels aren't together, the intonation
won't line up either. This is the genesis of Fred Waring's "Tone
Syllables" (if you've seen the old Shawnee Press editions, you know what
I mean!). Robert Shaw was brought to New York by Waring to help prepare
his new radio choir and Shaw certainly learned those lessons. To get
the best diction, the best unification of vowel (and best unification of
pitch), the choir has to be able to sing all the sounds precisely
together. I remember watching/hearing the King's Singers in concert
quite a few years ago from the first row, dead in front of them. The
unanimity with which they closed through every single dipthong was
amazing--you could literally see their mouths closing through the "oo"
as the vanishing vowel of the diphthong "oh" exactly at the same time.
The second part of this fits with Shaw's development of the
technique of count-singing. This is a way to get the ensemble (before
they pronounce words) to find a precise rhythmic ensemble and sense of
intonation (since they're all singing the same vowel:
one-and-two-and-tee-and) at the same time. Once the choir moves from
count-singing to text, each sound (not each word) has to fit
precisely in place. Shaw said, "There is no such thing as good
intonation between voice lines that do not arrive or quit their
appointments upon mathematically precise, but effortless schedule."
Again, the level of your choir will determine how far you take this
and how you choose to teach it, but without a good sense of rhythmic
ensemble and being able to sing all the vowel sounds in a given phrase
together, your choir will not sing as well in tune as they could.
Building a technique/discipline (whether or not you use count-singing)
of rhythmic ensemble and learning how to correctly sing all the
different sounds in the words we pronounce will make a huge difference
in not only diction and blend, but of intonation as well.
And when intonation in your choir seems to be fuzzy, ask yourself
whether the rhythm and ensemble of your choir is fuzzy, too. Again,
Robert Shaw (although probably paraphrased, since I'm doing this from
memory--Howard Swan's chapter in Decker/Herford's Choral Conducting: A Symposium): good intonation and good rhythm make a pretty smooth couple.
Well said!
No comments:
Post a Comment