On 20/07/2012 9:39 PM, Ray Harrell wrote: Here is something special:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHmzzu4FAnM REH Darryl from Futurework responded: Not knowing the language I cannot place the chest to falsetto transition and back again precisely for comment (near the end of the piece anyway - the highest note) - veerry smooth. I always had trouble with that and my teachers were not able to show me the key (style, technique) to accomplish it. Maybe it was because at the age of 13 I started to do a lot of yodelling and could accommodate both tongue and especially throat (epiglottal and laryngeal). But, suffice it to say the smooth transition never came to be. I'm reaching back in my mind to say (I think) the sotto voce technique of Dietrich also very commanding. Your student? Darryl REH response: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau has been the father to a whole generation of us who have come from the kinds of hell that existed in various places due to greed and war. A dignified artist and a gentleman others would have found reason to say that he was more, but the artistic world is filled with mastery in most cases as a requirement for walking the door. Art doesn't tolerate Messiahs well because there is always someone standing behind the "Great Master" to go further, think higher and longer and imagine a world that demands more of freedom of spirit than simple "small governments" not making laws or demanding people pay their share. Here is a funny battle between a tenor and the Master in a "Master" class. The tenor seems like an idiot and the Master is less than masterful at teaching him how to fix his cultural clumsiness and seemed culture laden ego. Actually, the tenor looks as if there are other agendas here and there probably are. Master Classes become situations where great Masters at singing prove less than perfect at performing such situations. The results for the young professional trying to show themselves in the best possible light for agents who will not only sit in the audience but observe these things for a generation on You Tube, can be terrible. We should all be more humble when it comes to singing that which we weren't born to, yes, but the truth here is that the Master was a great singer, perhaps the greatest of his day and he proved his virility by singing the phrase in the tenor's key. Wow! After that the tenor didn't move. I know an American Jewish Master Teacher who could have fixed it simply and has (with an impressive number of great singers) but never in front of a camera or the public. Can you imagine someone showing a session with Frank Corsaro where he helps the young Placido Domingo with his Alfredo in the Corsaro production of La Traviata at the New York City Opera? Especially if Domingo was having a problem getting from the Spanish macho to the Italian/French of this multicultural opera? If such a tape existed and was posted on YouTube the Opera buffs would have been endlessly gossiping about Domingo, Patricia Brooks and Corsaro and who saved whose behind. Perhaps its enough that people are great at one thing. :>)) REH REH commented further: To the list: Context is one of the great lessons of Art. I just enjoy the music and the great artist. Fischer-Dieskau sang this Schubert in the POW camps of WWII and then brought the entire repertory back after the war when the German people had lost their identity to the beast they had followed. I would make the argument that the beast is still present in other forms as the rest of Europe gives up their great art to the "Great Pumpkin in the Economic Patch" and lose their shirts. Except for Germany and the Scandinavians who seem to believe it is because they are the only cultured people in Europe, (along with the Serbians). It was the West Germans who accepted their cousins once the wall fell and didn't throw them away, for their failures, as defective Germans and losers as the American right characterizes the American left.. They also said that everyone was German and this great artistic culture was their potential and every German's heritage. Germany is now having difficulty saying the same about the Greeks, the Italians, the Spanish and the Irish. Just as the Serbians did with the Bosnians and Kosovo. Only the French truly stand up to them with the power of their own chauvinism. On the other hand the English didn't join Europe in the first place but everyone says the "English have poor taste." How often have I heard? "Did you ever taste English or Canadian food and everything the English speaking Americans have, that's any good, is from somewhere else." You can smell this bad odor in the air of all European economists through the tone of the language being used. Was nothing learned in the deaths of 90 million people and the destruction and dispersal of whole cultures and their Art? The economic argument goes that Winchester Cathedral and Dresden would never have been so beautiful without the war and Israel wouldn't have existed. I've heard preachers here call it "God's plan." Was this a part of the argument in 1939? Still, anyone can profane beauty with the beasts of war, money and power as a higher good. Just listen to what we American Indians call the "huckapuck" being said in America's election about the innocence of the market and its deity (the invisible hand with thumb down to the poor and the lowly born). Dietrich Fischer Dieskau was not a part of that. He simply labored and brought back the ideal of the Meister Singer. He was an amazing singer even into his last years. That he succumbed to performance on You Tube Master class is sad but speaks to his own limitations in the Art of class teaching. I'm sure that tenor will figure out a way to overcome his imitation of the "deer in the headlights" as he failed to ask the question about the beautiful daughter of his employer via Schubert. At one point Fischer Dieskau recorded the Prologue and Epilogue that Schubert didn't set to music. In the Epilogue, Müller, the poet, suggested that we not take this quiet so seriously since it was meant as a piece of your own imagination and heart. That it's up to the human artist to turn on the lights of the stars and heavens and to turn them off so that we can live more wisely. Perhaps the Epilogue will make this brash young tenor confront the real questions of that whole cycle. Perhaps he might even come, like the great Peter Pears, with a nontraditional approach to the text that ends in either death or insanity. I can remember when Phillip Miller the song scholar, translator and critic, criticized Fisher Dieskau for the same unorthodox approach to this cycle as we studied the cycle in an apartment filled with coaches, singers and teachers. Miller was a scholar of the traditions and Fischer Dieskau, on several different occasions, brought a contemporary approach that literally changed musical history. Miller was not uncritical of some of Fischer Dieskau's choices as well as he pointed out the deviations. Every master has another master who doesn't agree with his choices. Unfortunately most lesser minds take that idea of Mastery to the realm of power and have dreams of conquest based upon the value of blood and lineage entitlement. Meanwhile the loss of the Spring (Im Frühling) and the loved one, should have been a warning, an omen as to the beast's presence. Delivered with grace it is too often unseen and if seen, ignored. REH Im Früling Still sitz' ich an des Hügels Hang, der Himmel ist so klar, das Lüftchen spielt im grünen Tal. Wo ich beim ersten Frühlingsstrahl einst, ach so glücklich war. Wo ich an ihrer Seite ging so traulich und so nah, und tief im dunklen Felsenquell den schönen Himmel blau und hell und sie im Himmel sah. Sieh, wie der bunte Frühling schön aus Knosp' und Blüte blickt! Nicht alle Blüten sind mir gleich, am liebsten pflückt ich von dem Zweig, von welchem sie gepflückt! Denn alles ist wie damals noch, die Blumen, das Gefild; die Sonne scheint nicht minder hell, nicht minder freundlich schwimmt im Quell das blaue Himmelsbild. Es wandeln nur sich Will und Wahn, es wechseln Lust und Streit, vorüber flieht der Liebe Glück, und nur die Liebe bleibt zurück, die Lieb und ach, das Leid. O wär ich doch ein Vöglein nur dort an dem Wiesenhang dann blieb ich auf den Zweigen hier, und säng ein süßes Lied von ihr, den ganzen Sommer lang. In Spring. (Translation by John Knowles Paine) Quietly I sit on the hill's slope. The sky is so clear; a breeze plays in the green valley. Where I was at Spring's first sunbeam once alas, I was so happy! When I was walking at her side, So intimate and so close, and deep in the dark rocky spring was the beautiful sky, blue and bright; and I saw her in the sky. Look how colorful Spring already looks out from bud and blossom! Not every blossom is the same for me: I like best to pick from the branch from which she picked hers! For all is as it was: the flowers, the field; the sun does not shine less brightly, nor does the spring reflect any less charmingly the blue image of the sky. The only things that change are will and delusion: Joys and quarrels alternate, the happiness of love flies past, and only the love remains The love and, alas, the sorrow. Oh, if only I were a little bird, there, on the meadow's slope, then I would remain here on these branches, and sing a sweet song about her the whole summer long. Meanwhile, thanks to Darryl for the Bach. (Here's one I sang in Carnegie in 1978). Check out the violinist. No this is not me. This is also the Meister Singer. It's a great piece with children's choir, conductor on violin and the Master healing his world. Even when the words are "ich bin dein müde" the execution is divine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FERrn4smBU REH From: D & N [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 1:52 AM To: Ray Harrell Subject: Re: [Futurework] Something very special _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
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