I imagine there have been voice lessons for centuries. After all, to focus on royalty: I know that as least princesses sang for audiences at dances and whatnot, and royalty was taught practically everything they did. I'm sure they didn't learn the songs with no instruction on the singing. I definitely think a person can be an excellent singer by simply practicing over the course of years, and that in some cases no amount of training is going to bring the student even to an average sound! I read an old book written by a voice teacher who told the story of a girl who was found singing with an excellent voice in the middle of a bar, a girl of around age sixteen who had never had any training in the least. However she received no instruction and eventually lost the beauty of it because she hurt her voice by improper singing. Thus lessons sometimes serve only to make mild improvements, but most importantly to teach the singer how to care for their voice and not to damage their throats beyond what is necessary.
On 10/24/06, Anthony Hind <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Le 24 oct. 06 =E0 10:03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] a ecrit : > > > > > I think it is interesting because her performance uses much less vocal > > technique than sting and if elizabethans were untrained (which was > > most likely not > > the case) then they may have sounded more like this. English folk > > singing maybe > > contain some remnants of ballad singing from the 16th century. It > > is a style > > that is based around the text more than rock singing, so maybe has > > more > > relevance (in terms of HIP research) than what a rock singer would > > do with the > > music. > > > Mark > I would personally doubt whether some Irish folk singers are > completely untrained. Perhaps it is not a scholarly training, but > some (not of course the present singer) that I have heard make such > extraordinary vocalizations I can't think this is just the result of > a spontaneous breaking into song, as it were. > If this were so, why can't I do that. There has to be a long > tradition behind such singers. I believe the folk tradition is less > broken in Ireland, and less artificial than perhaps in England. > > Who knows that there was no voice training at the time of Dowland (as > you say yourself this is highly unlikely)? Clearly there was lute > training, so why not some form of voice training? Surely there would > have been strict training for singers in religious ceremonies, I > imagine. Just listen to some of those complex polyphonous creations. > Surely this would have spread into secular singing in some way. In > Robison PL XII and Pl XIII we see a chapter including "Rules to > instruct you to sing". This would certainly seem to imply some form > of instruction. > Whether, the techniques for singing at that time might have been > closer to those for a ballad singer, is a different question. > > Perhaps one completely different point might be that the vowels in an > Irish accent are less diphthonged than present day standard and > southern English (take for example <day> and <go>, <house> ). It > could both be closer in some ways to Shakespearian English and also > to Dowland's English. Irish English is often considered to have kept > some features that have been lost in present day Southern English. It > could just be that certain vowel sounds therefore sound somehow better. > > However, to contradict myself, even if Dowland had been Irish, as > some have suggested, how similar would an Irishman's pronunciation > today, be to that of an Irishmen of Dowland's time in terms of speech? > Regards > Anthony > > > > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > --
