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VOICE PEDAGOGY
Scott McCoy, Associate Editor
Some Thoughts on Tonal Image
Rudolf Piernay
Rudolf Piernay
Journal of Singing, March/April 2007
Volume 63, No. 4, pp. 425–430
Copyright © 2007
National Association of Teachers of Singing
M A RC H /A P R I L 2007
11:39 AM Page 425
Written questions that teachers and performers have submitted for discussion
at sessions devoted to systematic voice technique are wide ranging, often pen-
etrating the very heart of voice pedagogy. This column continues to examine
some of them.
ISSUE
ODAY ’S YOUNG SINGER IS SURROUNDED by numerous performance in-
T fluences. How do you go about helping the student to establish an ideal
concept that permits healthy, aesthetically pleasing vocalism?
RESPONSE
N SPITE OF EVER- INCREASING professional exchanges on many levels re-
I lated to voice pedagogy, there is no universal agreement amongst singing teach-
ers on how the concepts that determine student attitudes towards the forma-
tion of sung sounds should be arrived at and improved upon most effectively.
Many concepts and ideas that singers carry with them consciously or sub-
consciously are reflections of their individual pasts, of their lives’ histories, long
before the thought of voice training ever occurred. Formative influences in-
clude quality of home life, location of home while growing up, positive parental
guidance or dismissal, care about spoken language, love and appreciation of
poetry and of art in general, chance encounters of an eye-opening kind, en-
lightened music teachers at school—recognizing the special talent of the stu-
dent and going out of their way to be encouraging—and inspiring instru-
mental teachers in childhood and early adolescence who nourished the
appetite and curiosity of their charges for exploring the world of sound.
It is remarkable how many successful singers have an instrumental past of
some distinction. Instrumental playing includes experiencing the specific
timbre of the instrument, the choice of musically suitable color and phras-
ing, accurate pitching, the question of vibrato or nonvibrato (when applica-
ble), even the discipline of regular practice and tangible achievement. Such
activities produce an attitude of greater responsibility, care and sensitivity
towards the voice, and stronger work ethics than very often are found among
singing students. The serious early occupation with deciphering musical no-
tation and adhering to it precisely, dynamically as well as rhythmically, and
the possibility of making music together with others, will have very positive
formative influences on the future singer. The timbre of the instrument it-
self may induce ideas of vocal timbre and determine willingness or resist-
425
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Rudolf Piernay
ance to normal vocal vibrato later on. However, more
forceful, compressive methods of breathing for certain
wind instruments also may result in unsuitable habits
for singing, which could prove difficult to change.
Access from an early age onward to live performances
and a variety of high quality recordings can play an im-
portant part in developing ideas about sound, quality,
style, and taste.
Many aspects must come into harmonious play to pro-
duce a singer. I have come across physically marvelous vo-
cal talents in many parts of the world which had come
too late to assembling the necessary mosaic of basic in-
gredients required for a performing career as a classical
singer. For, although there may be a limited need for high
specialization in some details, a total lack of development
in one seemingly subordinate sector may well jeopardize
any possibility for achieving the required standard of ex-
cellence, balance, and self-awareness to start out into the
profession. It is surprising how many late-starting singers
find it impossible to focus simultaneously in a concerted
way on all necessary aspects of singing. Acquired gradu-
ally, over an extended period of time, these skills seem
easily assembled and monitored by most students.
How then is one to go about developing the most cen-
tral area of a singer’s skill, the adroit handling and main-
taining of the subtle balances within the different mus-
cular structures that together produce a healthy singing
sound? How can one assure, once a finely tuned sense of
artistic perception has been established, that the musi-
cal mind can call freely upon the vocal instrument to
react with spontaneity and fluidity to the demands of
artistic ideas and impulses? Establishing the basis of
such function certainly is a lengthy and complex under-
taking, a process demanding flexibility and patience
from both student and teacher. Success, I believe, relies
in the final analysis mostly on the ear as a unifying agent
above all other controls.
I disagree with schools of thought that mainly advo-
cate physical manipulations of the breath mechanism
and/or the vocal tract as the basis for voice training,
and/or of explicitly asking students never to listen to
themselves in order to evaluate the quality of tone. While
it is of course true that singers do not hear themselves
when phonating as they are heard by others, they still do
hear themselves (How could they not?), and it is just
the capacity for this different, adjusted kind of internal
426
hearing that, with the help of the diagnostic ear of the
vocal instructor, needs to be carefully developed, not
suppressed. How can one otherwise achieve subtle al-
terations in registral balance?
I shall not go into great detail about the important
questions of breath management or posture, but refer
to basic descriptions that can be found in many good
books on singing. Verbal explanations should go hand
in hand with demonstration by the teacher himself, tan-
gibly checked by the student by laying hands on the
teacher’s torso. Postural advice should be reinforced with
the help of a full length mirror, this most indispensable
piece of furniture in a singing teacher’s studio.
Breathing exercises should start with strong exhala-
tions while keeping the upper chest in an open, calm,
upright position, to set up reflex breath intakes without
sucking in air, which could cause high chest breathing and
prevent the vocal folds from sufficiently relaxing be-
tween phonating. Depending on how adroit a student
might be, not too much time should be spent on non-
voiced breathing exercises. The combination with the
right kind of sounds will soon begin to make the singer
feel the simultaneous interplay of exhaling and inhal-
ing musculatures, which will mark the beginning of a
sense of appoggio activity, the term that describes the
special handling of the breathing apparatus for classical
singing. This procedure really encapsulates the differ-
ence between normal breathing and breathing for singing,
and as it does not happen “naturally,” it has to be learned
painstakingly. The advice to a student by one of the great-
est tenors of the past generation to deal with problems
by doing everything al naturale did not help the student
in any way, nor would it help anyone else.
Support action by the diaphragmatic region functions
on a demand-supply basis. Therefore complicated ex-
planations or manipulations make little sense to the stu-
dent until such time as the necessary muscular activity
is ready to come into play and as more energetic, exten-
sive singing requires increased subtlety in handling
breathing. Individually there will be a right point in time
to attend to breathing in more detail. Much time and ef-
fort can be wasted with untimely work.
Time-tabling and coordinating technical and musi-
cal measures in the interest of the student’s personal de-
velopment often can present considerable problems,
particularly with musically more talented students who
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usually present themselves already with a strong sense
of vocal identity. They often will want to sing repertoire
that, although musically well within their reach, is phys-
ically far beyond them. They are likely to try to com-
pensate for this lack by using the wrong means. Those in-
clude mainly either constriction of the vocal tract in
order to achieve a substitute “focus” and thus more power
and “ring,” or distension of the pharyngeal area and ex-
cessive lowering of the larynx to acquire a prematurely
rich, dark quality of sound.
They may well feel that the sound they produce rep-
resents their personality, as, indeed, one could say it does
as far as present levels of taste and judgment have taken
them; yet, they might have chosen a sound fashioned
after very unsuitable vocal ideals, and therefore in ur-
gent need of change. Thus, they may perceive any at-
tempt on the teacher’s part to interfere as a hurtful and
intolerable criticism of their entire person, not just of
their vocal habits.
There are many possibilities for problematic constel-
lations to surface. One, for instance, can be found in the
young woman who has kept her girlish speaking and
singing voice (often for very obvious psychological rea-
sons) and can hardly bring herself to explore naturally, in
due course, her chest register. Some piano oriented, non-
Mediterranean schools of singing may prefer to ignore
the female chest register altogether, hiding behind such
untenable slogans as the “one-register approach,” but
most others would agree that at a certain point, when
the central part of the vocal range is fairly settled, the
regular inclusion of the low range in the daily gymnas-
tic program of practice is absolutely necessary in order to
keep in balance all muscle groups involved in phonation
and also to clarify fully issues of voice classification and
actual range extension. The female flute register and the
male falsetto both are functions that belong to the com-
plete technical spectrum of a voice. They need to be ex-
ercised even if never required in the actual future reper-
toire of the mature singer.
Another example may present itself in the form of a
young male who feels the need to reaffirm his recently
discovered vocal masculinity by uttering gravelly sound,
much to the detriment of his head voice function and
of its necessary interplay with the modal range.
The student who can react with willingness and free-
dom to the subtle demands of adjusting his vocal spec-
M A RC H /A P R I L 2007
Voice Pedagogy
trum—in itself already a sign of superior talent—often
also shows a natural ability for the rhythmic application
of breath energy during the onset of a sound, and in an
innate sense of musical phrasing, fuelled by the vitality
of his buoyant breathing function. Such a student, through
the further development of his finely tuned inner hear-
ing capability, will be able to improve more quickly than
colleagues who lack his capacity of subtle hearing and
who rely on muscle memory and coarser physical pro-
cedures alone.
Nowadays, the sounds that assail the human ear from
birth onward are manifold and mostly the result of man-
made machinery operating in traffic and in the home. As
to musical sounds, they often are considerably ampli-
fied, not infrequently transmitted from early life by ear-
phones and often ceaselessly and thoughtlessly applied.
Apart from the known harmful long term effects on the
physical condition of the ear itself, this overload also
leads the listener into an attitude of nonselective pas-
sive hearing, thus severely dulling aural sensitivity.
Concerning musical activities in early childhood, inves-
tigations have shown that the absence of repertoire suit-
able for children’s voices and/or the inability of adults to
sing for or with them at a pitch suitable for their limited
vocal range can have ill effects on vocal abilities later in life.
In many junior and senior schools, the tendency seems
to be to take the easier road of putting on pop oriented
shows in order to capture the attention and interest of
a wide group of pupils, rather than to try to work on
classically based repertoire or even traditional choral or
folksong material, sung in a somewhat more controlled
and careful way. In practice this might make sense, but
it can alienate listeners and participants even further
from classical vocal ideas and from knowing about the
necessary effort that has to be made in order to achieve
familiarity with the world of classical music. This situ-
ation is also bound to blur, for potential future classical
singers, the borderline between two quite different mu-
sical and vocal disciplines. In pop music, the widespread
stressing of the male component (chest register) in females
and the female (falsetto) in males, in order to create
quasi androgynous performers of sexually interchange-
able attractiveness can, if practiced or imitated to ex-
cess, lead to irreversible changes in vocal function.
Vocally, light music and classical music were close
companions during the first half of the twentieth cen-
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Rudolf Piernay
tury. Operetta and show repertoire, with its leaning to-
ward gentle and sentimental subject matter, required
vocal treatment similar to classical repertoire. Opera
singers were the stars of the day in the same way that
pop singers and film actors are today. Numerous clas-
sical singers nowadays are seen, albeit with varying suc-
cess, to be trying to raise their star status by “crossing
over” and thus possibly benefiting from the more ex-
pert and aggressive PR machinery of the pop world, al-
though vocal ideals have grown further apart. This can
confuse young people even more by suggesting that,
first, there are no differences in quality among various
musical products, and, second, that as an accomplished
performer one should be able to sing everything. There
are now even a number of voice studios catering to this
trend by claiming to prepare students for just about every
musical task imaginable. My limited experience as an
observer so far has not convinced me that there is no
harm for a classical singer in learning to belt.
Yet, seen from a different angle, it also must be ad-
mitted that the possibilities for learning by comparison
are much improved today and access to sources of every
kind has been made easy. However, to steer a young per-
son safely through a mixture of superficially seductive
contradictory information is a task requiring patience,
dedication, and knowledge.
Exceptional vocal or artistic talent, admittedly not
encountered by any voice teacher on a daily basis, can
of course include a sense of being drawn instinctively to
what is helpful and constructive, but it is risky for both
student and teacher to give way to such intangible feel-
ings, and it is safer to build on logical processes. Only
occasionally will a special talent storm across any in-
struction and find its own successful path, much to the
surprise of all onlookers. Often, however, students’ opin-
ions and actions are borne out of dubious and ill-
assembled information. Notwithstanding what anyone
might say, they decide to take from a teacher only what
they consider worthwhile or relevant, and might find
that, after having gone through a considerable number
of teachers during their course of studies, they have
learned very little indeed.
There is a great need to make a singing student un-
derstand that building and conditioning a voice is some-
thing profoundly different from learning about apply-
ing it to musical repertoire. The approach of learning
428
vocal technique through the singing of repertoire and
not through well structured technical exercises (surpris-
ingly still found today on occasion) is indicative of a se-
rious lack of technical knowledge on the part of the
teacher and must be rejected.
Learning to sing is profoundly different from learn-
ing to play an instrument in that the simplest tune can-
not be played satisfactorily on a violin or a clarinet un-
til basic skills of handling the bow, holding the instrument,
having some dexterity in how and where to place the fin-
gers, and in the case of a wind instrument, finding a con-
sistent embouchure, have been acquired. Normally a
singer does not start from zero. He is able to sing some-
thing up to a certain standard, or nobody would have en-
couraged him to have his voice trained. Therefore he al-
ready has some degree of “technical” skill at his disposal,
however imperfect or subconscious. Particularly in be-
ginners, this initial ability must not be stifled or belittled
by forbidding them to sing any repertoire at all. Psych-
ologically critical situations may arise early on, when a
new teacher needs to be found, maybe someone to ad-
dress questions of technique for the very first time. “We
will have to start again right from the beginning” is an of-
ten unnecessarily dramatic pronouncement by a succeed-
ing teacher, and, rather than proving his superior knowl-
edge, it will serve only to discourage the student who
could have hoped that there was at least something com-
mendable about his singing. A statement like this should
be made only to a student at a later point of development
when there could be real grounds for concern.
The more experienced student must be expected to
be able to support himself emotionally through a pe-
riod of technical restructuring with very little singing
of repertoire through feeding on the positive singing ex-
periences he already had in the past. For beginners,
pieces must be found that can be managed easily, with-
out interfering with important technical work (numer-
ous collections of such material exist). The student must
be made to understand, without feeling discouraged,
that technically demanding literature is, for the time be-
ing, out of bounds.
Very different points of departure may need to be ob-
served in working with singers of different nationali-
ties. A young Italian with robust vocal material but lit-
tle theoretical knowledge about music, who loves the
operatic ring in his sound, will need very different treat-
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ment from the musically sophisticated English choris-
ter, who is accustomed to finding musical rather than
vocal satisfaction in the blend of a group deliberately
producing a flutey, homogenous sound of little individ-
uality and with a deliberately restricted use of upper
partials. Both may have equal artistic justification in
wanting to become soloists. Romanian friends tell me that
their early vocal training is more likely to include arias
by Puccini than by Mozart. This tells us something about
their preoccupations and also about the kind of vocal
talent that would be encouraged to think about study-
ing singing there. I remember a talk given to mostly
American students at an operatic summer school in
Italy by the internationally famous baritone Gino Becchi
on the profession of an opera singer. During its course
he said that he would not advise anyone experiencing
any vocal difficulties at all to consider studying singing!
If this attitude were internationally widespread, I reckon
that the conservatories of northern Europe and North
America would have considerably fewer voice students!
Opinions on what aspects of singing can be taught
vary widely. In the age of easy international travel, and
long past the time when one felt that Italy was the prefer-
able place for studying singing, a teacher at an interna-
tionally well known conservatory may have students
from many countries. Apart from British and German
students, I have taught during the past couple of years
young singers of the following nationalities: American,
Austrian, Australian, Canadian, Spanish, French,
Estonian, Serbian, Russian, Indian, Korean, Sri Lankan,
and Swedish. All have studied to a greater or lesser de-
gree in their respective home countries before going
abroad, and show national traits which in some ways
are very dissimilar, often connected to the kind of work
an aspiring soloist might hope to find in his own coun-
try, closely related to the length and depth of an ongo-
ing national tradition and its connection to the present
international singing business. So, as the well known
German voice teacher Franziska Martienssen Lohmann
once wrote, “The student is the method.” There is ob-
viously a problem when a young Russian soprano (first-
prize winner at an international competition) cannot
understand why “Casta diva” and “Ach, ich fühl’s” do
not belong together in her European audition program,
or when a Korean baritone of light operatic character, hav-
ing so far learned all his repertoire from CDs, is told by
M A RC H /A P R I L 2007
Voice Pedagogy
his Korean professor that it is okay to sing anything from
Malatesta to Amonasro, and that with his Mozartean
disposition, he should expect to be able to tackle Wagner
at age forty, should he feel so inclined. It might take a
long time to arrive at the point where student and teacher
understand clearly what the other is talking about, and
when the student is ready to accept the advice borne out
of the teacher’s longer experience. The sensitive teacher
first of all will try to understand the technical position
of the beginning student and attempt to reinforce and
clarify what may already be good in his or her singing.
He might have to gain the student’s confidence before
introducing major changes. He should, as impercepti-
bly as possible, change attitudes, perhaps by stressing
desirable and undesirable traits in well known artists for
comparison, generally working toward an unforced, age-
suited tonal ideal, dominated by head-voice oriented
registral balance, while, particularly with already sea-
soned students, keeping in mind William Vennard’s dic-
tum of also exercising the “unused register.”
A technical detail of great importance seems to be the
liberating of the tongue from compulsive parallel activ-
ity with the lower jaw. Paramount to deliberations con-
cerning “vowel equalization” is the fact that it is possi-
ble to articulate vowels for singing satisfactorily (as it is
in a more exaggerated way for a ventriloquist) with con-
siderably less change of buccal opening and horizontal
and vertical movement of facial musculature than is usu-
ally assumed for the articulation of speech. The oppos-
ing Italian terms of voce aperta and voce chiusa also in-
clude the aspect of unifying articulation of language in
singing. The lively mobility of the tongue alone is indis-
pensable for the clear production of vowel shapes, the
more noticeably so when the buccal cavity is fairly open.
It is therefore imperative to free the tongue. This neces-
sity is best illustrated by the vowel [i:] which in speech
will normally go together with a fairly small opening of
the mouth. In articulating this vowel it is desirable to
achieve a sense of contrary motion between the lifting
of the middle part of the tongue and the gentle lower-
ing of the jaw. The achievement of this freedom will be
particularly useful in higher tessitura when the speech
range has been left.
In connection with freeing up the root of the tongue,
trill exercises are extremely useful (e.g., 1-2-1-2-1 3-4-
3-4-3 5-6-5-6-5—and reverse—in 4/4 time, rather sharply
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Rudolf Piernay
executed, possibly even with a change of vowel on each
note [a-e-a-e-a], and so on). They will help to uproot in
a positive way a stuck larynx, as a true trill is not possi-
ble without a certain amount of laryngeal oscillation. Of
course, no up-and-down movement of the larynx should
be present in normal vibrato; therefore the juxtaposition
of a trill followed by a nontrilled sound on the same pitch
will provide a good check on functional clarity.
The number of vocal exercises within a lesson must al-
ways leave enough time for singing some music to main-
tain the enthusiasm that initially fired the student in
wanting to become a professional singer. Home prac-
tice time also needs to be discussed, several shorter pe-
riods being preferable, at least in the beginning, to fewer
longer ones. Aims must be set from lesson to lesson if
possible and be well within the student’s physical and
mental capacity at the time.
In singing instruction, it is a better idea to encourage
movement rather than stillness in the instrument. Stillness
should be experienced as a retarding of movement with
an inherent pulse and direction still present, never as a
locking of muscles. After a general warm-up of legato
figures, triads, three-tone exercises in a suitably com-
fortable range, onset exercises are a very good way of
training the simultaneous action of laryngeal and epi-
gastric movement. Short exercises are better than longer
ones, as fairly unexercised muscles find short contrac-
tions easier to monitor than sustained ones. Short martel-
lato runs (not very loudly executed, but rather lightly
bounced, one abdominal impulse per note), and dotted
Alberti Bass figures grouped into single short-long im-
pulses, are excellent for installing a sense of continual
contact with the breathing apparatus while relaxing suf-
ficiently between impulses to re-attack.
In more developed singers, attention soon might be
drawn to the phenomenon of vibrato as a revealing in-
dicator of tonal balance and registral mix. The sensa-
tion of general tonal elasticity and the observation of
position and impingement will appear together with no-
tions of varying degrees of density in the sound, and af-
ter sufficient discussion these may become useful tech-
nical tools for the student. It is much preferable to wait
until the singer himself comes up with these sensations
than try to cause them by directional thinking.
430
The task of the teacher is more to set up the condi-
tions in which such events can take place spontaneously
than to superimpose his own feelings and sensations
onto the students. Of course, all exercising should not
be done only on vowels, but also in connection with con-
sonants that might increase or decrease breath flow, and
influence the positioning of the sound as deemed nec-
essary in the particular case. It is very desirable, from
the beginning, to differentiate between imagination and
fact, and if possible, to underpin the “as if ” side of in-
struction with hard and fast technical evidence. Above
all, care must be taken not to fix technical gestures pre-
maturely in young voices when mobility and flexibility
should be the principles of teaching and learning. One
should never hasten either to finalize the vocal label, but
encourage the student to keep an adventurously open
mind toward the final structure and character of the
voice, unless there is absolutely no doubt about the voice
classification right from the start. Too often a very re-
stricted use of the vocal instrument is deemed to repre-
sent “good technique” when this false safety is in real-
ity blocking or complicating further development. The
ear of the singer should finally be sufficiently percep-
tive to monitor with precision the technical state of his
own voice, although it is very advisable for the professional
to stay in contact with someone who can check occa-
sionally that all still is well vocally.
Learning to sing means really to undergo a very spe-
cific course of aural training!
Rudolf Piernay studied voice, piano, and conducting, mainly in Germany
and England, and has had an extensive international performing career
as a singer. In 1974 he started teaching voice, voice pedagogy, and Ger-
man repertoire at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London, and
in 1991 became Professor of Singing at the Staatliche Hochschule für
Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Mannheim, Germany. Early encounters
with Cornelius L. Reid and Richard Miller provided strong influences on
the formation of his own teaching concepts. Students from his studio
have won prizes at numerous competitions, and many of them enjoy
international careers. Since the late 1970s Professor Piernay regularly
has been giving vocal master classes all over the world. Recently these
have included return visits as a faculty member of the Steans Institute
at the Ravinia Festival, the Bachakademie in Stuttgart, Germany, an
extended period as a guest faculty member of the Juilliard School, and
with the young artists programs at the Chicago Lyric, Houston Grand,
and the Metropolitan Opera companies.
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