Classical singers have the wonderful task of not just marrying text and music, but doing so in many languages. The mark of a studied singer is often her ease with shifting between any number of languages – mostly European. It was even a joke in my undergrad that in order to have permission to correctly pronounce the name of the composer of The Well Tempered Clavier, one had to finish grad school. Bach, Bach, Bach!!
To a serious singer, language is the vehicle that separates the baritone from the bassoonist. Unless the song is a vocalize, It is the extra element that makes a song a song. But it is not only our predilection with the communicative power of words that excites a singer – it’s the transformative power of language and the sensation of speech. As Berton Coffin noticed in the mid-20th Century, ours is an international art and we are living in an increasing global society (NATS, February 1964). Singers need to adapt to their environments and be able to communicate with whatever language a composer throws their way (even if it is a language that is made up or reimagined!).
As someone who has a healthy obsession with travel and a love of meeting new people, the linguistic challenges of my field have always felt like a wonderful opportunity. When you speak or sing in another language you reinvent your sound – exploring muscular movements and sensations that don’t exist in your native tongue (pun very much intended). When I travel, I do all that I can to pour myself into a new culture – through the landscape, the architecture, the food and, of course, the language. I study and emulate not just my academically-appropriate phonetic pronunciations in the language, but I seek the nuance in tone, inflection and accent of the different regions and dialects. I collect not only memories and photos in my travels, I collect the shapes and spaces of the language. I am endlessly fascinated by the possibility of my own voice to morph in tone and inflection. I marvel at the ability of the human instrument to mold and shape sound to suit the rules and customs of language. Considering that the vocal tract has over 3 million possible variants, it is no surprise that we have the ability to embrace any number of linguistic frameworks.
As a singer explores the vast cultural and musical landscapes that our interconnected world offers, it benefits her to respect the colors and intricacies of the linguistic possibilities. With each new language, is a new palate to explore (again, pun intended), a new series of shapes and sounds to add to her artistic tool kit.
As you are exploring your own repertoire, if new languages are introduced (and I hope they are), embrace the difference. Revel in the possibility and seek to do justice to each linguistic framework. Like travel, linguistic exploration helps you not only learn something new about someone else, it may even teach you a thing or two about yourself.