Among other gems my undergraduate voice teacher, Lindsey Christiansen, once remarked that “if you finish your bachelor’s degree having mastered your breath, that was four years well spent at the conservatory” – An odd remark considering the breadth and depth of a singers’ technical training in such prestigious institutions. Years later, as with many of her bits of wisdom, that off-the-cuff remark has proven itself true year after year.
The breath is truly the foundation of all singing. It not only serves as a technical pillar of tone management, it carries with it life. After all, without it, literally one cannot survive. How is it that this ‘skill’ that we are practicing from our first moment of life outside the womb to our final sliver of conscience can be so challenging to so many singers?
For decades, I have trained singers on the mechanics and specifics of varying levels of breathing for singing. I have found that even the most adept and technically proficient singers often get caught in the breath trap. Singers who with the most impressive control in their workouts, can fall short when confronted by an extended melisma or even a simple legato phrase. There is no way to predict where they will get trapped – no seeming rhyme or reason. And while there are plenty of technical training devices we can deploy to work our way out of these traps, I am always curious as to the reason for what seems to be a random phenomena. As a firm believer in occam’s razor, the explanation here seems to be our basic humanity.
Of course that is a trite answer because humanity is anything but simple. No matter how hard we work technically, we can never take an end run around our own emotion and artistry – nor would we want to. If we want to present a performance that is compelling and worth the effort, the trick lies in learning to live with our humanity – our anxieties, our fears, even our joys. A good singer learns to marry emotion with technical skill – to be in control of the body while making space for the artistry to bloom in the moment. This is not an easy task, but if achieved, it creates the most compelling performances. But how? Aside from reorganizing the technical underpinnings of the mechanics of the phrase, consider a more holistic approach. Acknowledge your emotion, your fear, your excitement. Seek to understand where it comes from. If it is not serving you in the moment (sometimes, it is perfectly appropriate to the character of the piece), replace it with a more manageable choice. This is where interpretation and technique can overlap to produce transcendent performances that not only serve the music, but the singer.
It is no linguistic coincidence that the words, spirit, inspire and breath all have the same root word – spirare. The breath is intimately linked to our basic humanity and all emotion flows from that one gesture – the inhalation and exhalation of the breath. Singing is, at its best, the most pure expression of that humanity. As Richard Miller says, “When the artistic imagination is coupled with technical mastery…the resultant flow of tone will be compelling in its freedom.” When the voice is free to express itself fully and wholly, there is no limit to the sound and soul.