Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 00:01:23
-0600
From: "Automatic digest
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Subject: LIEDER-L Digest - 21
Feb 2002 to 22 Feb 2002 (#2002-51)
To: "Recipients of
LIEDER-L digests" <LIEDER-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
Reply-to: "Lieder, Melodies,
Art Songs in any language" <LIEDER-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
There are 6 messages totalling
282 lines in this issue.
Topics of the day:
1. Gender Compatibility (6)
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Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 08:35:20 -0500
From: George Mott <georgemott@EROLS.COM>
Subject: Gender Compatibility
The question of what might be
termed "gender compatibility" in lieder performance revolves around
the thorny issue of identification, i.e transcending the aggressivity inherent
in the mirage of the similar other.
Some animals will do mortal combat with their "double" in a
mirror and humans tend to do the same, though on a more complex imaginary
level. Since our perception of all
reality begins with ourselves, in a narcissistic mirror image, it takes a
certain psychic development and maturity to be able to understand a point of
view that is truly different. Cleaving
to biological gender identity is therefore an incomplete means of perception.
I admit to having been startled
by the idea of a woman singing Winterreise when I was younger, but then I could
not imagine how a black soprano could take the role of the Marschallin or even
the Trovatore Leonora - I blush to
think of my closed horizons back in the late fifties / early sixties! Now, the Lotte Lehmann recording of Die
Winterreise is one of my favorites and the one which seems to my ears, at
least, closest to the "truth" of the cycle.
Indeed I often think that
Frauenliebe und Leben would be better served by a male singer if only because
of the element of distance this would provide from content that is now a little
uncomfortable (after all the poetry is a masculine fantasy of what women are
like or what men would like them to be).
I bet Matthias Goerne would be wonderful singing this.
Speaking of Matthias Goerne, I
enjoyed Melanie Eskanazi's interview enormously. What a difference when the
interviewee actually knows and loves lieder!
Unlike the remarkable claim made in a recent brochure about "Great
Performers" from Lincoln Center here in New York which announces,
breathlessly, the "World Premiere of Schubert's Die Winterreise" with
Simon Keenlyside and choreographer
Trisha Brown!
George Mott
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Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 09:56:50 -0600
From: "Edward A. Cowan" <eacowan@ANET-DFW.COM>
Subject: Re: Gender
Compatibility
FWIW, a fellow graduate student
with me at Penn back in the late 1960's,who had also been a student of Martial
Singher at one point, reported tome that Singher had told Mme. Lehmann that,
should she ever make another recording of "Winterreise," he, Singher,
would record "Frauenliebe"!
-- E.A.C.( who still likes
Alexander Kipnis' recording of Brahms' "Immer leiser wird mein
Schlummer," despite the fact that it's a "woman's song"...)
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 12:45:30 -0500
From: Leslie Crabtree <LeslieCrabtree@CS.COM>
Subject: Re: Gender
Compatibility
This has always seemed to me to
be an interesting issue -- and of course it is more of a problem for female
singers than for male, since the vast majority of gender-specific Lieder (id
est, poems) are for men.
Speaking for myself and my
colleague Jane Bishop, we pay virtually no
attention to this aspect of a
song: if we like it, we do it!
So, I think there are basically
three approaches:
First, one can simply decide
NOT to have a person of the wrong gender sing a song;
Second, one can try to adapt
the song (recently I heard a baritone sing Schubert's "Ave Maria!",
and he did so via the device of changing a few words here and there,so that it
was sung in the third person;
Third, one can simply not care,
as in the example cited of a black Marschallin (of course this is the wrong
race, not the wrong gender).
Of course, regarding the first
case above, convoluted situations can arise:
some years ago I set
Shakespeare's Sonnet 33 ("Full many a glorious morning
have I seen"). This poem is clearly a man-to-man effusion,
but for most
people in the audience, Jane's
singing it worked out more comfortably than if
a tenor had done so.
Sincerely, Leslie
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 23:59:52 +0100
From: dredeman@YAHOO.COM
Subject: Re: Gender
Compatibility
Beste groeten,
The opposite of a correct
statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well
be another profound truth.
Dear Liederers-1,
Mr. Moth misuses a lot of words
to suggest that I am an animal-like primitive person, that might never become
as enlightened as he.
This subject deserves more than
primitive pc-ism and insults. Leslie Crabtree's reaction was completely
different: to the point and she also gave an interesting alternative. She wrote
amongst other things:
'Second, one can try to adapt
the song (recently I heard a baritone sing Schubert's "Ave Maria!",
and he did so via the device of changing a few words here and there, so that it
was sung in the third person;' This brings Schubert's 'N=E4he des Geliebten' to
my mind, where a man who wants to sing it gender-correct only has to change the
title slightly. There is also an interesting story connected to the gender
issue of this Lied/poem, which I cannot tell now.
To make my position clear: it
is certainly not so, that I am against any
singer singing gender
incompatible songs. I like to hear female singers,
they mostly move me more than
male singers. The gender incompatibility I
mostly take for granted. But a
complete Dichterliebe done in this way, is simply too much for me.
Yet it is important to
understand, that one person is more gender conscious than another. In my
experience and opinion, gender unconsciousness can find it's cause in many
things.
One important thing could be
that this person just does not know the language of the song well enough. To
experience the Verfremdung connected to the gender incompatibility, you need to
be able to experience all the emotional nuances expressed in a song. For that
reason you need to be (almost?) a native speaker. I for example am bilingual,
and one of my mother tongues is German. French is, like English, just a
language I learned at school, and so I don't have the feeling something is
wrong when listening to a gender incompatible performance of a French song,
although of course I realise the gender-incompatibility.
Another thing can be the fact
that the listener has been brought up in a culture that more or less forces him
or her to gender flexibility, e.g. if he or she is homosexual. Some people even
think that women are more gender flexible than men, because our culture is
somewhat masculine.
All this means that a singer
cannot just say: I sing this song, no matter for what voice it has been
written. This is true even completely independent of the gender-issue, no voice
is suited for every repertoire, and certainly not if you octave something. In
opera people are generally very aware of this, but in Lieder singers don't give
it enough thought in my opinion.
In the case of Dichterliebe a
high soprano is the wrong voice type, just like a tenorino would be, octaving
Sarrastro. (Well, a tenorino would not be the right person to sing a
Dichterliebe either.) Mezzo's on the other hand, do quite well in Lieder.
Then there is of course the
difficult but important issue of the accompaniment. Just listen to Frauenliebe
und Leben, and you hear the piano notes are much higher than in Dichterliebe
e.g. Octaving a song means often putting an octave between the voice and the
piano. In many Schumann songs the piano and the voice can make a beautiful
colour together. This you loose when octaving. Sometimes you can find a
solution, and sometimes it does not matter that much. Some pianist even octave
their notes as well, which might work in some situations. But all this proves
that you cannot simply say: I just sing all the songs I come across.
I once heard Bonney sing the
Eichendorff (op. 39) Liederkreis together (well, each singing one or two songs
in turn) with Thomas Hampson. There it
worked, because she mainly sang the 'female' songs, which were also the songs
that fitted more into her voice. That was a performance that gave you the idea:
Schumann never wrote it this way, but had he been here this evening, he would
have. That's what I totally miss in her Dichterliebe.
Best greetings
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 19:14:06 -0600
From: Bruce Alan Wilson <bawilson@CITYNET.NET>
Subject: Re: Gender
Compatibility
Pop singers do this all the
time. With some pop songs all one has
to do is change the pronouns; for others the sheet music often prints
alternative lines for male/female performers.
That being said, there does
seem to be less of a problem with women
Singing 'male' songs than with
men singing 'female' songs. My late
Mother was a singer and teacher/coach, and both her own and her female
student's recitals often had songs whose lyrics assumed that the 'speaker' was
male. I never heard any of her male
students sing a song in which the 'speaker' of the text was female.
I speculate that it may be a
carryover from opera, in which 'trouser' roles are common (a male character
sung by a soprano or mezzo) but 'dame' roles (a female character sung by a
tenor or a baritone) are rare. (The
only one I can think of offhand is the Witch in 'Hansel und Gretl.' This in turn goes back to the days of the
castrati--surgically produced male sopranos--who were often assigned the macho
heroic roles.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 23 Feb 2002 13:15:43 +1100
From: Ian and Jonathon <parsifellow@OZEMAIL.COM.AU>
Subject: Re: Gender
Compatibility
Hi all,
I am relatively new to Lieder
and therefore relatively new to this debate, so forgive me if I am completely
missing the point here - but why is it so odd for a woman to be singing
Winterreise? My introduction to Winterreise was actually the Brigitte
Fassbaender recording. I realise that they are songs about someone who has been
forsaken by their female lover who is now about to get married - but that does
happen to women, too, after all!!
Women fall in love with women,
and men fall in love with men. It happens, so why not make beautiful music
about it?
Regards,
Ian (Australia)
------------------------------
End of LIEDER-L Digest - 21 Feb
2002 to 22 Feb 2002 (#2002-51)
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