LJ Idol Week 8: Sprezzatura
Dec. 5th, 2018 06:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
babydramatic_1950As some people say in the vernacular “This is a new one on me”.
I am definitely someone with a large vocabulary, including foreign words that have crept into English, but I will have to confess that I had to look this one up.
The first definition I found was “studied carelessness,” and the first “hit” I found said that “sprezzatura” is now a word primarily used to describe men’s fashion: not something that I am interested in, so it’s not surprising that I had never heard it.
Scrolling down a bit, I saw that the term could refer to any kind of studied carelessness. “Discourse” was mentioned, for example. I also saw that “sprezzatura” was in competition for “word of the year” in 2016. Someone wrote that it means what, in today’s parlance, is called “cool”, a word that I loathe, because today “cool” not only means “sprezzatura,” it can also mean everything from “innovative,” as in “I found a really cool new app”, to “ok” as in when Person A says “I will return your book when we meet for lunch” and Person B answers “cool”. But I digress.
Mostly, all this online scrolling made me very interested in the relationship between “sprezzatura” and singing (it’s an Italian word, after all). Isn’t that what the art of glorious classical singing is all about? Making it look effortless?
So I googled “sprezzatura” + “singing.” Some posts were about a piacere singing, a feature of both bel canto and jazz. Not strictly sticking to what’s written on the page, but improvising. Or making it sound as if you are improvising. I have done that with Handel.
Then there’s the effortless floating legato of the pure-voiced lyric soprano. For example, Montserrat Caballe in this video
youtu.be/UgbU88Pyq6I
or Leontyne Price in this one
youtu.be/74HvM1lDUdw
This technique is, yes, studied, but some voice types can learn it faster than others. A light soprano who has taken voice lessons since puberty will most likely be able to sing this way as a conservatory undergraduate. A dramatic mezzo like Yours Truly might need a decade or more of blood, sweat, and tears to achieve this and some never do. We are known for the power, rather than the beauty, of our voices, and can produce spine chilling drama, even rapid fire coloratura, sung at a breakneck pace at a volume of sound equal to that of several light lyrics, but an effortless-sounding pianissimo high note? Only the greats among us can do that regularly. It took me 12 years of study to be able to spin high notes sitting down at a choir rehearsal. I was about 66.
The best example of vocal sprezzatura that I saw close up was from a 20-year-old lyric soprano who ended up (as the star – we’d never had one before) in our choir. She was given the soprano solo in the Brahms Requiem for Good Friday. She sat there in jeans, looking like the undergrad she was, and tossed it off with no muss, no fuss. The choir broke into applause. I went home and cried. And realized that no matter how impressively a woman with a lower voice can sing, lower voices are always “less than”. Because of course with most non-soprano church solos, you’re singing in the same range as the untrained singers. Better, of course, but people don’t realize that. So if they hear you sing an alto solo like “O Rest in the Lord” they think “Oh, I could do that.”
That was 5 years ago, now. During the ensuing years I learned that my high notes were effortful because I could not raise my soft palate, which was because I had a mammoth amount of sinus drainage weighting it down. I did not notice this in the ordinary course of things, because unless I was trying to sing high, I could not feel it. I began using a Neti pot. My tiny waist (which I’d had all my life even during periods of relative plumpness) filled out, mostly with muscle mass, thanks to Pilates class and, of course, singing. My teacher abandoned exercises on “loo”, which had made me choke on my tongue, and gave me exercises on “hoo”, which kept air flowing freely. I learned how to push my larynx down to counteract the “gag reflex” that would kick in every time I saw a note above an A5.
I now vocalize up to a high C every day. I don’t need to muster my forces, gird my loins, and pray in order to sing high notes. At choir rehearsals, I can sing in a range I never dreamed possible, for extended periods, without getting tired.
Does this mean that I sing with sprezzatura now? I got plenty of applause the last time I sang “Rejoice Greatly” in church, although that piece is mostly known for its fireworks, not its ethereal quality. On the other hand, I plowed through all the long runs without breathing, and, mostly, without looking faint, which, I suppose, was a form of studied carelessness.
Of course every time I begin singing, I have to rely on faith. Because it is so hard to believe that the notes coming out of my mouth now are mine. I’m a girl from New York, a former smoker (I had my last cigarette in 1980 or thereabouts) whose speaking voice sounds like Lauren Bacall’s.
If I work hard and don’t lose heart, maybe in 18 months, on my 70th birthday, I will have achieved true sprezzatura.
I am definitely someone with a large vocabulary, including foreign words that have crept into English, but I will have to confess that I had to look this one up.
The first definition I found was “studied carelessness,” and the first “hit” I found said that “sprezzatura” is now a word primarily used to describe men’s fashion: not something that I am interested in, so it’s not surprising that I had never heard it.
Scrolling down a bit, I saw that the term could refer to any kind of studied carelessness. “Discourse” was mentioned, for example. I also saw that “sprezzatura” was in competition for “word of the year” in 2016. Someone wrote that it means what, in today’s parlance, is called “cool”, a word that I loathe, because today “cool” not only means “sprezzatura,” it can also mean everything from “innovative,” as in “I found a really cool new app”, to “ok” as in when Person A says “I will return your book when we meet for lunch” and Person B answers “cool”. But I digress.
Mostly, all this online scrolling made me very interested in the relationship between “sprezzatura” and singing (it’s an Italian word, after all). Isn’t that what the art of glorious classical singing is all about? Making it look effortless?
So I googled “sprezzatura” + “singing.” Some posts were about a piacere singing, a feature of both bel canto and jazz. Not strictly sticking to what’s written on the page, but improvising. Or making it sound as if you are improvising. I have done that with Handel.
Then there’s the effortless floating legato of the pure-voiced lyric soprano. For example, Montserrat Caballe in this video
youtu.be/UgbU88Pyq6I
or Leontyne Price in this one
youtu.be/74HvM1lDUdw
This technique is, yes, studied, but some voice types can learn it faster than others. A light soprano who has taken voice lessons since puberty will most likely be able to sing this way as a conservatory undergraduate. A dramatic mezzo like Yours Truly might need a decade or more of blood, sweat, and tears to achieve this and some never do. We are known for the power, rather than the beauty, of our voices, and can produce spine chilling drama, even rapid fire coloratura, sung at a breakneck pace at a volume of sound equal to that of several light lyrics, but an effortless-sounding pianissimo high note? Only the greats among us can do that regularly. It took me 12 years of study to be able to spin high notes sitting down at a choir rehearsal. I was about 66.
The best example of vocal sprezzatura that I saw close up was from a 20-year-old lyric soprano who ended up (as the star – we’d never had one before) in our choir. She was given the soprano solo in the Brahms Requiem for Good Friday. She sat there in jeans, looking like the undergrad she was, and tossed it off with no muss, no fuss. The choir broke into applause. I went home and cried. And realized that no matter how impressively a woman with a lower voice can sing, lower voices are always “less than”. Because of course with most non-soprano church solos, you’re singing in the same range as the untrained singers. Better, of course, but people don’t realize that. So if they hear you sing an alto solo like “O Rest in the Lord” they think “Oh, I could do that.”
That was 5 years ago, now. During the ensuing years I learned that my high notes were effortful because I could not raise my soft palate, which was because I had a mammoth amount of sinus drainage weighting it down. I did not notice this in the ordinary course of things, because unless I was trying to sing high, I could not feel it. I began using a Neti pot. My tiny waist (which I’d had all my life even during periods of relative plumpness) filled out, mostly with muscle mass, thanks to Pilates class and, of course, singing. My teacher abandoned exercises on “loo”, which had made me choke on my tongue, and gave me exercises on “hoo”, which kept air flowing freely. I learned how to push my larynx down to counteract the “gag reflex” that would kick in every time I saw a note above an A5.
I now vocalize up to a high C every day. I don’t need to muster my forces, gird my loins, and pray in order to sing high notes. At choir rehearsals, I can sing in a range I never dreamed possible, for extended periods, without getting tired.
Does this mean that I sing with sprezzatura now? I got plenty of applause the last time I sang “Rejoice Greatly” in church, although that piece is mostly known for its fireworks, not its ethereal quality. On the other hand, I plowed through all the long runs without breathing, and, mostly, without looking faint, which, I suppose, was a form of studied carelessness.
Of course every time I begin singing, I have to rely on faith. Because it is so hard to believe that the notes coming out of my mouth now are mine. I’m a girl from New York, a former smoker (I had my last cigarette in 1980 or thereabouts) whose speaking voice sounds like Lauren Bacall’s.
If I work hard and don’t lose heart, maybe in 18 months, on my 70th birthday, I will have achieved true sprezzatura.
