Annotations

What is hiding between the lines?

When I purchased the Paschke hard cover translation of Garcia in the nineteen eighties, I was ill prepared to assimilate the content.  I found that my ideas, ways of thinking and not a few bad attitudes needed adjustment.  When I understood the first bits of wisdom my little brain was capable of digesting,  I realized I was reading books that contained information roughly equivalent to the content of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  Where do the thousands of missing pages reside? Between the lines in Garcia’s text, and a large portion of that information stuffed between the lines could not actually be documented in Garcia’s day.

As time allows, I will be adding to this page my thoughts on A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One.  My intent is to lay out the things that I can explain which I have mined from between the lines.  I think Garcia intentionally left a lot of truth in there for us to dig out for ourselves.

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Page xvii: Introduction To The First Edition - Paragraph 1 and 2

At the very beginning of his book, the Grand Master sets the tone and honors the great teachers of the past by declaring his desire to know more about them.  It is no waste of time to delve into pedagogical history, so If you are seriously reading Garcia, I suggest you make an effort to read James Stark’s book: Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy.  He gives us a good and unconfused survey of the historical evidence Garcia mentions and documents the history of vocal pedagogy to the end of the 20th century.  One may find reason to attack Stark’s vocal understanding, but his research seems solid.  I am grateful to have his book as an historical reference, and wish I could find his CD for sale.

Page xvii: Introduction To The First Edition - Paragraph 3, 4, 5 and over page

Garcia introduces himself and inserts his book into the fabric of history with confidence and humility.  By crediting his father for the method he presents in Part One, he defines himself as an acolyte of his father’s vocal brilliance and wisdom. When his book was first published, Garcia Sr. had been in his grave for only a decade. Every member of Garcia Jr.’s target audience knew who his father was, and many would have actually heard him sing. Today we need a little help to understand just how much justification Jr. was gathering to himself with his few words referencing his father. There is an excellent book which can help us understand how important his father was to the world of music of his day: Manuel García (1775-1832) Chronicle of the Life of a bel canto Tenor at the Dawn of Romanticism. Garcia Jr.’s stated goal would seem simply to consolidate his father’s manner of instruction with supporting evidence gained through scientific inquiry and logical deduction, and, by so doing, present a comprehensive course of study in which all singers and teachers of singing could find answers to questions and remedies for difficulties.

People have been propagating the idea that interpretation is not teachable for as long as I can remember.  Garcia explains how wrong they are.  He dedicates his first volume to systematizing all the components necessary for interpretation in anticipation of his second volume.  In that volume you will find the call to use everything a singer should have learned from volume one and how to use that education for interpretation.  His books are effectively all about teaching interpretation from the beginning of Part One to the end of Part Two.  There is no way to learn interpretation from a teacher who says it cannot be taught.  Garcia says he teaches it, and I think anyone who calls him/herself a voice teacher should do the same….  No.  Not say he/she teaches interpretation.  Actually teach interpretation.

The vocalise is a lovely item, just think of

and you will get the idea.  Where Garcia is supper correct is the fact that vocalises are in many ways harder to do well than the normal words and music. Teachers tend to throw normal stuff at singers to see if they will sink or swim.  Garcia suggests that focusing the singer on the exercises found in his first volume is a better way, because they focus on the difficulties found in the singing of the student.  There are exercises specific to each difficulty a teacher should expect to discover in his/her student.

Garcia starts this introduction with a rumination concerning the physiology of the voice and how knowing about it could be profitable to the singer.  It truly is profitable, and is a good segue into explaining his new implement.  resizeimage_sendThat little mirror inspired him to submit a paper to The Royal Society.

This is not the “Memoire”.  I have yet to put my hands on an actual facsimile of the document.  It may not exist, but, if opportunity presents itself, I will grab it.  Garcia allows his Parisian presentation of 1840 to be summarized by someone other than himself.  Notwithstanding the possible quibbles concerning accuracy, I believe he would not have included this “Report” in his first edition if it did not represent his thinking correctly.

On this page we have rumination about the theories being touted in Garcia’s day.  These various conjectures were all shot down by Garcia’s work with the laryngoscope which he presents on previous pages.(xx-xxiv)

The author asserts an admiration for the abilities of the human voice.  Garcia does the same later in the main pages of his method, but here we see it used as primary reason for why any understanding of the human vocal mechanism was elusive if not unfathomable.

On these pages of his book we have an extended analysis of the phenomena Falsetto and Chest Voice as understood before Garcia came along to add to this discussion the conclusions derived from his own research. It is in this revealed understanding that we find one of the most important facets of this “preamble” to Garcia’s method. Falsetto and Chest Voice were very well recognized and known to be distinct vocal products. There was no consensus as to their mechanical production, but no one had to be instructed in how to recognize these phenomena.  Sadly, I see confusion everywhere today.

 

“According to Mr. Garcia, that part which is common to the two registers is placed on the same notes for the man’s voice and the woman’s voice.”

Mr. Dutrochet with this report lets the cat out of the bag.  Garcia had yet to invent his laryngoscope when he made his presentation to the French.  He made assumptions about the “nature” or mechanical production of these “registers”. He wrote his first edition in 1841 bassed upon the above reported assumption/hypothesis, invented the laryngoscope in 1854 and, in 1856, published a new edition of his book.

He discovered that he was wrong about a few things. He made no mea culpa.  He just eliminated everything related to these assumptions/hypotheses.  His laryngoscope observations inspired him to completely reorganize his book for publication in 1856.