Saturday Singing with Cantare Lunedì

If you are familiar with Italian at all, you will not be surprised to learn that the quartet I spent Saturday afternoon with usually sings on Mondays. It was a session focused on techniques and methods rather than preparing for a specific performance occasion: the repertoire was chosen as useful vehicles to work on, but the intent was to work on things that could then be transferred to all their other songs.

There were two broad areas we focused on: first, vocal technique, second, ensemble techniques. They arrived as four singers comfortably in control of their vocal apparatus (I note that the tonal centre did not waver all afternoon), but with potential to develop greater resonance.

We started out by rooting and opening the posture as the foundation for all the other developments to come. When you have been focusing on cognitively intense activities such as note-learning, it is easy to start hunching into your sheet music as you think deeply about it, so coming off copy is a great moment to consciously reset your relationship with your body.

We also drew heavily on SOVT exercises such as vvv-ing and bubbling in the earlier phase of work, as these set everything else up to succeed, connecting the voice to a deeper-set breath and encouraging a cleaner adduction of the vocal folds. This led us on also to consider legato, which is not only key to developing continuity of resonance, but thereby facilitates the connection between voices by creating greater opportunities for lock. Another nice side-effect of producing a clearer tone is that the breath lasts the full phrase more readily when you’re not leaking it away en route.

This general, foundational work then set us up to explore more subtle changes to head angle and tongue position. The difference that quite small changes can make are always surprising to those who have not experienced them before, but you really need to do the postural and breathing work first to really get the benefit. One thing I find particularly pleasing in this work is hearing how the poise of the head can really help connect up the vocal line, again creating a smoother legato.

Ensemble techniques are methods to help four individuals sound like a single performing unit. It’s interesting that a quartet who all sing together in the same chorus as Cantare Lunedì do come with some of this built in, but there are also aspects of ensemble craft that are specific to one-a-part groups.

The first thing we did is actually one that is also great for chorus: breathing out together as the pitch is sounded, so that the first breath they start the song with is (a) together (b) deep-set. If you don’t empty before you sing, you will be filling up on top of lungs partially filled with used air, and likely over-filling into the bargain. Clear out the lungs first, and the air falls in without tension ready to support a nicely resonant start.

We returned to this point at the end of the afternoon, putting it into the context of starting songs overall. When a group needs to coordinate a start in the absence of a conductor, they need a protocol that they can follow so they all know what each other are doing. You need to know who is responsible for starting each song (if one part starts first, then them; if everyone starts together, then the lead), and have them gather the gazes of the rest of the group as you all coordinate your breath, and use subtle clues of body language to lead all into the song.

Of course we also did some duetting, as the foundation of all ensemble craft, and one of my favourite listening exercises to develop lock and ring. We also developed a protocol that the quartet as a whole can use to support an individual singer who has learned a wrong note to replace it with the right one. But I’m going to write about that separately, not just because it would make this post too long and unbalanced to talk about it here, but also because I have a hunch it is going to be useful in the future to be able to point back to it to help other groups. It’s a challenge that everyone encounters periodically so it helps to build a repertoire of solutions.