A
GREAT SINGER ON GREAT SINGING
PAGE 4 OF 5
Hines:
All right, that's ringing bells when you say it. There is something
tracheal. This is not just pulling the larynx down. I can pull the larynx down
voluntarily, and not by pushing down on the tongue. I can pull it down from
below. But this is a feeling of lateral expansion under the vocal cords. I am
not sure exactly what causes it.
Shore:
One of the great things about you is that you have an open mind, are
still experimenting and still learning.
Hines:
Oh, like crazy.
Shore:
Jerry, you read my lectures on the singer's formant and you said you made
some experiments on your own articulation based on them. You said you were able
to get high notes you never got before. Tell us what you did and what happened.
Hines:
I wanted to see what enabled some singers, like yourself, to be able to
sing high notes as easy as the middle voice. I played with that after discussing
the singer's formant with you. I was emulating a tenor who has this facility
with high notes and I was able to get that result when I felt as though the
resonance chamber I was aiming for was down below the tongue in the area where
the vocal cords are.
Shore:
Well, you're right. That is the key chamber. The expanded larynx
ventricle is a key factor in the strong singer's formant (Sundberg, Ibid.
p.121).
Hines:
That would be the way Warren and the others were singing their high
notes. When I got that articulation all of a sudden the high voice became as
easy as the middle. I found that once I got that feeling of expansion in the
larynx I still had to add in some raising of the soft palate
Shore:
I would liked to have seen studies of Warren's articulation and phonation
for those great high notes. It certainly does sound as though his singer's
formant was very strong. Many great singers in your book talk about that feeling
of two-way stretch you just mentioned. I wonder if it could be related to the
support certain extrinsic muscles give to the larynx. Husler and Quiring believe
that the stylopharyngeus and palatopharyngeus muscles support the larynx by a
pulling stretch upwards, which must increase for higher notes. We need studies
on great singers to be able to speak more definitely (Frederick Husler, Singing,
the Physical Nature of the Vocal Organ, pp.23-30). The trouble is in accessing
those muscles with EMG's in a way which would not be so invasive as to render
the study meaningless.
Dr.
Van Lawrence does tell us that the support of the larynx from below the hyoid
bone is accomplished by muscles which attach to the hyoid bone or the thyroid
cartilage and connect to the sternum (Sternohyoid, omohyoid, sternothyroid).
Their pull down, he says, is quite important, especially on high notes. So
important, that if those muscles are damaged by surgery, the singer may lose
his/her high notes thereafter. (Van Lawrence, "Singers and Surgery,"
Vocal Health and Science, p. 49.) This important function they provide may give
part of your sternum feeling you described.
Shore:
Jerry, these questions have been mostly technical. I'd like to ask you a
few questions about the art and profession of singing. Boris Christoff, one of
your basso competitors, who just recently passed away, said in his Opera News
interview some years ago, that young singers today all sound alike, that is,
they have less distinctive timbres. Do you agree?
Hines:
Let me put it this way. We are facing a generation of young singers who
are much more diminutive in their approach to singing. I will sing King Mark
with a Tristan who I feel should be doing Almaviva.
Shore:
Jerry, a few years ago a major regional opera company did DON CARLO
and hired you to do the Grand Inquisitor. A young international bass of
the current generation, who I will simply call Mr. X, was the Philip. The Chorus
Master is a friend of mine and he relayed this account of the show. He said,
"We all thought Mr. X was sounding just fine as
Philip until out walked Jerome Hines as the Grand Inquisitor, and he made Mr. X
sound like a teenager. WE HAD ALL FORGOTTEN WHAT A REAL
BASS SOUNDS LIKE."
Hines: I have a tape of that performance and Mr. X sounds like my little boy!
(Shore: While Jerry was alive I never revealed who "Mr. X" was but now that Jerry is gone I don't mind revealing that Mr. X was Sam Ramey and the opera company was Tulsa where Ramey was singing Philip and Hines was the Inquisitor.)