A celebrated soprano once posted her tips for vocal technique with a considerable foray into breathing. Because of the particular caché of her name, this post was shared in many singer forums and pages. In this blog, she enumerated many things that the singer must consciously do when thinking about their breath and especially their “support”.1
Were a singer to take even half of her advice, they would become so tied up in ‘doings’ that all communicative ability would be destroyed, and the singer would resemble some kind of a breathing machine, not an expressive human artist.
Singers love this level of control in the singing act, because it gives the ego the satisfactory feeling that something is being accomplished. When you give singers a checklist of things to do - the mind rejoices!
But what does this do to the body (especially after these breathing mandates can usually be accomplished in the first two lessons)?
The body and the mind, while functioning as a gestalt, may not be on friendly terms when concepts of doing or end-gaining, (to borrow F.M. Alexander’s term) are introduced. The singer will leave no stone unturned in the attempt to accomplish these highly mechanistic maneuvers, and feel that they have failed when they are not able to feel what the teacher assures them that they must feel.
Let’s also set aside the tenuous idea that singers actually engage in the vocal behaviors that they describe.2 In almost all cases, singer’s sense of what they say they do in singing and what they actually do is imprecise. Their kinesthetic sense or somatic map is faulty.3
To compare to an older historical tradition, a story is in order:
Once upon a time at the end of the nineteenth century a wealthy young British ear, nose, and throat doctor travelled to Italy.
He wanted to get the most old-fashioned advice that he could find on the speaking and the singing voice. This gentleman’s name was Dr. George Cathcart, and he went to Naples, Italy to study with the teacher Domenico Scafati. Scafati was himself one of the last pupils of the celebrated castrato Girolamo Crescentini, who had delighted Napoleon and his court. Crescentini also left some of his wisdom in print form, available here.
This is the report of Dr. Cathcart on his lessons with Scafati:
As far as breathing was concerned, this was learned unconsciously. Signor Scafati did not trouble the pupil with any directions to hold back the breath during the elementary stage, well knowing that by the time all sense of “push” had disappeared the tone would have become balanced, and there would no longer be any waste of breath… Signor Scafati [said] that all efforts to control it consciously…invariably led to the voice being stiff and throaty.
Well – this is interesting advice to our modern, mechanistic age because in a single sitting, I can scroll through an endless parade of Instagram and TikTok reels showcasing students being drilled in every conceivable method of micromanaging their breath.
Scafati asserted that he was repeating Crescentini’s teachings. Among Crescentini’s other pupils were famous names such as Catalani, Colbran, Grassini, Garaudé, and Pasta. From 1816 Crescentini taught voice at the Royal School of Music in Naples, where Scafati would have studied with him.
Similarly, in the 20th century, scholar and singer Stefan Zucker described his lesson with Tito Schipa:
The routine began with scales [on the five alphabetic vowels, Italian a, e, i, o, u] with him (Schipa) at the piano. If the student ran out of support before a scale was over, Schipa didn’t seem to notice or care. He never mentioned breathing or placement…He didn’t interfere.
Adelina Patti remarked on breathing:
Je n’en sais rien. [I know nothing about it].
Etelka Gerster, a Hungarian soprano, and rival to Patti, was a student of Mathilde Marchesi. What did she say on the topic?:
What is all this trouble about breathing? My teacher told me nothing about breath…I breathe naturally.
Sir Charles Santley in his book The Art of Singing (1908):
I have heard the most amusing instructions for breathing, but, of all, I think ‘abdominal breathing’ is the most comical. I have in vain tried to discover whereabouts in the abdomen there exists a store-room for breath; wind there may be4, perhaps, but not available for breathing purposes.
Tenor Louis Antoine Ponchard (1787-1866) had this to say on his breathing approach:
No one has sung more than I. It is true that in my time music was not taught as scientifically as to-day. We sang with the means with which nature had endowed us, without troubling ourselves whether we breathed with the ribs or the diaphragm.
And it is a singular thing that, in spite of our profound ignorance of the art of breathing, and of many other things, we sang well and for a long time with our poor natural voices. Since then scientists have set themselves to fatigue voices, and we hear speak only of ruined singers and lost voices.
So what are we to make of this conflicting information?
Manuel García, the great titan of vocal pedagogy, offered the most useful frame for another path in an 1894 interview with Frederick Root (emphasis mine).
The actual things to do in producing tone are to breathe, to use the vocal cords, and to form the tone in the mouth. The singer has nothing to do with anything else. Garcia said that he began with other things; he used to direct the tone into the head, and do peculiar things with the breathing, and so on; but as years passed by he discarded these things as useless, and now speaks only of actual things, and not mere appearances. He condemned that which is spoken of nowadays, the directing of the voice forward or back or up. Vibrations come from puffs of air. All control of the breath is lost the moment it is turned into vibrations, and the idea is absurd, he said that a current of air can be thrown against the hard-palate for one kind of tone, the soft-palate for another, and reflected hither and thither. He drew a picture of the throat, and scouted all that. With regard to the position of the larynx higher or lower or the more or less raising of the palate, he said that the singer need only follow natural emotional effects, and larynx, palate, and the rest will take care of themselves. Speaking of breathing, he said ‘Do not complicate it with theories, but take an inspiration and notice nature’s laws.’
In my own teaching, I stand on the side of the Old Masters. The natural sound of the human voice is the most useful guide for teaching it. These celebrated singers of the old tradition worked to keep their natural sounds into advanced age. Many of them accomplished this very feat – vocal decline in the old Italian tradition was almost unheard of. They were encouraged to find the core or ‘center’ of their voices5, and over time with practice these sounds would develop and grow.
One of the old Italian sayings was:
Cerca la qualità e la quantità verra.
[Search for quality, and quantity will come].
If you read their writings (and truly read them (and refrain from re-interpreting or reverse engineering them with a 21st century mechanistic worldview), you will come to realize that these singers had total belief in this system of working. The obedience to Nature was paramount. Anything that attempted to rush or expedite this process was shunned as working against Nature.
Most modern systems of singing now emphasize and prize sheer volume or cut of tone, rather than purity6, not realizing that pure tonal qualities in and of themselves are more penetrating than false, loud tones.7
To give a singer a shopping list of mechanistic ‘doings’ does not serve anyone, despite a well-meaning singing artist’s intentions. Shopping lists are for grocery stores, not human beings. It is merely application of a band-aid that must be reapplied when the voice falls apart.
To sing in the way of the old tradition, we must disabuse ourselves of much of our modern mechanistic pedagogy, and return to observance of Nature.
This is how great singing came to be in the first place, lest we forget.
I’m no fan of this term in general.
In a 1995 study professional classical singers were asked to sing “supported” vs “unsupported.” Many participants had strong beliefs and opinions about their method of support. The results indicated that there were no statistically significant differences in breathing activity between a "supported" and "unsupported" tone. What did change? Laryngeal and/or glottal configuration. Let that sink in.
"Breathing patterns were variable and not significantly different between supported and unsupported voice. Subjects in this study believe that the supported singing voice is resonant, clear, and easy to manage and is produced by correct breath management.. Singers adjust laryngeal and/or glottal configuration to account for these changes, but no significant differences in breathing activity were found.”
Not only do singers not know if they're supporting or not, a 1985 study shows us that singers have no idea which method of support they're using!
"Anteroposterior diameter changes of the rib cage and abdomen were recorded during respiratory, speaking, and singing activities in six adult male subjects, all baritones with extensive classical singing training and performance experience.... Subjects' descriptions of how they thought they breathed during singing bore little correspondence to how they actually breathed."
Only a little borborygmus, Mr. Santley.
What is this “center”? To me, it is a well-functioning laryngeal mechanism in which the two registers are developed with a precise understanding of the vowel–harmonic relationship, bringing these physical and acoustic realities into ever-greater precision and ease.
I would describe purity of tone as a vocal sound produced through stable, efficient vocal fold vibration with minimal extraneous noise, yielding a clear, resonant signal with a well-defined harmonic structure, supported by a freely adjusting vocal tract that remains free of internal constriction.
It’s the well-tuned tonal quality that travels, not the thick, fat one.
Another little step towards undoing all the desire to control the voice. Great article!
I have been taught by various teachers - all but one (you) stressed the mindful manipulation of the breath, which drove me farther and farther into a tight space where I could no longer move. How refreshing to be reminded that the body knows exactly what to do and that the mind must get out of its way.