CHERYL FRANCES-HOAD (b. 1980)One Life Stand (2011)

This chapter addresses Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s One Life Stand (2011). This major work was conceived as a companion piece to Schumann’s loved cycle Frauenliebe und Leben, Op. 42 (1830). It sets eight vivid contemporary poems by Sophie Hannah—charting the often turbulent emotional journey experienced by the present-day woman in love—in starkest contrast to the more conventional, submissive attitudes portrayed in the Schumann. Each song subtly, even obliquely, evokes a movement of the Schumann, ingeniously mirroring aspects of its musical setting, particularly in the relationships between voice and piano. It constitutes a compelling narrative of contemporary feminine experience, and a rewarding tour de force for a mezzo and pianist of interpretative and technical accomplishment. The work is written in standard notation and the voice part, set straightforwardly with a few curving melismas at key points, eschews extremes of range and ‘extended vocal techniques’. The singer will, however, need to call on reserves of stamina for some lengthy high-lying passages, although there is plenty of light relief in the fast movements with their quicksilver parlando delivery.

Extending Vocal Pedagogy: Extended Vocal Techniques in North American Post-Secondary Music Education

In North America, post-secondary music education is heavily focused on (and limited to) the repertoire and techniques of the Western Art Music canon. Vocal training at these institutions is no exception: vocalists are trained in the bel canto technique whose lineage reaches back to seventeenth-century Italy. This conservatory-based curriculum supports a categorical vocal pedagogy, one that seeks to produce a particular type of singer with a very specific kind of sound. Instead of embracing what each individual singer is capable of, this model focuses on what singers should be capable of from the perspective of repertoire and technical mastery in the operatic tradition. In this paper I will argue that this model risks our losing sight of what the singer has to say in favour of what the composer has to say. Recently there has been discussion and research around a more inclusionary model of vocal pedagogy that would incorporate other techniques alongside bel canto. However, these discussions have been focused on inclusion of musical theatre and belt techniques, with very little discourse on the inclusion of extended vocal techniques. By drawing on the scholarly discourse on the limits and extensions of technical training in post-secondary vocal performance, as well as interviews with several women working in the performance and teaching of extended vocal techniques in Canada, I will explore the potential for extended vocal techniques to contribute to a more inclusive model of vocal pedagogy.

Anhalt, Istvan (1919–2012)

Istvan Anhalt was a Hungarian-born Canadian composer and one of the leading figures in avant-garde composition during the second half of the twentieth century in Canada. Nearly all of his major compositions were written after his emigration to Canada in 1949. At various times in his works he made use of dodecaphony, electronic music, and extended vocal techniques. Many of his most significant compositions are for orchestra, but he contributed to all major genres, from solo instrumental works to opera. From the mid-1970s onwards he began to use more traditional compositional techniques, from which he fashioned an original, distinctive, and evocative idiom. In addition to his work as a composer, Anhalt had an important career as a university music professor and administrator (at McGill University and then at Queen’s University in Kingston) and he was also known for his work as an insightful music theorist. About half of his two dozen or so major compositions were completed after his retirement from academia in 1984.

The Vocal Music of Ana Sokolović: Love Songs for the Twenty-First Century

Enchanted by the vocal music of Serbian-born Canadian composer Ana Sokolović, Tamara Bernstein visited the composer at her home in Montreal. Sokolović’s music draws on several sources, including the theatrical world and the culture of the Balkans. The extended vocal techniques in Sokolović’s music are rooted not in the avant-garde music of the twentieth century, but in the oral traditions and poetic voice of Serbia. It seems that the more the composer returns to her cultural roots, the more she embraces the universality of the human soul.

Electroacoustic voices in vocal performance art - a gender issue?

In my dissertation Gender Perspectives in Vocal Performance Art, I examine the history and aesthetics of the genre. The core of my work is a vocal database that focuses especially on the extended vocal techniques of the natural voice. In this article, I concentrate on the electronic aspect of vocal performance art. While I provide a brief historical overview of the developments of vocal performance art and its technological developments from the 1970s to the 1990s, the central question of this article is whether gender patterns exist when these practices are combined with electronic sound technologies.