The Art of Accompanying and Coaching

265 Pages·1976·5.82 MB·English

by  Kurt Adler (auth.)

THE ART OF
ACCOMPANYING AND COACHING
ART
THE OF
ACCOMPANYING AND
COACHING
Adler
BJ Kurt
Corrected Edition
A DA CAPO PAPERBACK
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data.
Adler, Kurt, 1907-
The art of accompanying and coaching.
(A Da Capo paperback)
Reprint of the ed. published by University of Minnesota Press, Min
neapolis.
Bibliography: p.
1. Musical accompaniment. 2. Singing-Diction. 3. Style, Musical. I.
Title.
[MT68.A31976] 781.6'3 75-31666
ISBN 978-1-4615-8367-7 ISBN 978-1-4615-8365-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4615-8365-3
First Paperback Printing 1976
With the exception of a small number of corrections made in accordance with
the wishes of the author, this Da Capo Press paperback edition of The Art of
Accompanying and Coaching is an unabridged republication of the first edition
published in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1965. It is reprinted by special
arrangement with the University of Minnesota Press.
© Copyright 1965 by the University of Minnesota.
Published by Da Capo Press, Inc.
A Subsidiary of Plenum Publishing Corporation
227 West 17th Street
New York, N.Y. 10011
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United State of America
THE ART OF
ACCOMPANYING AND COACHING
I dedicate this book to the memory of the teachers who molded my
musical culture during my formative years
CANTOR JACOB FUERNBERG • PROFESSOR RICHARD ROBERT
MRS. FANNY BOEHM-KRAMER' PROFESSOR ALEXANDER MANHART
PROFESSOR DR. KARL WEIGL' PROFESSOR GUIDO ADLER
PROFESSOR WILHELM FISCHER' PROFESSOR FERDINAND FOLL
HERMANN WEIGERT' ERICH KLEIBER
Acknowledgments
My SINCERE THANKS go first and foremost to Malcolm Friedemann Bach, edited by Ralph Kirkpatrick, copy
M. Willey, educational consultant to the vice chancellor right 1959; to Mr. Felix Eyle, noted violinist and or
of the University of Calcutta and former vice presi chestra manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and to Mr.
dent of the University of Minnesota, and to the director Frederick Steinway of Steinway & Sons, New York
of the latter institution's Department of Concerts and City, for their information about the construction of
Lectures, Mr. James S. Lombard. Without their en stringed instruments and pianos.
couragement and active help I could not have under Miss Lieselotte Singer of New York City contributed
taken to write this book. her talents in drawing some complicated anatomical il
I was furthermore very fortunate in getting expert lustrations. The late Miss May Savage and Maestro Jean
advice and fruitful suggestions about many aspects of Morel of the J uilliard School of Music helped to unravel
the book from many different sources. It is impossible the intricacies of French musical diction; Miss Mattlyn
here to mention all of them, but I should like to tender Gavers and Mr. Vincenzo Celli, both of New York City,
my sincere thanks to Dr. Frederick Brodnitz of Mount did likewise in the field of music for basic ballet steps.
Sinai Hospital, New York City, for his patient explana Mr. A. Gimson, London, secretary of the International
tions of the anatomy and physiology of the vocal ap Phonetic Association, furnished me with a copy of the
paratus; to Mr. William Vennard of the University of latest I.P.A. chart. To all of them go my profound
Southern California, Los Angeles, for permission to thanks.
quote some passages from his excellent book, Singing: I am also extremely grateful to my editor, Miss Marcia
The Mechanism and the Technic; to Mr. Ralph Garcia Strout, of the University of Minnesota Press, for im
of the Bell Telephone Laboratories, New York City, for proving the readability of my English and for sifting and
permission to use some of the laboratories' splendid organizing the bulky manuscript, and to the members of
high-speed photographs of the human vocal cords in all departments of the University of Minnesota Press.
action; to Mr. Joseph S. Whitehead, president of the And - last but by no means least - my colleagues
Aeolian-Skinner Company, Boston, for his invaluable of the Metropolitan Opera musical staff have earned my
corrections and additions to the difficult chapter about lasting gratitude for their constructive criticism and their
organ-building; to Yale University Press for permission suggestions based on rich experience, tendered to me
to use the illustration on page 144, which is taken from during long train rides on tour and in free moments at
their edition of Bach's Clavier-Buchlein vor Wilhelm rehearsals and performances.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION 3
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF ACCOMPA~\jYING 7
THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF COACHING 18
THE MECHAN ICS OF MUSICAL INSTR UM ENTS 21
PHONETICS AND DICTION IN SINGING 43
IT AllAN PHONETICS AND DICTION 48
FRENCH PHONETICS AND DICTION 65
SPANISH PHONETICS AND DICTION 89
GERMAN PHONETICS AND DICTION 92
ELEMENTS OF MUSICAL STYLE 111
PROG RAM -B UILDING 171
THE ART OF ACCOMPANYING AND COACHING 182
BIBLIOGRAPHY 243
INDEX 246
THE ART OF ACCOMPANYING AND COACHING
Introduction
IN WRITING a book for which there is no precedent (the tistic achievements. But, alas, there has not been such
last textbooks about accompanying were written during a genius in the realm of music during the twentieth
the age of thorough bass or shortly thereafter - the century. The creative musical genius of our space age
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries - and dealt has yet to be discovered, if he has been born.
exclusively with the problems timely then) one must Our time has perfected technique to such a degree
make one's own rules and set one's own standards. This that it could not help but create perfect technician
freedom makes the task somewhat easier, if, on the one artists. Our leading creative artists master technique
hand, one looks to the past: there is no generally ap to the point of being able to shift from one style to
proved model to be followed and to be compared with another without difficulty. Take Stravinsky and Picasso,
one's work; but, on the other hand, the task is hard be for instance: they have gone back and forth through as
cause one's responsibility to present and future genera many periods of style as they wished. Only with a stu
tions of accompanists and coaches is great. In short, pendous technique fortified by a certain lack of convic
to break a new trail and to set a standard for the future tion as to what one's own style ought to be could these
is a most gratifying but also a most difficult undertaking. Proteans have attained their place in our artistic world.
In our world of rapidly changing values - welcome Compare the uncompromising spiritual loneliness of
changes when they are the results of technical and scien Beethoven's last quartets, not fully understood even to
tific progress - spiritual, ethical, and artistic values tend day, with the modern commercialism of Picasso's cross
likewise to change, but much more slowly, and not al eyed beauties.
ways for the better. It is sad but true that ours is not What the future will bring, no one can say. I should
an age of real cultural and creative artistic growth. And, like to venture the opinion that the vistas opening for
in fact, a fast-growing culture, even in the era of nuclear us will render us more humble, more concerned with
energy and interplanetary travel, is unthinkable. Cul inner or spiritual values. Our technological advances
ture and art are the apparent emanations of an age, should give us more time; we shall need culture and be
but not its inceptors - this notwithstanding the fact that able to afford it. Two writers, both Nobel Prize winners,
occasionally some lone artistic genius may suddenly have recently raised the question of the future of music.
spring up to rebel against the existing order, break the Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse, neither knowing of
chains of conformity, and create a new artistic age. the other's efforts, came to very similar conclusions.
Such lone geniuses - to mention but a few - were They envisage music as rising to a much higher spiritual
Michelangelo, Beethoven, Mussorgsky. Although their level than heretofore - as not just entertaining, but up
early development is anchored in the era in which they lifting and cleansing.
were born, they later traveled along hitherto uncharted Mann in Doctor Faustus models the life and death of
roads. Beloved and admired by their progressive con a young German composer on the actual lives of a num
temporaries, these geniuses did not become the idols ber of artists - Robert Schumann, Nietzsche" Hugo
of mankind until a later age caught up with their ar- Wolf, Hindemith, Schoenberg. His hero's life's work is
4 THE ART OF ACCOMPANYING AND COACHING'INTRODUCTION
climaxed with a vocal-orchestral composition - a com ual and ethical value, underlining these traits in his con
bination of medieval philosophy and modern twelve-tone ducting, implanting them in his audiences, and drawing
music. It seems to me, however, that this road of atonality from them the life-prolonging waters. This almost reli
traveled by Schoenberg and Webern, and followed to gious, though non-sectarian, service reminds one of the
some degree by Alban Berg and Krenek, is a one-way ritual of the Grail's life-preserving power in Wagner's
street which has already come to a dead end. To us, Parsifal.
the importance of Mann's Doctor Faustus lies not in What has all this to do with a book about accompany
his hero's choice of musical language nor in his clinical ing and coaching? Nothing, and yet at the same time
end, but in the idea that the music of the future will very much. I believe the reader has a right to know the
revert to spiritual values. author's artistic credo. I want to make mine clear to
Exactly the same idea is expressed in the Swiss writer my reader in the very beginning, particularly since my
Hermann Hesse's Nobel Prize-winning novel Magister point of view will be found wherever this book offers
Ludi (Das Glasperlenspiel). Hesse goes so far as to a choice of solutions to particular artistic problems.
imagine the music of the future as imbued with Pythag This book is meant to be an aid to pianists who want
orean and scholastic ideas, founded on strict mathe to become or already are professional accompanists or
matical rules, taught and played by members of a coaches. The "or" between the two professions is only
monk-like brotherhood. After they have heard the music relative. One may be an accompanist and a coach.
played on a musical instrument consisting of ethereal Though the two professions, accompanying and coach
sounding glass beads, the musicians of the future (the ing, are really two different specialties, they will overlap
action takes place in the twenty-sixth century) derive most of the time. I am therefore justified in writing one
sensual and spiritual enjoyment from just seeing the book about their art instead of devoting a separate book
musical-numerological writings, without actually hear to each of them. Only on the highest professional level
ing the music except with the inner ear. Whether or not does specialization usually take place with the result that
this kind of musical enjoyment may prove to be too a career is made as either accompanist or coach.
ascetic for the real future, the fact remains that Hesse, These two professions, then, are offshoots of the large
like Mann, sees the future of music in the enrichment family of pianists. They are not the only offshoots. Figure
of spiritual and ethical values. This outlook is also repre I shows how many branches the pedigree of the piano
sented by the conductor Bruno Walter, who in his old player consists of. Each of these groups of musicians may
a~e restricted himself to conducting works of high spirit- be divided into classical and popular pianists, but this
,,-
- -
" VOCAL INSTRUMENTAL CHORAL DANCE
"
"
"
"\.
"
PIANIST IN "
ENSEMBLES "\.
CONCERT (chamber music " ACCOMPANIST PIANO
PIANIST orch.estras, etc. ) "' - -- - - - - -_/ TEACHER
PIANIST
Figure 1. Diagram of the family tree of the pianist