The thought behind the utterance : Aspects of Communication in Song

This thesis investigates how a classically trained recital singer may set about achieving
mastery in his or her field. It draws upon the ideas and opinions of writers on singing,
pedagogy, composition, aesthetics, rhetoric, acting and psychology. It also draws upon
the experience of the author as a singer whose career has spanned thirty years as
performer and recording artist, teacher of voice and repertoire, and who has written on
the history and interpretation of English song.
The main thrust of the argument is that the complete performer must engage the
mind in every aspect of the craft, whether it be in the creation of vocal sound, in the
preparation of musical and textual material, or in the visualisation and realisation of the
character of a song’s protagonist: prescriptive instruction alone is not sufficient to
achieve this aim.
Chapter one, The voice, maintains that intellect, musicianship, imagination and
visualisation go hand-in-hand with vocal technique and natural talent to create the
consummate performer.
Chapter two, Visual presentation, explores the visual element of performance,
and how feeling may be convincingly displayed through appropriate use of the body.
Chapter three, The mode o f address, looks at the delivery of text and how this
may affect the performer’s focus of attention.
Chapter four, The poem’s provenance, discusses how the significance of a text
may be affected by the context in which it is found.
Chapter five, Meaning, highlights some problems encountered in translating or
interpreting texts.
Chapter six, Interpretation o f a non-English text, looks in some detail at a
particular song in order to explore how the nuanced meanings of poetic language can be
preserved during the process of translation.
Chapter seven, The thought behind the utterance, contains a discussion of the
moment the protagonist finds a new thought before expressing it