Customer Reviews

Basics of Vocal Pedagogy

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Clifton Ware's book could easily become a standard of pedagogical reference works, if it weren't for so many others that fall into that category from people such as Barbara Doscher and Richard Miller. There is an intellectual and quite possibly deep, artistic insecurity that owns him, however, and seems to bleed through and desecrate his often brilliant perspectives and erudition. To the point, in some areas, of it being as palpable as the dramatic subtext of the operas in which he wants to teach you how to sing. He has a way a tainting a magnificent introduction to otherwise unknown or unthought-about topics of interest with pedantry, old style elitism, pre-Nietzschean, 19th Century anthropology-based aesthetics, and even the occasional sprinkling of pure racism. (There is actually a comment about "ghetto youth" on one early chapter, regarding their supposed cognitive inability to think and plan for the future of their lives in total, as compared to an educated white [read: suburban] professional. I kid you not. As a bass-baritone from the Bronx who WAS "a ghetto youth" and has fulfilled many a grade school dream by singing in probably more foreign countries and great European stages than he has, if I weren't USED to coming up against such primitive preconceptions in my professional life [and as such acquainted with the artistic insecurity that usually produces them], it would have offended me too much to get the unrelated point about singing and the mind he was trying to make.)

And yet, how often could a singer find a vocal pedagogy book that makes references to the humanist psychology of Abraham Maslow, among others?

Many of his references to similiar topics make the book worth a great deal, even if the price is a bit over the top (get a library copy). His graphs of the vocal mechanism and surrounding musculature, for example--not to mention those of the brain--transcend many of the helpful anatomical references of the books of the famous authors previously mentioned on the topic. He thinks so clearly, and communicates information so lucidly, that many of his biases are forgiveable. (Not all, but many of them.)

As his subjective points of view about people (of various races and ethnic backgrounds), art (of various cultures and European styles) and life in general have a subtle but greater negative psychological impact than he is probably aware, I would recommend his book only to the more advanced and older singer. In other words, a singer mature enough to instinctively separate the wheat of his voluminous, well explained material and challenging scientific perspectives from the chaff of his quasi-sociological and antequated aesthetic opinions.

Excellent book. It teaches all about vocal compostion by an outstanding teacher. Overall an excellent choice for all ages