COWTW - The intonation of singers

[Tony Halstead]

Sorry to say I have had to give up listening to the Brahms 'Serious Songs' as performed by the much-feted baritone Thomas Quasthoff.
Why?
Because his INTONATION ( 'pitching') is constantly flawed; to the extent that if he, as an orchestral player, were to display such a cavalier attitude to intonation, he would not be able to hold down a job in an orchestra for very long.
Why do we tolerate this from singers?

[Hornspieler]

Sorry to say I have had to give up listening to the Brahms 'Serious Songs' as performed by the much-feted baritone Thomas Quasthoff.
Why?
Because his INTONATION ( 'pitching') is constantly flawed; to the extent that if he, as an orchestral player, were to display such a cavalier attitude to intonation, he would not be able to hold down a job in an orchestra for very long.
Why do we tolerate this from singers?

Good evening Waldhorn!

I suggest that the reason that some singers perform out of tune is because they get away with it. Excessive vibrato helps slightly to cover up their auditory shortcomings but it only emphasises the fact that they owe their lovely voices to the empty space between their ears.

A soprano of my acquaintance was not slow to solicit praise for her usually less than impressive warbling.
I was standing at the side of the stage as she came off the platform and she buttonholed me immediately.

“Da-ah-ling,” she cooed “was it awful?”

When the truth must hurt, how does one avoid lying? I thought for a moment and found the answer.

“My dear,” I smiled “I have never heard you sing better.”

She was happy, my conscience was clear and the audience were applauding the reputation, not the rendition.

Enjoy your Bach evening.

Yuletide greetings to you and to anyone else viewing

HS

[Nick Armstrong]

Sorry to say I have had to give up listening to the Brahms 'Serious Songs' as performed by the much-feted baritone Thomas Quasthoff.
Why?
Because his INTONATION ( 'pitching') is constantly flawed; to the extent that if he, as an orchestral player, were to display such a cavalier attitude to intonation, he would not be able to hold down a job in an orchestra for very long.
Why do we tolerate this from singers?

I don't. I can't bear it. I tuned into (and out of) a concert earlier this week, to hear 'Dies Natalis' - it was almost fascinating how the singer avoided most of the actual notes of the piece, and seemed to hit a cluster every time (due to the vibrato, presumably), normally some way sharp of the real note. It wasn't quite fascinating enough a phenomenon to restrain me from switching off.

I've pretty much given up paying money to go to opera and vocal recitals, with very rare exceptions, because I was emerging irritated too often...

I'll see your and raise you a waldo...

[teamsaint]

The variety of quality from professional singers (soloists), compared to instrumentalists never fails to amaze me. I (as a rank amateur) have heard some shockers(perhaps sometimes because of weak direction from the podium?) and that can seldom be said of instrumentalists.

Edit, just seen Caliban's post, and like him, I just turn off. I mean, people like JEG don't put up with it.

[David-G]

Sorry, could someone explain what COWTW means?

[Nick Armstrong]

Sorry, could someone explain what COWTW means?

Given that Brahms is Composer of the Week, and this is the Composer of the Week page, and waldo's post came towards the end of this evening's programme, it's not too much of a leap to think that it is "COTW" and the odd fact that one can't edit thread titles meant that a stray W had to remain!

[Tony Halstead]

Many thanks, Caliban. You are absolutely correct. I apologise for that stray 'W'...

[subcontrabass]

Sorry to say I have had to give up listening to the Brahms 'Serious Songs' as performed by the much-feted baritone Thomas Quasthoff.
Why?
Because his INTONATION ( 'pitching') is constantly flawed; to the extent that if he, as an orchestral player, were to display such a cavalier attitude to intonation, he would not be able to hold down a job in an orchestra for very long.
Why do we tolerate this from singers?

There is an old joke that there are three grades of musician. In descending order these are musicians, singers, and tenors.

[David-G]

(Re Caliban) Thank you! I suppose that at the end of a long day I was not feeling quite bright enough to work that out. In my defence, I found this via "What's New", and so did not notice that this was the Composer of the Week page!

[Nick Armstrong]

(Re Caliban) Thank you! I suppose that at the end of a long day I was not feeling quite bright enough to work that out. In my defence, I found this via "What's New", and so did not notice that this was the Composer of the Week page!

It would be a good upgrade for titles to be capable of editing, like text. A new thread about, say, German-born composer Richard Fuchs is, I calculate, about 2cm from a most embarrassing disaster...

[Tony Halstead]

[verismissimo]

I've always admired Callas as a singing actress, but nobody seemed to care much that she was very approximate in her intonation. I think she has had a profound influence on singers since, especially opera singers.

If one goes back to an earlier generation, the pupils of Mathilde Marchesi seemed to emerge from her ministrations very much in tune - Melba arguably the best of the bunch in that department.

They also had perfect trills, something that contemporary singers seem virtually unable to attempt, let alone pull off. Do teachers not think it's important any more.

I find this particularly irksome when listening to suppposedly HIP singers. They sort of leave a blank space where the trill should be.

[umslopogaas]

This complaint about intonation reminds me of Gerald Moore's exasperated response to a singer he was accompanying who would not sing in tune: "Madam, I can play for you on the white notes or I can play for you on the black notes, but I cannot play in the cracks!"

[rauschwerk]

This complaint about intonation reminds me of Gerald Moore's exasperated response to a singer he was accompanying who would not sing in tune: "Madam, I can play for you on the white notes or I can play for you on the black notes, but I cannot play in the cracks!"

If I remember rightly, the problem was that said singer was trying to decide on the best key for a particular song, and said that C was too low and D flat too high!

[umslopogaas]

Rauschwerk, that sounds very likely. As a non-musician, I assume that on the piano (assuming it is in tune), you only have a finite and well defined number of choices. Mr Moore only had a specific number of black and white notes to play on. But if the singer had been so bold as to have a violinist accompany them, there would have been any number of notes in the cracks, the number being only limited by the violinist's skill in finding them.

Which reminds me, somewhere I have an LP of microtone music by Alois Haba, which is supposed to contain sounds which occur between the sounds we know. As far as I recall, it sounded surprisingly ordinary. But that is probably because I have cloth ears.