Campbell Vertesi

Today was going to be a big day for me.  Today, I was going to crash my first audition.

 Tanglewood was one of the summer opportunities whose application due date flew by me this year.  It's a very prestigious program, and by all accounts a very good one, too (those two do not always correlate).  But the application required a recording, and at that point I hadn't finished mine. 

Their audition is at CCM today, and I thought "what the hell?  Let's try crashing!"  I'm gonna be here all day anyways, right?  So I got all dressed in my suit, warmed my voice up just right, and went to a computer lab to print off my materials.

The usual process for crashing an audition is to arrive with a filled-out application in hand, along with all your usual promo items (resume, headshot, audition rep list).  You sit outside THE CHAMBER and wait for someone to no-show.  Then you take their time slot, and sing the shit out of it.

In looking at the Tanglewood application however, I realized that this was not an audition I would be doing today.  They want every singer to bring a complete repertoire list to their audition, with a special emphasis on song.  Asterisks for the pieces you've performed.  You must also bring a letter of reference from a non-teacher.   And then your usual materials on top of that.

And you know, that's just not going to happen.  I don't want to begin to think about the songs I've learned - I've given annual concerts since 2002, remember - and honestly, if the program has that much emphasis on art song... it probably isn't for me.  There really isn't a very large repertoire of art songs written for specialty voice types like a low bass.  What's more - and here I brace myself for the onslaught of rebukes - I just don't like art song that much. 

Art song always feels somehow unsatisfying to me. To have a piece of music void of a larger dramatic movement just doesn't thrill me the same way.  The scale of that kind of singing is also no fun for me, especially the way they are sung nowadays.  One is expected to scale down one's voice, to perform dynamics that would never carry across a proscenium, and to cherish each little note with a caressing touch.  It's not that any of this is impossible for me (though the ranges tend to be challenging, certainly)... it really is that it's fundamentally unsatisfying to whatever it is that moves me to love my music.

I like a plot and theme that moves explicitly in the music.  I like singing about concrete things.  I like singing when the stakes are high for a character, and the music is moving the drama somewhere.  With individual exceptions, art song generally doesn't do these things.

 I should mention that there are definite exceptions.  One is permitted operatic-scale dynamics on certain individual songs, or in particular cycles.  I get a reasonable facsimile of the drama I enjoy when a piece of music intersects with my own life.  For example, Poulenc's "Ponts de Cé" is a piece with great personal meaning to me, and I love singing it.  Or more obviously, individual pieces of great Romantic cycles that have a connection to my personal love life.  (can we say "Ich Grolle Nicht"?)  But these exceptions form only a small handful of the larger song repertory.  

I sing arias and oratorio whenever I can.  I sing art song whenever I have to. I feel like a bad musician saying this, but the truth is that art song just isn't to my taste.

OK, now go ahead and torch me.