News

A big 'thank you'

Organisations and institutions

We would like to thank the many institutions and organisations, as well as several individuals within them who shall not be named here, who so generously took on board our research interests and facilitated the distribution of our questionnaire. These include:

-Association of Teachers of Singing, UK

-Australian National Association of Teachers of Singing

-European Voice Teachers Association

-Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London UK

-National Association of Teachers of Singing, North America

-New Zealand Association of Teachers of Singing

-Royal Academy of Music, London UK

-Royal College of Music, London UK

-Trinity Laban College of Music, London UK

Research participants

Amongst our research participants themselves, firstly, we would like to sincerely thank the 100 professional singers, singing teachers and singing students at universities and conservatoires, for answering our questionnaire. Together they form an international sample of singers from many countries including not only English-language countries (the language of the questionnaire) such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA, but also Egypt, Spain, Catalonia, Japan, Italy, Malta, Romania, France and elsewhere. Respondents were extremely generous in sharing their time, experiences, beliefs, values and knowledge about self-accompanied singing.

A large number of respondents – 61% – kindly agreed we could approach them for an interview. This overwhelming response is way more than we had hoped for. We are not able to interview everyone, but we have started with some interviews, and these are producing interesting results – to be reported on in more detail in due course. The generosity, enthusiasm and support of the interviewees is so much appreciated.

Some of the respondents have performed self-accompanied recitals, either formally, informally, or online. Amongst some of the others who have never done so, a few have become interested in the idea of self-accompaniment, partly through our questionnaire, and have agreed to prepare a self-accompanied song up to a performable standard, or even a short recital, and to keep a diary of the process. From the diaries of these novice self-accompaniers we hope to glean information about, for example, how they went about the preparation; whether they were surprised by any aspects; whether they learned anything new about the music; what they felt was disadvantageous or advantageous; and many other aspects.

Finally, a small number of singers who are making self-accompaniment a central part of their recital programming, have come to our attention through networking and searches. Most of them did not come across the questionnaire, but nonetheless generously agreed to share their invaluable knowledge and experience with us through detailed interviews, selflessly setting aside time during extremely busy performing and teaching schedules. We cannot thank you enough.

Brief news about some of our findings so far

The questionnaire

Amongst other things, the questionnaire looked into the extent to which the respondents already use self accompaniment, how, why and in what circumstances; and explored their opinions concerning self-accompanied singing as a professional performance practice. A large majority – 92% – had plenty to say about the disadvantages of self-accompanied classical singing. (Fifty-eight per cent ticked 'Yes' and 35% ticked 'Maybe' to our question 'In your opinion, are there likely to be any disadvantages in a classical singer accompanying themselves in a concert performance?') More interestingly, in their written answers, whether they had ticked 'Yes' or 'Maybe', they gave rich reasons, for example: vocal technique might be compromised by having to do two things at once; doing two things at once is simply too difficult; a seated posture would negatively affect the diaphragm and therefore the whole standard of the performance; the audience wouldn't be able to see the singer's face and would therefore have a less enjoyable experience; the voice wouldn't project well from behind the piano; the singer's ability to act out the meaning of the lyrics would be severely inhibited; accompanists might feel they would lose their jobs, and also the joys of musical collaboration with another person would be taken away; many singers do not have sufficient instrumental technique to do this in the first place; singers may feel they would expose themselves to accusations of amateurism if they were to be seen and heard self-accompanying in public; it could be regarded as a gimmick; and more.

How surprising it is, then, to be able to report that an almost equal number of 91% – obviously including most of the very same ones who expressed disadvantages – had positive reactions to the question 'In your opinion, are there likely to be any advantages in a classical singer accompanying themselves in a concert performance? (65% ticked 'Yes' and 25% 'Maybe'.) Again whether they ticked 'Yes' or 'Maybe', these respondents between them expressed rich and appealing advantages to self-accompaniment such as the following: on a practical level was the observation that it would be cheaper and easier than having to book an accompanist! On a more musical level, many people said self-accompaniment would increase the singer's musical knowledge and understanding of the song, enabling the observation of small details that they might otherwise miss and an overall better quality of performance as well as musicianship. Aspects of performance such as rubato, dynamics, fermata and other expressive devices would be not only easier to negotiate, but could be approached with total spontaneity; and even things like choice of tempo would be freed up. The fact that all the music would 'come from one mind' was seen as beneficial, making the performance more organic; and by a similar token the need to negotiate aspects like tempo, dynamics and so on would be dispensed with. Some thought self-accompaniment would be a more informal way of presenting a concert, and some thought it would be more intimate.

As well as these mainly qualitative responses, a very large dataset is still being analysed which will reveal rich statistics concerning, for example, how many of the singers use an instrument during practice (answer – 98%), and how they use it; how many of them, all of whom are classical singers, also sing pop, folk and/or jazz and to what extent their use of an instrument differs during that practice from their usage during classical practice; and many more issues. Further details will be posted when the analysis has got further along.

The interviews from the questionnaires

Brief news on these will follow in due course.

The diaries

News to follow.

The interviews with other, experienced self-accompaniers

News to follow.

Some examples of comments

As a varied snapshot of the thousands of comments we have received, here are some, taken just from the pilot study alone. They show the many different kinds of reactions singers had to the questionnaire:

-What an interesting area of study. I hadn't heard of it before.

-What a smashing idea! You should definitely do this project. I think it's very exciting

and could change the face of musicianship everywhere …

-It would be fascinating to work on self-accompaniment with a student. It would reveal

any technical things that fall off due to multi-tasking: seeing layers of technique. It would

deepen my understanding of their musical skills/talents/preoccupations.

-Controversially I think singing became more known as … [placing] a lot of emphasis on

the visual aspect: I think it became more important to Look and Behave like a singer

than to actually be a rounded musician!

-I always play through piano accompaniments before and during work on a song, and

learn a lot about the music from doing that; but since filling in the questionnaire I've

been trying it more, and it felt really MUSICAL! It's now my ambition to do it properly.

I've been doing it today and finding it much easier than I thought I would. A couple of

songs just FELT like they'd been written specifically for it. Others don't at all; it's in the

interaction between the piano and vocal lines; it was just Lieder today, I'm going to do

some early English song (w. figures) tomorrow. WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO ME?

And, to balance all this enthusiasm with the smaller number of distinctly less positive

comments (from the main study questionnaire), self-accompanied singing:

-…is not customary or advisable, but some people don't know any better.

THANK YOU TO EVERYBODY WHO HAS BEEN INVOLVED SO FAR!

Postlude: our list of recitals

Please see our page 'Upcoming recitals', which is growing, largely thanks to the schedule of

the amazing Rachel Fenlon (one of our interviewees); but we know of more recitals that are in

preparation to be added. If you are a self-accompanying singer and would like your recital to

be on the list please do just let us know.

Posted: 26 Nov 2024