The Voice Within the Voice

There is a memorable line in David Mitchell's novel, Cloud Atlas, when a fugitive human clone, Sonmi-451, is taken to the "facescaper," ne plus ultra of plastic surgeons, to alter her well-known cloned features. This particular facescaper is regarded as the best in the business, which she attributes to her ability to "see the face within the face." I thought of this recently when trying to describe a quality which I believe many of the most memorable voices have: they reveal the "voice within the voice".

This is the voice beyond the meaning of the words spoken and beyond the aesthetic qualities of the voice heard. In his excellent monograph, A Voice and Nothing More, Mladen Dolar calls this the "object voice,"  and delineates the two ways we lose or mask it: either we over-focus upon what a person is saying (the message), or we over-focus on the quality of the sound, as when we listen to a singer (the aesthetics). Both paths lead us to miss the object voice, which becomes completely covered by sound or meaning.

We seem aware that the voices have the power to affect our minds independent of text and aesthetics, and we can see this power in examples from religious or mystical rituals to fiction and Hollywood. Call-and-response patterns in a ceremony, especially with a well-known text, let us feel how vocal sound can penetrate the mind when text has lost all surprise, but beauty of sound has no relevance. To be affected by an outside voice makes us aware of voices' special access to our psyches, to comfort but also to hurt or control. In the sci-fi novel Dune, a caste of witch-nuns called the Bene Gesserit study the psychoacoustic properties of voice in such detail that they can use "the Voice," a special way of speaking which allows one to control the listener like a puppet. No less disturbing are the real cases of schizophrenics powerless to resist the demands of voices in their heads.

Horror movies' numerous demonic possessions, and even Gandalf showing his otherworldly side, use technological tricks to depict this excess of voice beyond sound and meaning, where the voice itself can command power over others. Perhaps it is necessary to alter the actor's voice electronically or by mixing it with another actor's voice because, as Dolar suggests, the excess of voice over sound and meaning is also its excess over and separation from the body. David Lynch depicts this in one of my favorite scenes from Lost Highway, where the Mystery Man has literally too many voices, but also a voice which exceeds the bounds of time and space.

What about voice divorced from body completely? A famous example of this uncanny effect, which Dolar cites in his book, is the mother's voice in Psycho:

[Think] of Hitchcock's Psycho, which revolves entirely around the question "Where does the mother's voice come from? To which body can it be assigned? We can immediately see that a voice without a body is inherently uncanny, and that the body to which it is assigned does not dissipate its haunting effect. (p. 61)

Horror movies also frequently use this "voice without a body" trope (Dolar's book, incidentally, is where I found the title for this blog) in menacing phone calls. Imagine the lack of chills had the opening of Scream been filmed this way instead, or handled via text message.

In music, both technique and technology can be used not just to amplify the voice, conform to a style, or create innovative sound colors (this would keep us within the aesthetic dimension of the voice), but to amplify this sense of the voice's excess over body, and thus give us a peek at the object voice. In The Knife and another solo project, Fever Ray, singer and composer Karin Dreijer Andersson often uses extensive electronic processing of her vocals, the goal being, according to interviews, is to remove the audience's identification with a personality via the voice; ironically, Karin's voice (with or without processing) is the most striking thing about her records. Selective and creative use of electronic processing not only provides aesthetic variety, but creates a mutating voice which belongs to no one. Another famous Anderson made her career in the early 80’s on the same insight: clever and targeted use of technology can create an overall context in which even the plain spoken voice no longer sounds everyday.

The great vocal traditions of the world, of course, had no such technological resources to create a mutating voice, and draw very real boundaries of style which may seem to contrast with the supposedly limitless colors electronic processing can achieve. How is it that vocal technique might also reveal the voice within the voice? Horkheimer and Adorno write:

In every work of art, style is a promise. In being absorbed through style into the dominant form of universality, into the current musical, pictorial, or verbal idiom, what is expressed seeks to be reconciled with the idea of the true universal. This promise of the work of art to create truth by impressing its unique contours on the socially transmitted forms is as necessary as it is hypocritical.... Yet it is only in its struggle with tradition, a struggle precipitated in style, that art can find expression for suffering. The moment in the work of art by which it transcends reality cannot indeed, be severed from style; that moment, however, does not consist in achieved harmony, in the questionable unity of form and content, inner and outer, individual and society, but in those traits in which the discrepancy emerges, in the necessary failure of the passionate striving for identity. (Dialectic of Enlightenment, 103)

I believe a similar point should be made about the voice: in the "passionate striving" for mastery of a vocal style, a the "discrepancy" of the object voice emerges, and "what is expressed" can be recognized with the idea of the "true universal," a voice within the voice. This implies two things:

First, dilettantism is impossible. While technical perfection, stylistic purity, or other "questionable [unities] of form and content" cannot be the whole goal, the performer's "passionate striving for identity" must include fidelity and respect to the tradition. If a singer stops practicing and declares himself "good enough," this is not a "necessary failure" but a chosen one. There should instead be no end to the striving.

Second, the limits of commercialized music become clear. Passionate striving to attain mastery of a style, as just noted, is about trying and failing for perfection, about Martha Graham's "queer, divine dissatisfaction". Neither the logic of selling infinitely more nor the logic of having sold enough can motivate this passion; striving for commercial success is about commerce, not art. It may be satisfying and one may be good at it, but it's not divine. 

The Best Online Introduction to Opera

Just a brief post to say that if you're someone interested in learning more about opera, YouTube is a treasure trove of mind-blowing singing performances. The best education in opera appreciation is to listen to a lot of great singers and see what you like, what you start to notice, etc.

To that end, one of the best YouTube channels created by any opera fan belongs to Onegin65. Check it out here. With almost 60 million views to date, he/she must be doing something right!

Why is "Nessun Dorma" on Every Talent Show on Planet Earth?

There have been countless amateur renditions of "Nessun Dorma" on TV talent shows across the world, and this phenomenon perplexes me. How is it that the wider public goes crazy for these performances, but cares little for professional classical music? I cannot believe that so many people who enjoy Paul Pott's "Nessun Dorma" would not enjoy Franco Corelli's.

For better or worse, American Idol, X-Factor, and [Insert Country]'s Got Talent rule television ratings around the globe. You don't attain that level of success without knowing what you're selling, and this product includes a healthy rotation of unpolished dreamers who dream to perform classical music. This is what I'm talking about. Whether tackling "Nessun Dorma" or a few other purely classical (as opposed to crossover) pieces, the spectacle of amateur classical singers doing their best sells well. Real classical tickets sell poorly.

So how can this be? 

Issue #1: "Nessun Dorma" as a moment instead of a piece of music, or, Does Anyone Actually Listen To Paul Potts Sing?

Here's the first obvious thing I missed: "Nessun Dorma" on these shows doesn't lead to stampedes at the opera box office because it is not a performance of opera.

Yes, these shows need good personal interest stories, cathartic moments, triumphs, embarrassments, struggle, heroes, and villains. This sounds exactly like opera, but these components are primarily produced in the TV studio and editing room, not through music itself. The values of classical music--commitment to a beautiful sound, attention to detail, expert control of technique for singers and instrumentalists, etc.--don't really support the needs of entertaining commercial television. Instead we have the familiar camera angles, the shots of judges' faces shifting from skepticism to amazement, and the endless standing ovations of the crowd, all meticulously arranged into a TV segment with the dramatic emotional journey the audience came to see.

Both the live and home audiences get satisfaction, but it's not because of music. If you really care about a musical moment, you don't scream during it; you listen.

Issue #2: Disinterest in musical values, or, Let Me Like What I Like

Everyone who has studied classical singing has experienced this: you board a plane home for Thanksgiving, you mention to your friendly neighboring passenger that you study singing, and now manners dictate that you must pretend to kind of like Josh Groban.

Because we've also experienced this: people become peeved if we say we don't really find these talents that amazing. While we've been holed up in a practice room or music library, most people have learned from commercial music that you like what you like, you get to buy what you like, and those who disagree with you are disparaging your taste, and thus your freedom (to buy). We then emerge from the music academy with several degrees in hand to find that even if people claim to want our opinion on a singer like Potts, direct criticism based on our accumulated knowledge gets branded as "snobby" no matter how delicately it's phrased. Musicians thus learn when to hide the fact that they're educated at all.

The problem here is that when trained musicians judge these talent show performances, they do so relative to musical principles, while the wider audience tends to do so relative to the principles of entertainment commodities. Serious music lovers evaluate whether the musical components came together to produce artistry. The wider audience cares more about whether the moment was exciting, the singer looked impassioned, the high note was surmounted, and the audience overwhelmed--in short, whether they've been watching good TV. My musical critique thus covers principles quite literally irrelevant to most folks' appreciation of a performance, but my dislike of Potts registers and becomes a slam against a moment they enjoyed. It's taken personally.

Issue #3: Repetition vs. relationship

With little free time to waste, entertainment seekers want guarantees that they'll enjoy themselves. The performances on these shows are commodities that come in packaging as standardized as a Coke's, so we know what we're getting and that we're going to like it, and also that everyone else is getting the same thing. There's a lot of comfort in that. As a result, the question is not whether so-and-so is a competent singer with potential, but whether we were entertained. If the current talent entertained us, as Susan Boyle did for many, then it's ready for mass distribution now, unchanged except for the perfunctory makeover.

Listening based on musical principles comes from a desire to understand music and have a relationship with it. We want to know what a singer's strengths are, how she develops as an artist over time, and what new things her voice may be capable of in the future. We want to know how she uses vocal sound to communicate inarticulable truths. A thoughtful relationship over time with an artist, a style, or even a single work is a necessary part of appreciation for all art, and like all relationships, there may be rough spots, things you don't understand, frustrations. It's not entertaining, but it's infinitely rewarding. The classical music of many cultures requires this commitment.

The point is that as consumers of entertainment, we don't want what classical music is: we want repetition over relationship. When I go see most new science fiction movies, I'm really hoping I get to watch The Matrix for the first time all over again. Should someone criticize technical components of The Matrix, informed by a deep love of and relationship with film as an art form, it matters little to me; I just want my show. Ergo, the opera world isn't scooping up hoards of new "Nessun Dorma" converts because nothing in the enjoyment of that aria on TV has prepares one for a relationship with classical music. It prepares them to watch more TV and buy the CD in stores as a kind of souvenir.

Coda: What is an arts organization to do?

I've long been perplexed that various kinds of classical singing seem so resistant to commercial appropriation. The power of commerce to market anything, combined with the internet's ability to find and mine the most specialized of niches, should be easy to wield for anyone trying to either build a commercially relevant classical music audience or develop and market new music based on classical traditions. Instead, big symphonies struggle to hold onto their (literally) dying base, and virtually no contemporary commercial music makes direct use of true classical technique.

I think the above goes a long way toward showing why. To gather new audiences, we need to convince the uninitiated that a relationship with classical music (and this holds true of many other art forms) is worth the time and effort. Embarrassing Hollywood-style ad campaigns in an attempt to be "relevant" don't do this, and in fact insinuate the opposite: opera can be just as slick and disposable as that trash in the multiplex! Instead, we should focus on activities that invite and allow people to start their own relationship to opera. I recently read of opera singers giving a free concert in a park, only to have their company's next show sell out of tickets. This is a perfect example of preparing an audience: let them decide on their own that live, beautiful and professional singing is something they enjoy, then invite them for more.

Let's stop marketing opera as what it's not, and start showing it for what it truly is. It has nothing to do with Paul Potts on TV; that is about entertainment, and people should be free to entertain themselves however they choose. Real art in music is something that needs and includes you within it, builds a relationship with you, and gives you lifelong nourishment. Let's help more people find that.