#IndependentWoman

Recently I was facing certain questions about myself and you know, you'd think that by the time you turn 33 years-old you already have your personality completely figured out. And I think I know pretty much who I am and I am proud of the woman I've become. I am grateful for everything I had in my life, and I am satisfied with my career as it is.

I get asked many times if I wouldn't want to have more work in the music and then I think about the 3 ensembles I manage, the 2 choirs I am conducting and another ensemble I am coaching, the churches I am doing musical duties at, and there's this foundation (Stichting Zin in Zingen) I am working with, and the projects I am doing as a guest singer occasionally and so on, and there's teaching and then I am like: Work even more? Isn't this just enough? Yeah, of course, it would be great to become rich and doing that CD recording I've been being asked in the summer whether I have one or not, but next to a part-time job and the diverse musical activities I have and my own vocal- and personal development I have hardly time for posting new entries on this blog, not to mention the fact that when I mention to my Friday date all the things I listed above just now, I get two different reactions. The first reaction is that they ask me if I'd have any room at all for a relationship being so busy, and they already assuming I don't, without me actually giving an answer to this question. The second reaction is that they don't ask this question, just assume that I'd probably don't have time for a relationship so I'd obviously wouldn't mind being treated as a hook-up material or just simply back off - what flattering options to have, isn't it? Anyway, I get assumptions and they make decisions for me without even being asked whether I'm fine with their conclusion or not (let me tell you, no woman would be satisfied or happy with a man making decisions for them - I know, this might be shocking for many! - insert sarcastic joke here). Well, for these gentlemen, whose head are full of their assumptions about me and my intentions, I have no room, no emotional energy and definately no time at all (unless they come out of their head and stop reading between my lines 😉)
So work more? I don't know, maybe. But surely not wasting time for delusional men.

The best was when I was accused of not being a feminist. Well, this made me think a little. I have always considered myself as an "equalist" when it comes to gender rights and gender gap. When I say "equalist", I mean I believe that men and women deserve to be treated as equal, since both of them belong to the human race. There shouldn't be any discrimination based on biological differences. I don't like to call myself a feminist, because then I would be considered as a feminazi as well, who hate men, and as a matter of fact I don't hate men. I love them! I love everything about them! They make great friends and some of them can be excellent lovers (I guess) and very few of them could make exceptionally good partners (the kind I am looking for, actually). In the old fashioned way, I am a true feminist, I act like one. I take pride in the fact that I pay for my monthly expenses, my rent, food on my own, and really I am the Independent Woman from the Destiny's Child song. I am super excited about the 8-week long boxing training I'm about to begin in the end of this month. I am proud of the fact that I can make it on my own without the financial support of some boyfriend or husband or anyone, actually. It's not that I wouldn't need or wouldn't want to have a relationship...

Or well, you know what?

I don't want a relationship. I want partnership. I am an equalist. I want someone with whom we treat eachother like equals. If I don't have that, I prefer to be single, because I am happy the way I am and I don't need a relationship to justify my existence or to give me the flattering status of someone's girlfriend or wife. Again, I'm not against of becoming someone's girlfriend or wife, but not in a relationship that's only relative, I want to be equal with my man. I want to build a castle with him - figuratively. Accepting eachother as we are with all our scars and flaws, laugh together, inspire, forgive and understand eachother. That's what I want...


But well, back to the singing part and music and work and such.
People usually ask me if I've ever thought about singing in a professional choir. And really, I did. I gave it a thought and decided not to do it, not only because I am terrible with auditions. I don't even hold auditions with Bartók Rózsái Együttes for the vacant places, because I don't believe in the efficiency of an audition to filter out candidates for a possible long-term cooperation.
I knew it quite soon back at the Conservatory that I don't want to do the same things fellow-singers did: going to auditions, sometimes just for the sake of doing it and not particularly to get the gig - seriously, I will never understand this madness. Once I asked a friend what is it like to go to these auditions and she told me it's like doing a singing exam at school. I was like: Eh? What's the point of that?? I think it's really rude from the professional world to keep freshly graduated singers in the student state this way. I hated singing exams! There's no way in hell I'd want to go back there! No wonder I've always been bad at auditions...
Don't get me wrong, if you like them, knock yourself out, but I'm not joining this vicious circle of sending me back to exam situations. By the way, this might be also the infected wound which the classical music world actually suffers from - but it's really just a thought.

I will never settle for something less than my goal. Not in my professional life and surely not in my private life.

So here you go:

• I am a feminist, but not a feminazi.
• I am traditional in some cases, but very radical when it comes to (social) causes I am passionate about.
• I am old fashioned, but I don't mind taking the first step.
• I love to experiment with literally anything with the right people in the right circumstances - and not only because my whole self as an early musician and performing artist revolves around experiment and new sensations all the freakin' time
• I believe and trust in God, but I'm not a religious fanatic (like those crazy people from Margaret Atwood's Gilead - a huge shout out to The Handmaid's Tale and The Testaments which is an astonishing deduction to what would happen if religious fanatics would take over in the politics)

I could go on with this list forever. Nothing in life is ever black and white.

Priorities

There's something I learned a few years ago, like five or six years ago: set your priorities.

But what are these priorites? How can you decide what's the most important for you at the moment you set them? This morning I've found the ever first interview I gave in my life from 2014, the year when I graduated from my MA studies. At that time artistic development was all I cared for and I was sure that the rest will come by itself. I wanted to develop artistically by growing as a person, figuring out who I really am - just like every young adult does in their 20s.

I remember back then I wanted to make it as a performing artist, a singer, I wanted to be a bright hot star, but not for myself but for others to recongnize my talent, and maybe I wanted badly to grab someone's attention - like it would mattered if that person recognizes my talent. Today I know that my talent is just one little detail of the person who I am. I don't need anyone's recognition anymore. I am fully capable woman, standing on my own, just like I've always been. Ever since I don't care about success, fame, wealth or being able to make a living out of singing and music, I am free. Not caring about these earthly treasures liberated me completely, and now I have time for more valuable priorities, such as family, friends, my garden and above all these: myself.

I look back of my reckless 20s with nostalgy and with a little laughter. It's not that I don't want to face beautiful musical challanges anymore, but I changed my mentality about it. I try to choose my battles and challanges carefully in such way that I am aware that I am the one who takes care of the firm emotional background, I am the one who takes care of Johanna Földesi, and not someone else. I'm almost sure that even if I would be in a relationship, I would still be the only one who would be responsible for this task and I would only have a tiny support and space given to be able to do so. Actually I was a little kid when I had the very strong feeling that I would have to learn to be able to be alone and to be a good companion for my very self. This childhood memories follows me on my path every day, and sometimes life just gets overwhelming and too much - at times like this I just stop, take a good look at myself and I decide whether I could use some help or not.
It doesn't sound too flattering, right? Don't worry, it's not as bad as it might sound like.

But back to priorities! Here are some top priorities of the 33 years old Johanna Földesi.

Quality above quantitiy
I remember when I was in my 20s I could do a thousand stuff in a day and now I am happy if from the 6 tasks I planned for a day I can do the half of it, but then I do them right. It gives me now more satisfaction than the amount of tasks I complete per day.

Reputation
You know, as you age, it's all about dignity. There are certain things I would do at the age of 33 years, what I would have definitly had done when I was 23. Fame and wealth can shine so bright that you don't see the dirt and the wrong under it. You're blinded by their illusion.
Once you get to a certain age, and you don't have to be 50+ to be an example for the younger generation, to become an influence for a youngster. I believe that as an artist you're responsible for those who look up to you and your work and your morals should show that. So stop messing around and grow up! Act like an adult person, even if it seems hard. You can be a kid again when you perform, but accepting adulthood will only help you to develop further as a human being.

Family and friends
Not blindfoldedly and not putting them before yourself, but they are top priority. And sometimes you have friends who make up for some family members - no offense, really. Of course, in the end you're the one that's responsible for yourself, but you also need some support from your family and friends, and sometimes you have to be their support. Whatever happens, just do your best to be there for them: check on them, ask them how they are doing and ask it in such way that you're truly interested in their answer - you know what I'm talking about!

Be lazy sometimes
I have a very dear old friend in Vienna. This friend of mine a bit older than 80, but just as fresh as any young adult. Every once in a while I go and visit her in Vienna and then we talk about what has happened to us since we saw each other for the last time. Even though I spin around much less than I used to, I still do a lot of things and most of the times these "lot of things" happen in paralel with eachother. So there was me telling my friend how many things I am involved with, what amazing projects, and my job, and so on, to which she just told me: but are you also lazy sometimes? I just laughed and said that yes, every once in a while I just do nothing - although at that time I wasn't living up to it that much as I do now.
What I want to say is that you should be lazy sometimes. Just do nothing and enjoy it. And when I say "nothing" I mean literally nothing. Before I fully embraced the dolce far niente (= pleasant idleness) I seriously started to wonder about why am I so busy all the time? Am I busy because I'm really busy and things must get done, or because I think they must get done. Huge difference. Also, are these things coming from my side or is it something that necessary for the everyday life? I came to the conclusion that there are very few obligations in our lives that really are obligations, therefore I decided to be more relaxed about it, and one of the consequences of this decision was that my body let go of a lot of tension and I changed as a singer.
My way of thinking also have changed. For example if someone tells me that I should go to an audition of a talent show, because I'm told that I'm talented and it looks good on my CV and it would get me good connections, doesn't mean that I really should do that. It's rather that I have the freedom to choose to do the audition and even if I choose not to do it, I'm still the same talented singer I've always been.

Settle down
There comes a moment in life when you get more mature and you are not as bouncy-bouncy as you were when you were much younger. There comes a time in your life when you just want to have something to rely on and you just want to have a quite life with working in your garden, taking long walks in a forest and enjoying a glass of wine and cooking together with a good friend on a Friday evening. You start to feel that you need a safe harbour where you can return to for recovery and rejuvination.


It's funny how priorities change in just 5-6 years time. Of course, not everyone's priorities change this early as mine did, and that's also perfectly fine. I think, standing alone throughout my entire life anticipated this change. I had more time to figure things out for myself. I wouldn't call myself wise, I'm improvising through my entire life and there are just a few things I'm sure about, and those are my priorities. And the best thing about it, that your priorities will change as your life changes. Or at least that's how I survive, I believe...

Read, research, discover!

I'm a singer specialized in early music and as being one during my preparation for a concert  (regardless it's a programme that I put together or someone else) I'd do my research on the pieces I am supposed to sing. Looking up the origin of every single thing I have ever been busy with is probably a result of my insatiable curiousity, and it just got "worse" as I've got more and more involved with medieval and renaissance repertories.

Doing research became also a necessity, but also something I've always enjoyed to do. I think I've mentioned this before, but I decided to become a singer in the last year of grammar school (it is quite late to make such a decision, according to current standards - NB: it's a stupid standard), because I was tired of library hours and I needed challange. I didn't want to spend my entire adult life in a library. Little I had known back then that I'd be involved with early repertories which will demand a certain amount of library hours. I wasn't planning to become an early music singer I've just gradually become one. I still remember how I hated and cursed square notation and Gregorian chant at my first encounter with them during my studies and now I wouldn't be able to imagine my life without Gregorian chant, square notation and neumes! It was a true metamorphosis from being an old school Classical Musician-Singer into a brand new Early Musician-Singer. I had finally the tools to search back the origin of all those Renaissance motets I had ever sung with chamber and church choirs. I finally understood that Ave vera virginitas is just a little part of Josquin's Ave Maria motet. And I understood at last, why would historians would state that Johann Sebastian Bach was a revolutionaire composer for applying the old techniques with his newly developed ones. My growing knowledge on early repertories helped me to become a better and updated Classical Musician. The more I had to perform from early notation the better my sight-reading skills become.

I've seen classmates at conservatory who were completely clueless when they were pushed into doing research. They found it somehow a waste of time, and not as an opportunity to become better performers. The thing is that research will help you understand the pieces you're performing. Either you acknowledge this or not, sitting in your practice room won't ever make you a better performer, it will just make your technique better and not your performing skills. Imagine you have a really abstract piece on your programme: if you just playing the notes without understanding the piece itself, it doesn't matter how flawless your performance is, your audience will be bored and they won't understand the piece. Easy or abstract, any piece needs to be understood and only becoming as good as anyone else won't make you a better performer. Communicating the message behind - a message you decoded from the piece - will excite your audience. Technique will never excite or elevate them on the long term.

Therefore: read, research and discover! You think you've seen it all? Do you think you know everything? You couldn't be more wrong...

Listen! (Part 2)

It was quite a long time ago since I've posted an update to my blog, but since I've finally had time to give a new look to my website, I thought it is about time to share some thoughts on my blog as well.

As I have already mentioned in my previous post I would like to drive your attention to the ears and on the fact how important it is to listen, especially when you are a singer. If you need a quick recap, you can find the previous entry here.

It is almost obvious that in order to have decent communication with eachother in any circumstances, we need to listen to eachother very carefully. Listening with care requires more concentration in the beginning, but you can train yourself to be more precise when it comes to listen to someone else. When it comes to music and especially intonation problems, you can easily solve your intonation problems by giving more attention to the note that you're singing and listening. At conservatories and music schools, students (mostly singers) get the critique that their intonation may not be perfect. Now, it is important to know that as a singer you have mainly three possible reasons to get this comment:

1. You push instead of using the natural support
2. You don't listen carefully enough
3. Both of them from above at the same time

One would think that a musician or a singer has perfect ears (not perfect pitch!) and we don't have any problems with listening. Actually, in most cases it's not true. Many of taking listening for granted and we don't train our ears and the brain funtion, called "listening" carefully enough, that's why careless listening results slight or big intonation problems. Here I wouldn't mention different tunings since it's not relevant yet.

Those who don't have natural affinity towards music and considered not having musical ears, are actually people who don't use their relevant brain function to listening. They listen in a superficial way. I have had singing pupils who had difficulties to sing back a note played on the piano, but could perfectly sing back the same note when I was singing it for them. It is not only the fact that it is easier to resonate together with another human being, than with a musical instrument, but it is also a proof that people not having musical ears can train themselves to a certain level to be able to do so. They probably won't reach the quality of a professional solo instrumentalist or singer, but they can become pretty good ensemble players. 

Listening is also a question of sensitivity. Artists in general are different from people whom are not involved in the arts, because they sense and experience the world around them in a different way. When musicians and singers hear a note, their brain literally translates it to a musical note and they are able to sing or hum it back, but when a non-musician hears a note, it is just a note, so he/she will hum back some note and not exactly the same. Why? For their senses it doesn't really matter what note it is, for us, musicians it does, especially when we make music together or improvise.

Unfortunately, improvisation went out of fashion in the 20th-century among classical musicians and singers (fortunately, improvistation is an essential element of jazz), but it is slowly coming back to practice. In the 19th-century it was a common thing to improvise on concerts and it belonged to any musical training. I wish someday a classical music education model would rise and spread all over the world, that includes lots of improvisation and ear-training...

Spending some precious time with the audience...

I have to start by telling you, before this sentence hits bigger than it should, that it is so interesting how musicians have become elitist snobs (not everyone, but 95% of them) in the last decades. I have two conservatory diploma's, but I am sick and tired of the traditional way of performing music (nicely dressed up - preferably in black, or in a suit -; the venue doesn't really matter, any traditional musician can make a snob, elitist concert hall out of any venue). They do an excellent job, but meanwhile they are doing their best, they give a flawless performance, they forget to enjoy the whole thing (whole thing = the piece they are performing, the fact they are giving something to their audience, and all the emotions music can squeeze out of performers and listeners alike), and they also forget the fact that a flawless performance is a piece of cake for a machine as well.

Guess what? I would like to hear performing musicians make mistakes and show me they are just as much of a human beings as I am, moreover, I would like to see how they get over their mistakes. I don't care about how well you can play that piece, show me some flesh and blood, and please, please, entertain me! Make me laugh, or cry, I don't care, just make me feel alive!
Every single time I see a performer making a mistake and coming out of it, he/she becomes immediately very special to me and I will make sure I'll check out his/her performances in the future. For one single reason: for letting me see the human side of a performer. It is the madness of nowadays, that (literally) everything has to be perfect, though as far as I know only the dead are perfect, everyone else (the living) has a lot to accomplish still, right?


So... Now that this is out of our way, we can talk about spending time with your audience. I know, the paragraphs above seem nothing to do with the title of this entry, but believe me, that few paragraphs of rant will all make sense in the end.

It is funny, how we are not taught to spend time with the audience. I have met many people (singers and instrumentalists alike) who cannot say anything to the compliments and comments of their audience. We are so busy with doing our best on stage that we forget about what really matters: the people. I was also for a long-long time confused and I was at loss for words what to say when someone complimented on my performance or even shared some constructive ideas with me about it. Of course everyone comes to the final solution of saying "thank you" to these compliments and maybe a few more neutral sentences to those constructive comments. But while we are looking for this final and best solution, we really forget to spend time with our audience. Isn't listening to them after they listened to us would be at least the minimum we could do for them? Wouldn't it be the best way of figuring out how we can please their ears (and not the ears of other professional musicians)?

I used to be one of those singers who couldn't deal with her audience, and I am so happy I am not like that anymore. Also, fortunately I have been an exhibitionist person since my early childhood (showing off with my drawings, the new songs and poems I had learned, etc.), so it wasn't too difficult to reach out again to this. Now that I could (more or less) get back to this mentality, and I don't care anymore about saying something smart and artistic to my audience's words, I am able to enjoy the warm bath they are preparing for me: the compliments are the hot water, the bath oil and the bubbles, and the comments (constructive or not) are the cold water and the towel. And that's how everything stays in balance. I am happy I am finally able to enjoy their company after the concert and their happy faces make me feel satisfied - despite the mistakes I might have done.

Do you know what's good about your audience? First of all, they are cheering for you. Secondly, they forgive the mistakes you make at the concert, and they appreciate if you overcome the shock caused by this mistake. They forgive you, because you're human, just like they are. It is not bad to show your vulnerability to them - actually they love it, It is just the illusion created by music teachers that perfection and invincibility to motivate their pupils to practise enough. But if you bore them, that's something beyond recovery, I'm afraid. You can agree with me, and you can disagree, but it's true. After all, music is so much fun, so why would you keep all the fun for yourself?

Get it by your hands

"Don't beg for it, earn it! Do that and you will be rewarded."
(Eureka SeveN)

I have never been the kind of person who would be satisfied with anything that's granted. I have always found satisfaction in my achieved goals and my successfully accomplished tasks/missions when I had to really work hard for them (even if I had to perform a miracle). I would hate to be appreciated for being who I am (for my name, I mean) instead of what I do. When I told this to a dear friend of mine, he told me that it is an honorable and nice feature of one's personality, but it's also a little bit stupid. I cannot help, this is who I am, but I have to admit, I agree and disagree with him at the same time.

I agree, because it is indeed comes with more seemingly unnecessary investment (qua time, energy, money, etc.), and living on what you've already got by birth, everything that you can take for granted (thanks to your ancestors, and your name, or the position you happen to have) is much easier than to fight your way inch by inch towards your goal. But if you keep on working from the resources that you were given, you'll prevent yourself from reaching for an unimaginable success, because you cannot and you don't want to see anything else, but these resources. Of course, probably you may come up with new ideas, and manage to obtain new additional resources and connections to your current and given ones, but you'll only be able to use them until a certain limit. That's what happens also when your experience becomes a burden instead of a benefit. And anyway, who on earth like limitations in anything?

So I have to say, I firmly disagree. I am rather fond of the theory of the Greater Fool. The greater fool theory states that the price of an object is determined not by its intrinsic value, but rather by irrational beliefs and expectations of market participants. A price can be justified by a rational buyer under the belief that another party is willing to pay an even higher price. Or one may rationally have the expectation that the item can be resold to a "greater fool" later. (yes, Wikipedia is your evil friend sometimes... I wouldn't quote from Wikipedia if I wouldn't checked it carefully). The Greater Fool in my opinion is also someone who doesn't really looks for fame or the merits he may get out of anything he does. Instead of that, he leaves everything behind and leads the way through the unknown and creates new paths to follow for the ones that are coming after him. That's why he doesn't look at the price and the amount of investements he has to put into a certain project or new approach. The only thing that matters for him is that everyone who decides to follow the path he created will result something better than before. That's why he chases after his dreams (or in other words, the irrational beliefs and expectations of market participants).
The Greater Fool don't beg for success, he earns it, and get it by his hands, though sometimes he's rewarded with success.

Why is this important for a singer (or even for an instrumentalist)? Singing and working on your (vocal) development demands one to become a Greater Fool. If I would make a calculation on how much I've spent for school, singing lessons and travelling for the sake of my own education so far, I could buy a furnished house, and pay for its expenses for a few years. And on the other hand (and this is quite old argument, but still good) if I would get paid for all those hours I work on programme's, organizing concerts and projects, or just for practising, even on the minimal wage's hourly payment, I would be a millionaire. It always takes more investment in time, energy, money, etc. than it actually pays back in cash.

But just imagine: you sing a song at a concert (not even at any of those fancy concert locations, just a song after mass or anything like that), and then you see the happy faces of your audience - well, you can be sure that they will bring something nice home in their heart. Making people happy doesn't pay you in cash, and it doesn't pay off immediately, but it makes you a better person, and who knows? Maybe later on you will get an unexpectedly nice comission from someone or you'll be asked to join a project that's interesting and even pays well. NB: the other side of this coin is that you better not screw around with people, because that's also pays off, but that payment will hurt pretty bad.

Enough of complaining about you cannot do what you really would like to, and that there are no challanging projects you can join! If you really would like do something interesting, well do something interesting! Don't beg for it, earn it! Do that and you'll be rewarded.

Post-graduation shock

Oh, I already know, this entry will be just like the one with the title If I had ever knew that...
 
It is so amazing how your graduated musician friends and your teachers don't talk about the year after their graduation. To be honest, in the past year I seriously had moments when I was sure, I have gone slightly mad, or I have lost something I had during Conservatory. I missed the almost constant fizz and fuzz (but of course not the fuss), and I thought if I don't have this fizzy-fuzzy bubbly days constantly I must be doing something really wrong. Of course I've been told that I will probably need some time to get used to the idea that I have a bachelor and a master diploma, but I have never imagined they meant something like this.

And then last Thursday I went to listen to the bachelor final recital of a friend of mine, here in Tilburg. I met a few old friends as well, friends whom I haven't seen for a long-long time, and each of them asked me the same question: what are you doing here? They meant it in a way that since I am graduated, there's no school anymore for me, so they were wondering what keeps me still here. Many of the conversations were rather on the funny slide, and I explained them that I am living my life, and for that I have chosen Tilburg - for now at least. To the last person on that evening who asked me this question I confessed that I am trying to recover after that 6 years at the conservatory (however much fun it was, it was still an impulsive, intense and stressful period in my life), and honestly I wasn't really looking for opportunities to get employed according to my diploma's - to which he told me that it is normal. Appearantly, the year after the graduation is seasoned and featured with reaching the bottom (sometimes in extremes), and building up your career is not as easy as you have been told at marketing lectures. It is certainly not like sending dozens of application packages (including your CV, recordings, portfolio, etc.) to a dozens of professional ensembles and hoping they would call you back. That works in other sectors of the job market but not among musicians, and also not among singers (where you just throw a piece of rock and it hits at least 3 sopranos before it hits the ground gently, because the last soprano was really short).

The year after the graduation is the nihil that nobody likes to talk about and they would rather forget about it. And yet, I still feel blessed for this past year regardless all the struggle I have had. I would rather reach for the bottom of the bottom than to get to breaking point. I would rather have a few struggling days than to ignore the struggle and end up with a burn out. I felt guilty for not being able to do the same amount of work and pracitising hours without emotional outbursts, and I also felt guilty for not seeking the opportunity to perform whenever I can. I used to be someone who couldn't stay put for more than 5 minutes and was constantly making plans for the future. In the past months, especially since January I crawled back to my shell in shame and I was reading the books I wanted to read for a long-long time and also some more I was advised to read at that time. And now, about a 5 or 6 weeks ago I was finally able to come out from my shell and wake up from my slumber. I moved out from my old and tiny room from Doctor Nolensstraat and moved in to a more spacious house with a friend of mine (we are singing in the schola at Ringbaan West).Proving how silly a human being can be, after getting over my guilt about not wanting to show off my gifts like I did before, after moving in a more spacious house I felt guilty for being happy about having more space... Silly is that... And then the sun began to shine again, I spent a a few hours in the garden, enjoying the sunshine and I forgot about that remorse as well. My weight loss stopped and suddenly I began to gain weight again (I'm almost at the point that I am saying, Now, that's the minimum to survive, milady). Simply: I decided to enjoy life again, which I somehow mysteriously forgot to do for a few months in the near past...

So... What am I doing here? I am living my life. I spend it sometimes with music (with Scherzi Musici or planning the up-coming concerts of Bartók Rózsái, sometimes with baking brownies. I make money to be able to travel and to get singing lessons (for the sake of my development, but on the first place, because I love to sing), and to make a living. I have a church choir to conduct in Reeshof at the St. Antoniuskerk, and I am singing in the schola at Ringbaan West on every 4th Sunday of the month. It is not that glamorous (yet), but I love it - and maybe I don't need the glamour, but I need to become the sparkle. And now I remember that I have a pile of motets from Bamberg Codex to make a selection from and make a programme and get the singers and musicians together for it. I have plans again, and my plans are crawling up on the hierarchy in my life with every single goodnight sleep... Oh, how I love my curtains and my new bed!

Living in the world of extremes

It doesn't matter how I look at it I still think we are living in a world of extremes. What makes me say this? Well, take a look at the artworks and peformances of nowadays. Art has always served as a mirror to reflect what's happening and also exaggerate it a little so it would bat an eye (at least a little).

But now this mirror-effect is even stronger. I mean, if I take a look at how different music genre's (classical, ligh music and early music) vocal music sounds like, the difference in vibrato preference is almost abstract, if not extreme and insane. Once a guy said in the end of 19th-century that using a lot of vibrato is considered as bad taste, and now everyone (especially authenticity freaks among early musicians) thinks that music should lack vibrato (if you ask me, this is simply a misinterpretation of a source reading, but that only my humble opinion, or in other words: don't take everything you read literally). As for me, I don't mind vibrato on the voice at all (and I am a non-authenticity freak, and a graduated singer specialized on early music repertory), if it's elegant and natural. Those who prefer this laser-voice thingie (I'm sorry, but I don't have a better word for this) don't know anything about the physics behind producing a sound: when the air is vibrating, it becomes something audible (it depends on the vibratory if we are able to hear it or not), and if the vibration has a regular pattern, it's called a sound, but if this pattern is irregular it's called a noise.

On muscular level and if you don't know how to produce this non-vibrato laser thingie you just grab your own larynx and don't let it move on it's natural way. Ehm... I think I've written something earlier about manipulating the muscles and how damaging it can be if you do it longer than you should (in this context "longer than you should" means "any length", so just try not to do it), but here you go: if you don' let your body work for you, although your body knows much better than your brain how to produce a sound, you'll get problems. The larynx is supposed to move freely without any manipulation during singing. That's one of the edges of the extremes; the other one when you try to move your larynx in a certain way in order to create the vibration - I don't think I have to repeat myself, so just shortly put: since it's manipulated, controlled, therefore it's bad for your voice. In both cases, also the breathing is being controlled and is by no means free, so there's a huge possibility that there's other muscular tensions in the body while you're trying to either create one of them: the vibration or the non-vibration - instead of letting it happen.

But my point is... It is extreme how classical singers' vocal interpration is full of vibration, while early music is almost weirdly and unnaturally non-vibrato, and then you have the light music singers who mix the two a little, and they sound still more natural than any singer who uses bel canto. And it is weird, because bel canto is all about following the natural muscle movements of the body (especially the larynx), while for example belting (as far as I experienced) is doing the opposite but still in a good way so you wouldn't harm your larynx and the vocalchords.

Another extreme shows in how musicians treat improvisation nowadays. A few weeks ago a friend of mine shared and interesting article which says (already in the title) we are playing classical music all wrong, because composers wanted us to improvise. I remember how afraid I was from improvising simply because I've never done it before, but the moment I began to experiment with my voice and explore my limits, this fear turned into curiousity towards the unknown. Last year in November I had the luck to participate in a project based on vocal improvisation (for those whom are interested: check out the Klankconcerten or if you don't speak Dutch, just watch this video to get an idea). When I was preparing for the rehearsals (we've got a few instructions on the improvised pieces) a part of me, which was still afraid of making mistakes, was also afraid of improvisation. What if I do something wrong? But then I thought: there's no way I can make a mistake if I listen carefully to the other singers - and I was right.

Why don't classical musicians improvise? They are not used to it, and most of the teachers at the conservatories don't push them towards improvisation (except for those who actually teach improvisation). Early musicians are a bit better on this, because the earlier the repertory, the more improvisation is required (in those good old times in the 10th-14th-centuries the scribes just didn't write everything down). Yet again, we have the other edge of extreme: jazz, which is (comparing to classical music performances) full of improvisations.

So yes, we are living in a world of extremes. I'm just wondering could this Planet and the Humanity be saved, if every artist would try to balance the sharp and wounding difference between the edges of the extremes? Maybe even wars and terrorism could be stopped, but that's just an idea...