Singing Lessons: A Hidden Pedagogy

Abstract

Two years ago, I created a performance piece called Singing Lessons: A Performance about Learning to Sing, in which I tried to demonstrate what I had learned about singing and about life from six remarkable singing teachers.In it, I told the story of my quest for voice, using archival audiotapes and photographs, and by telling stories, by demonstrating some technical aspects of singing, and by singing repertoire I had studied with each teacher.Mary Clare Powell (2002), in a chapter titled "Why I send the poet to teach my courses" explores how being a poet influences her university teaching.It made me think of how being a singer shapes my teaching.This paper is the result.I begin with a segment of the Singing Lessons performance piece which includes the script, photographs, and video clips of the sung material.1 This ten minute long segment takes place approximately in the middle of the original hourlong performance.At the end of the Singing Lessons segment, I turn to a reflection on what it means to take my singer to teach my courses. The Script: Singing LessonsAldeburgh is a fishing village on the Suffolk coast of England.The North Sea pounds the shingle shore 2 and the smells of salt sea and freshly caught fish and chips wrapped in newspaper always mingle on that beach.Benjamin Britten, the composer, and Peter Pears, the tenor, lived together in Aldeburgh, and it was there that most of Britten's music was premiered.When I was 27, I went on scholarship to study at the 1 The accompanist is Mark Sirett.2 A shingle shore is a beach composed of small rounded pebbles.

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