So You Want to Sing Chamber Music: A Guide for Performers

by Susan Hochmiller

Overview

Vocal chamber music encompasses a wide range of music composed for anything from a solo to twelve voices and instruments. Performing chamber music offers the singer a unique opportunity to increase collaboration with instrumentalists and improve technique, musicianship, artistry, and communication.

So You Want to Sing Chamber Music offers a comprehensive guide to learning, rehearsing, and performing in this genre. The book explores such critical skills as choosing repertoire that is appropriate for one’s voice type, communicating with wind players and string players, preparing for a successful rehearsal, performance style, staging considerations, and recital programming. Also included are suggestions on using vocal chamber music as a pedagogical tool in the voice studio, alongside recommendations for listening and further reading.

Additional chapters by Scott McCoy and Wendy LeBorgne address universal questions of voice science, pedagogy, and vocal health. The So You Want to Sing seriesis produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing Chamber Music features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538105177
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	12/21/2018
Series:	So You Want to Sing , #14
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	244
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Susan Hochmiller is assistant professor of voice at the Sunderman Conservatory of Music at Gettysburg College and director of Orvieto Musica’s Art of Song summer vocal chamber music festival in Orvieto, Italy. She is an avid recitalist and has performed chamber music in Italy and across the United States. An active member of NATS since 2007, Hochmiller was one of twelve voice teachers from the United States and Canada selected to participate in the prestigious 2012 NATS Intern Program, and she has served as president of the Allegheny Mountain Chapter since 2016.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – A Brief History of Chamber Music
Chapter 2 – Why Sing Chamber Music?
Chapter 3 – How to Program Vocal Chamber Music
Chapter 4 – Breathe with the Bow: Communicating with Instrumentalists
Chapter 5 – Stylistic Considerations
Chapter 6 – Pedagogical Advantages of Using Vocal Chamber Music in the Voice Studio
Chapter 7 – Singing and Voice Science, Scott McCoy
Chapter 8 – Vocal Health for the Chamber Music Singer, Wendy LeBorgne
Appendix – Introductory List of Art Song Duets, Trios, and Quartets
Appendix – Selected Journal of Singing Articles, James Maroney and Joan Frey Boytim

Editorial Reviews

Hochmiller’s book is welcome indeed, being a thorough, thoughtful, engaging and informative addition to the available literature on this worthy topic. We often neglect those aspects of vocal study that involve collaboration with anyone other than a pianist. This can be a very limiting perspective, and Hochmiller helps both students and teachers to broaden their understanding of what it means to leave no stone unturned in their pursuit of excellence. This is a most welcome and valuable book!

Karen Holvik

Susan Hochmiller succeeds in exploring most gratifyingly the long tradition of vocal chamber music. Besides being extremely informative in numerous areas, this book argues strongly for the inclusion of this marvelous and often-neglected area of our repertoire in voice curricula and recitals, with benefits to all who take part. I know that this volume will become an often-consulted and valuable addition to my teaching library.

Russell Miller

This superbly written and logically organized book is a must-have resource for every voice teacher and singer, amateur or professional. It is filled with excellent reasons to add chamber music to ones’ repertoire and contains information on its history, stylistic forms and characteristics, uses for pedagogical, performance, and artistic development with a multitude of repertoire and resource suggestions for recital programming. Don’t miss this one! There’s no other book quite like it.

Sharon Mabry

Hochmiller points out that many of the most celebrated composers of classical music have written pieces for voice (or a combination of voices) and instruments—including Brahms, Mendelssohn, Fauré, and Poulenc. Even so, she decries the lack of scholarly resources available on vocal chamber music, noting, by contrast, that there are countless resources dedicated to chamber music for instrumental ensembles. In this regard, So You Want to Sing Chamber Music is a much-needed and long-overdue contribution. Reviewed by Brian Maternach.

Classical Singer Magazine