 |
| A vocalise is a vocal work or an exercise without words. As an exercise, it is often used to develop flexibility and control of pitch and tone. |
He was "old school" meaning one of your conducting skills was that you had to be able to sing in solfege to conduct and that singing was with syllables; do re mi... do do (pronounced dough) sol sol la la sol, fa fa mi mi re re do is twinkle twinkle little star - try it, you'll like it. If you want to get more technical, then remember the Sound of Music song ... "Do a deer a female deer....All his students studied out of the Danhauser books (1,2 &3) Solfège des Solfèges and it got hard very fast. I wasn't very good at it to tell the truth; actually I'm much better now singing while driving the car....slow learner. The real treat was being "allowed" to sing on a neutral vowel, "ah" for instance. Then you could bellow in your most operatic shower voice...
I got to do this piece by Rachmaninoff and with Balaban accompanying me on a huge Steinway grand in his apartment on W. 71st....well. I still have the music that we used - my part anyway.
Sigh.