Excellence in Singing: Multilevel Learning, Multilevel Teaching.(Review)

Excellence in Singing: Multilevel Learning, Multilevel Teaching by Robert Caldwell and Joan Wall Caldwell Publishing Company 1,800 pp. Five volumes, $175

Ten years in the making, this five-volume instructional tome is an ambitious undertaking that takes teacher and student deep into the minutiae of the singer's craft. With extended pedagogical chapters followed by corresponding exercises, the books appear to be geared primarily toward students of vocal pedagogy and instructors looking to expand their repertoire of teaching tools. If the project is intended for singers, it's for those who would rather spend their time reading about singing than doing it.

Although many sections are pedantic and overwritten, the series, to its credit, includes explorations of all physical and artistic aspects of singing, rather than limiting its focus strictly to vocal technique. But the entire venture raises an intriguing question: we know good singing can be taught, but can good teaching of singing be taught -- and if so, can it be learned by reading a book?

Demystifying a process as paradoxically intangible and physical as singing has many pitfalls. Elements that most teachers grasp on an intuitive level can sound trivial and condescending when spelled out. This problem is most apparent in the painstaking explanations of Volume One: Beginning the Process, which will be of most use to those who know absolutely nothing about either teaching or singing. (Is this the ideal consumer for a five-volume set about singing?) The authors trade in the obvious, peppering the text with such resounding truisms as "There are many ways to think about flexibility" (I certainly hope so!) and "Your job as a teacher is to notice what your student is doing and respond." There is also a healthy modicum of new-age earnestness, with exercises in the realm of "What would happen if you didn't sing that way?" Thankfully, the semantic goo recedes a ...