The Adam Guettel Argument

I'm singing "How Glory Goes" in my voice class, and my voice teacher brought up an interesting argument. He doesn't care for Guettel's music because he said that Guttel doesn't write well for the voice. Which I'm finding is the case. And a lot of his music tends to sound the same. I think "How Glory Goes" sounds similar to a lot of his other works. He writes beautiful music, don't get me wrong, but my voice teacher said he just doesn't write for the voice and the people who pulled off his music in "Piazza" - the show he saw - should all have gotten rasies or Tonys. What do you all think?

Yeah, the voice is an instrument just like a piano, or cello, or anything else. There are easy exercises for beginners, and as you get better, you move on to more challenging things. Adam Guettel doesn't write chopsticks or I,vi,IV,V progressions. It's not called "not writing well for the voice," it's called challenging the singer.

And I would definitely say Piazza and Floyd Collins are quite different, except for maybe a couple things.

Updated On: 11/7/06 at 12:28 AM

I'm confused...how does that statement his voice teacher made distinguish that he is an ass?

I agree that Guettel's three major works - Piazza, Floyd Collins, Saturn Returns/Myths and Hymns all sound very different. True, I think that Guettel has a distinct sound, but then again so does every composer worth his or her snuff.

I also think that Guettel composes very well for the voice. I too have sang "How Glory Goes" and found that though it whipped my chords into a shape, I feel more natural singing his music than any other musical theater composer. His music is supremely difficult, and yet he is similar to Sondheim in that interpretation and acting make or break the song.

I don't think there is anything wrong with Adam Guettel's writing for the voice. I do however see how he can sometimes be writing voice parts with string instruments in mind. some things are easier on a violin than in the voice. This doesn't mean bad...just challenging.

There are many very VERY famous composers who have been "classified" as not knowing the human voice. A good example is Beethoven...His vocal stuff is done less often than others, because he didn't write as well for the voice as others. We still, however, sing Beethoven vocal pieces and label them "a challenge." I think my point is we shouldn't be too hard on this voice teacher.

Right now I have "Say It Somehow" from Piazza in mind, which is a piece I am performing with a friend of mine. It has some very tough things that aren't for your "average voice." Maybe that's all this teacher meant...not for the average voice.

"A good example is Beethoven...His vocal stuff is done less often than others, because he didn't write as well for the voice as others."

Which explains the 9th Symphony, the Missa Solemnis and, of course, FIDELIO.

Who ARE you people, and where do you come from?

The idea that Beethoven's vocal writing is sometimes quite awkward is a common one that has been expressed by critics and musical commentators and I would guess by performers as well.

Of course, it hasn't kept the 9th (especially), the Missa Solemnis and Fidelio from being performed frequently.

I would second Jazzysuite's comments that part of the problem may be that Adam writes for, at least in, his own voice, which is very high and very lyrical. If you get a chance sometime, find the audio files of him humming Light in the Piazza and notice how easy it is for him in his own range.

I agree that a lot of Guettel's work sounds similar -- but that is just his style. Most composers works sound similar in style to their other works. There are certain chord progressions, cadences, intervals, melody patterns, rhythms etc. that each composer is fond of and they use them in their works. That is what makes them unique. Just by listening to the scores without prior knowledge I could identify that Myths and Hymns, Floyd Collins, and Piazza were all by the same composer. By that same token I could pick out a show by Sondheim, Webber, Yazbeck, LaChiusa, or Jason Robert Brown without prior knowledge too. They all do things in their music that is distinctive of their style of composition. It's just like listening to a classical music radio station and knowing immediately if a piece is by Beethoven -- his style is very recognizable.

Of course there are always exceptions here and there. If you listened to some of Beethoven's later works, it might be hard to pinpoint it as Beethoven because by then his style had moved from Classical into what would later be deemed Romantic. If all you had to listen to by Guettel was "The Ballad of Floyd Collins" and "Aiutami" then it might be hard to guess they were by the same person -- but if you listened to the entire scores of both shows it would be obvious. When I play the song "Lonely Room" for people who are only familar with the movie of Oklahoma! they never guess it was composed by Richard Rodgers. However, obviously the rest of the show is in the classic Rodgers style.

Finally, I see where your voice teacher is coming from. Some of Guettel's work is very challenging and doesn't fit the vocal line well, but it is not unsingable. It is just very, very difficult. However, songs like "Migratory V", "Hero and Leander", "The Light in the Piazza", and "Passeggiata" all fit very smoothly into the voice. Sometimes I wish my college voice professor were more like yours -- he knew that I was comfortable singing musical theatre and melody driven pieces so he always wanted to challenge me by having me sing twentieth century art songs. Which I guess in the long run probably was better. My last year though, which was 1999, I was able to sing a selection by Jason Robert Brown and one by Guettel on my senior recital. The voice faculty was very impressed by the musical vocabulary used by these two composers. Up until then the only musical theatre composer whose works they thought were challenging enough to merit us occasionally singing them at recitals was Sondheim.

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Just as each person's fingerprints are unique, each person's voice has its own strengths and weaknesses. This is why classical voice created "fachs" -- categories that demystify the most common groupings of those strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, there are songs for all of us that we love dearly that just won't fit our voices no matter how hard we try.

It's really not so much an issue of how certain composers write for the voice (although Beethoven notoriously treated voices like instruments and makes his singers scream to compete with huge, bombastic orchestral backup that is the equivalent, for most people, of scraping their larynx against a piece of concrete)as it is finding the songs that fit your voice.

The one thing I will say about my own experience singing Adam Guettel's music is that it makes me work like crazy to support. But so does anything with soaring lyrical lines (no matter who wrote it). That's my particular challenge with his stuff. Someone else's might be hearing the melody amongst all of the dense and complex chord progressions. Someone else might find that the range or tessitura doesn't fit their voice -- well, if you're a bass-baritone trying to sing high tenor material, it may not work so well (duh).

I find that Adam Guettel writes for *performers.* The pieces are so effortless to act, and I've rarely heard music that captures and embodies a character's emotion as well as his. And especially in a piece like "Piazza" where the language barrier is part of the story, there are times when words fail the characters and all they can muster is a melisma on an [a] vowel. His music, to me, sounds like someone just opening their soul.

I see what you mean. A lot of the melismatic or "Ah" sections in Guettel's music do sound very improvisatory -- and due to the complicated nature of the music it is very hard to do any "altering" to the vocal line. I had a hard time singing works by Satie or Debussey for the same reason.

Do you have any music writing or MIDI programs that could play back music you entered? Back when I was in college Finale and Sibelius were still in their infant stages so I had a MIDI program that I used. When I had a song that was particularly difficult, I would take the several hours neccessary to enter the accompaniment into the program note by note. Then I would enter in my vocal line. Although the playback was of poor sound quality I could hear how my part fit in with the acccompaniment. I would turn the level of my part up loud so that it stood out and would then practice. Once I felt comfortable enough I would mute the vocal line and then sing it with only the accompaniment. It helped a lot, especially when there were difficult rhythms, syncopations, or when the melody and accompaniment were in dissonance. The program always kept strict time.

Obviously fitting the text in is a whole challenge unto itself, but once you can master the intervals, rhythms, and other tricky aspects of the melody then it might make things easier.

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Most of Sondheims music is just as, if not MORE challenging than Guettels...

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I've never tried to sing Sondheim, but it doesn't seem as difficult to learn/sing as Guettell. But I don't know. I'm too young to sing Sondheim - that seems to be the consensus around here anyways.