The Pleasures Of Chant Volume 3a. Mean Voice

This volume 3A Plaisirs du chant is, like the previous ones, intended for young singers, as well as musical training courses.
The pieces are presented in a medium range.
For convenience, French translations are also proposed for three lieder (a little remodeled, they date from the 19th century).
But, under this apparent facility, the pieces chosen are, for the most part, of a rather slow movement, and thus, more difficult to bind and to animate. They will help the young singer to externalize his musical and poetic sensibility.
Teachers can not be too strongly encouraged to begin vocal training with medium range songs, such as Singing Pleasures, before going on to the specific collections for soprano, mezzo, tenor or baritone later.
The first piece, The Love of Moy, which dates from the 15th century, is given here with a piano accompaniment, composed especially for this collection, but it is quite possible to sing it aloud, as it is noted in the manuscript of Bayeux. It's even a great exercise.
Until the end of the 18th century, the ornaments and variations were not written in the scores, but left to the imagination of the singers (these embellishments could change from one concert to another). We have lost a little sense of improvisation, but the student will be able to draw inspiration from the very simple ornaments and variations proposed in the CD by the two singers. All the pieces in this collection can be interpreted by female or male voices, without distinction. For the CD, I asked the collaboration of a soprano and a tenor for the sole purpose of varying the color while listening to the disc. These two artists sang with a great economy of means so that the example is not too lyrical and does not encourage the young singers to spend a useless and harmful energy.
The accompaniment, recorded on the piano alone, will help to set up the piece before working with the accompanist. For the preliminary exercises to the study of a piece, one can draw inspiration from the exercises for the beginnings which appear in my book The Professor of song: a luthier who builds a voice (reference: VV375) published by the editions Van de Velde . Experience shows that all the pieces in the collection are adopted with pleasure by the students and bring about progress on the vocal and musical level. Jacqueline Bonnardot