Extending Vocal Pedagogy: Extended Vocal Techniques in North American Post-Secondary Music Education

Abstract

In North America, post-secondary music education is heavily focused on (and limited to) the repertoire and techniques of the Western Art Music canon. Vocal training at these institutions is no exception: vocalists are trained in the bel canto technique whose lineage reaches back to seventeenth-century Italy. This conservatory-based curriculum supports a categorical vocal pedagogy, one that seeks to produce a particular type of singer with a very specific kind of sound. Instead of embracing what each individual singer is capable of, this model focuses on what singers should be capable of from the perspective of repertoire and technical mastery in the operatic tradition. In this paper I will argue that this model risks our losing sight of what the singer has to say in favour of what the composer has to say. Recently there has been discussion and research around a more inclusionary model of vocal pedagogy that would incorporate other techniques alongside bel canto. However, these discussions have been focused on inclusion of musical theatre and belt techniques, with very little discourse on the inclusion of extended vocal techniques. By drawing on the scholarly discourse on the limits and extensions of technical training in post-secondary vocal performance, as well as interviews with several women working in the performance and teaching of extended vocal techniques in Canada, I will explore the potential for extended vocal techniques to contribute to a more inclusive model of vocal pedagogy.