Listen to music - use streaming services!

 In my third year at the Norwegian State Academy of Music in Oslo, I had piano lessons with a legendary pianist of the old school. I was a horrible piano student, so we ended up spending most of the time talking about music, singing Schubert's Winterreise and talking about older Norwegian singers. He was dismayed about my lack of knowledge about the older generation of singers and about students' general lack of interest in performance and performer history. In his opinion, this should be a compulsory subject at the academy. And he was of course correct, for many different reasons!

I am subscribing to Youtube Music (which has replaced Google Play Music). It costs me 7 Euros per month, and this is well spent money. In fact, I think this is money that any music student should spend. It could be that Spotify or other streaming services offer an equally good or even better product. I simply do not know, so I do not specifically recommend Youtube Music.

But the fact is that: Recordings are our books! Recordings of operas, lieder, romances church music, oratorios, operettas. Any singing student should spend hours pouring over recordings. It is not only about learning the six songs that is on your list for this term (and I find many students restrict themselves to the absolutely necessary - what is on their term list) - you should get to know as much music as possible during your years at academy. As a musician, it is your academical and professional duty to know your subject! And curiously and inquisitively listening through hours of music will expand your knowledge about repertory, introduce you to new things to sing.

And equally important - and this is where this blogpost started - is to discover new singers, both from newer and older generations. They will have different approaches, different interpretations and different techniques. This is especially true if you to 50-60 years or more back in time. Singers had a different technique then. I might talk more at a different time about what the difference is, but there is a lot to learn from singers of older generations. These will be your teachers!!

I did a random search on three singer names in Youtube Music: Lotte Lehmann, Apollo Granforte and Lauritz Melchior. If you do not know any of these names, it only shows how much there is to learn - these are legendary names. It would be tricky to find any of their recordings in CD shops, libraries or even music academies. But there it was - recording upon recording, CD upon CD. A fantastic treasure trove to listen through. It is simply amazing to think that all of this is now so easily available, wherever you are.

As a singing student you should spend a lot of time listening to music and other singers. Find a good streaming service for classical music. Dive into it - discover music and singers and singing styles! Pay the 7 euros per month gladly, even if you are on a tight budget, it is way more than worth the money!