The easy answer is just to lighten up.  The more difficult answer is to improve your breath support so you are not singing every note, but singing every phrase.  The basic baroque approach is that there are strong notes and weak notes, and melismas are ALWAYS made up of weak notes--ornamentation.  My favorite metaphor is that the strong notes are like the pillars holding up the ceiling, while the ornamentation is like the carved vines and flowers connecting the tops of the pillars.

 

This is quite the opposite of the 19th century romantic approach, which makes the hard parts--the fast notes--more important than the slower notes.

 

If I might say so, it's a little strange writing to someone who wants to remain anonymous.  Could you use your real name, or is there a good reason for you not to?

 

John

 

 

Hi,

Grouping by other than the beat can help: articulate every two, three notes, or however the melody turns.  It adds a lot of interest, and should take away a lot of that dull heaviness you mention.  You have to work this out in advance, but use the directional groupings as a guide, so you can use the strategy anytime. 

 

best, Paul

 

 

Hi, N C -

 

The Robert Shaw method works quite well; i.e. for a melisma on the word "cast", sing "ca-da-ca-da-ca-da", etc. This may sound strange, but it works.

 

- Clare

A few thoughts on melismatic singing:

 

Practice, Practice, Practice -- Singing quick melismas gracefully and beautifully takes practice. Consider what an instrumentalist -- pianist, violinist, trumpeter -- must do to develop the technique required to execute passagework effectively. One does this work in the practice room (not in the rehearsal hall), so that when passagework is encountered in repertoire, one has the appropriate skills at the ready. I used to sing an extensive coloratura soprano repertoire in my younger days, and I can tell you that I spent as much time practicing scales, arpeggios, and trills as did the clarinetist in the next practice room. This practice must always be done with a light voice and easy approach. For most singers, coloratura (for that is what we're talking about) is a learned skill. In a choral setting, you could incorporate some scale work into the vocal warmups, along with good advice on how to do this gracefully and musically and with proper vocal technique. To sing melismas musically, the singers need to ...

 

Get the Big Picture -- As John said, many runs are essentially ornamental notes strung between the principal  notes. Take time to master, intellectually, the overall shapes of the lines and understand how the melismatic passages fill in and embellish. Most of the notes are fillers, not important parts of the melody; thus reinforces John's advice to sing the melismatic notes in groups appropriate to the passage at hand.  Tthink Deedle-eedle-eedle-eedle, not Deedle-Deedle-Deedle-Deedle (or worse, DEE-Dle-DEE-Dle-DEE-Dle-DEE-Dle). And this approach will also encourage singers to...

 

Use a Light Voice -- As John also correctly advised, use a light tone. There is no place for vocal weight or vibrato in quick passagework. There simply isn't time, and the weight will slow you down -- would you try to sprint in heavy boots? And, keeping in mind that the melismas are in themselves ornamental, there is no need to add the ornamentation of vibrato. Let the music come through. Even large-voiced soloists lighten up for coloratura passages. Heavy singing gets tiring and is (IMO) unpleasant for the audience. Advise your singers to...

 

Get Off the Voice. -- Sing on the breath, and try not to focus too much on the vocal mechanism. To my thinking, the pitch changes in a melismatic passage are executed more in the ear and brain than they are in the vocal mechanism. Envision running down a track -- you keep your eyes on the finish line and don't think about what each toe is doing inside your running shoe. I've found that the idea of "floating" works well for me -- I "float" the melisma on a stream of air, working hard with my lungs and brain and ears and eyes (conductor!) and less with my vocal mechanism. With your singers, ...

 

Listen to Expert Choirs --  Listen to recordings of ensembles that sing passagework in the way to which you aspire. Note that rapid passagework is rarely sung with loud or heavy voices. Note the groupings of notes into threes or fours or other groupings per composer and music.

 

Interesting question!

 

Sarah Hager Johnston

GraceNotes

 

All of the above, definitely. It will help the singers to lighten up on the unimportant notes if they see the basic underlying melodic structure. In the case of a mellisma of 16th notes, for the purpose of rehearsal, ask the singers to sing the first sixteenth for the entire value of the quarter note. (omit the last three 16ths) This will help them see the shape of the entire melisma and help them realize that the 2nd, 3rd and 4th 16th notes are just decorative.

I'm one of those crazy singers who love this stuff, and I make my kids do it all the time.  Here's a trick that works something amazing. 

 

 

First thing, make them do this by memory or rote.  If they're doing Handel they know how to read music.   They can use their ears for this one. 

Slow the mellissma WAY down.  Then, add an H before every note.  If the vowel is Ahhh, they're going to sing ha, ha, ha, ha etc.....

Make sure they know where those "anchor" notes are - the accents that help shape the phrase

When it's totally correct, start speeding it up little by little

When it's almost at full speed, tell them to not actually aspirate the H, but just imagine that they're singing it.

Even if some of them are still lightly aspirating the H, in a large group at that speed, the only thing you'll hear is a clean passage.