December 2002

It seems to be the way with me. I'm always looking for significances. Or they are looking for me! The paraphrasing of the well-known aphorism in my title (Onwards and Forwards) could have been completed by 'and downwards'. Please don't get me wrong—the 'downwards' would have been strictly indicative of a key component of White's Technique theory. It would not express pessimism! I know there is a current shortage of candidates for our Registered Teacher certificate. I know we now have a merely modest number of active teachers. I know that not enough of you support our London events. We—and you—need to deal with these situations. But excellent work is still being done across the country and overseas.

The theory and practice of White's Technique continues to answer a very real need in a unique way. To take a term much used in our money-obsessed times, there is a definite 'market' out there for a versatile, therapeutic and effective method of vocal pedagogy such as ours. I would go further, and say that we are needed as never before. Why? Because, apart from our traditional arena: genuine, quality singing in all its varieties, genres and manifestations; so much of what passes for singing today — the straining and belting out of pop music and stage musicals—cries out for White's help.

There is no denying, people are encouraged to treat their voices badly. Most role- model vocalists are unfortunate to say the least. Now, it is beside the point whether or not we can respect the mediocrity of the music and unlovely vocal styles to which the average 'wannabe' now aspires... Top Idols' and 'Fame School' en chamade! We don't need to teach the styles. Most of us couldn't and wouldn't want to, though future generations of White's Technique teachers might. But we can teach our voice-saving technique, and show how it may be applied to all vocal uses, however bizarre.

Of course, we are wise to keep any less-than-enthusiastic viewpoints under wraps—at least until our beneficial influence has had a chance to work! After that, it really is amazing how some students can begin to 'pick up' better music and better singing, and think that it was all their own idea. Those who don't, at least depart from their final lesson vocally secure, happily dreaming of hand-held microphones in a transatlantic heaven!

It really is up to us all—and I do mean all of us!—teachers, students and EGWS members alike: to promote and champion our message and work as widely as is possible. You don't have to mount a stand at Speakers' Comer (though don't let me dissuade you if you feel inclined!). Often, it means a word, a phrase, a sentence to someone at the right time and place. That someone can range from an individual who has remarked on some irritating vocal problem (theirs?), or who has come out with the time-honoured "I've always wanted to get some singing lessons—do you know anyone?", even to the local journalist interviewing you about your prize tomatoes.

Just watch out for your opportunity to splash our name and work! The Alexander Technique enjoys a huge success and enviable reputation, yet White's Technique, begun contemporaneously about a hundred years ago, can almost be described as vocal teaching's best-kept secret. This is certainly no fault of a few individuals, who, led by our indefatigable Honorary President, Arthur Hewlett, never lose an opportunity of promoting White's name and technique. Unfortunately, many other members, grateful students and ex-students, having enjoyed and witnessed in others the undoubted benefits of the method, seem to fight shy of telling others about it! They are backward in coming forward (that word again!).

Each year since I began providing these written Registrar's Reports, I have asked our teachers to provide me with succinct, written accounts of their work, so that I can incorporate them. Each year, some have remembered but most have not! Each year, therefore, I have told you that I am reasonably aware of the purely general position, through occasional conversations with teachers; but that I can write in some detail only on the work of those who have sent me something in black and white!

With this in mind, I can report on the work of four, nicely spread geographically—Jane Ashley (Chelmsford, Essex), Stephen Cox (Southwell, Nottinghamshire), Gwen Methley (Falmouth, Cornwall), and your Registrar, Peter Giles (Canterbury, Kent). I never merely insert each teacher's report as received, unedited, often hand-written.

Amongst other things, the result would be too bitty, uneven, and need to be typed, or, sometimes, re-typed. Instead, I write an over-all account, not only drawing from each report what seem to be the most significant names and points, but this year particularly, visiting a number of important vocal topics en route.

As always, Jane Ashley has been busy, professionally. Not only has she a heartening number of pupils, but she runs two successful choirs, and runs the Lea Valley Centre of the Incorporated Society of Musicians. Other individual students, her most obvious success is Susan Bialy (soprano)—obvious to us because we have had the privilege of hearing Susan on several occasions at our yearly EGWS concerts. Her progress has been clear. At the last event, improvement and development were especially marked. She sang demanding arias from the operatic repertoire most assuredly, very beautifully, and with noticeable and genuine improvement in her vocal—and physical—control. During this past year, Jane arranged for Susan a single consultation with Pamela Bowden, the distinguished contralto and vocal pedagogue.

This second opinion proved useful as part of Susan's decision as to how best she might take her singing forward, that is in ways other than aspiring to full professional status. Other listed students of Jane Ashley's include Edwin Edgar, whom we heard as an absolute beginner in our concert in 2000 (some of our events feature such beginners), but who has improved since. He is mentioned as a good example of how White's Technique helps individuals search for their vocal identity, and the dedication of our teachers when assisting pupils who have particular difficulties. Edgar has now settled to sing as a baritone. Vanessa Plappert (soprano), a relative beginner who sang for us in the last concert, and Patricia Harvey-Field (mezzo-soprano), who sang duets with her young niece in that of the previous year, but has been suffering from health problems, are progressing well.

It always takes time to rebuild a teaching practice after a move, and Stephen Cox, after a still fairly recent translation from Carlisle Cathedral to Southwell Minster as an alto lay-clerk, now has two vocal pupils in addition to his flute students and other vocally relevant work. One is a fifteen-year-old girl who is studying for Grade Three singing. The other is an adult soprano wishing to join a choral society (again, no names provided, so no pack-drill!). Both seem to be progressing well along their chosen paths.

Speaking of paths, Peter Giles (I'll switch to second-person mode!) has moved along similar tracks to last year. In describing something of them, we will touch on a few points of concern which affect most of us in the world of singing, one way or another, now or in the near future. They seem to spring best from particular aspects of this your Registrar's section, as and when we reach them. This may appear to lengthen it, but no apology is offered for their inclusion, because these issues need to be addressed.

Though the male-voice trio Canterbury Clerkes has been off the road this year, owing to the illness of the bass-baritone Antony Bussell (an EGWS member), Peter has given the occasional solo or joint recital, and directed and sung in his mixed-voice quintet Quodlibet, which is getting lots of engagements. As always, he has planned and run vocal workshops for speech and singing (spoken ones only for the Canterbury School of Ministry, which bodes badly for the future of real music in church!). He has directed choral courses, revised for a new edition his second book on the male high voice (A Basic Counter-Tenor Method); very occasionally deputised in Canterbury Cathedral choir; privately taught a wide range of vocal-production students (there are always about twenty-five on his books at any one time, three-quarters of whom are women); and, since January 2002, he has run the music at a large Anglo-Catholic church in Dover. Six members, all women, of this thirteen-strong choir are students of his. Similarly, three of the four other singers in Quodlibet—the soprano, contralto and bass—also study with him privately.

You will no doubt notice that, in this report— and in the teachers' originals—the names or mention of female singers by far outnumber those of males. If you have not yet drawn your own conclusions, consider a worrying phenomenon only too familiar to most people who direct or sing in choirs, ecclesiastical or secular. Twelve of PG's total thirteen Dover choir members are women or girls. It is useful here to point the obvious: in future, there will be few countertenors, tenors and basses around at all if church and school choirs do not actively recruit, promote, and adopt obvious, common-sense methods for keeping, boy choristers. For a number of reasons, most don't, and the future for SATB singing, therefore, looks bleak in these politically correct, distracted times; what with no boys, markedly fewer men singers every year, and the rapid spread of the musically vapid and vacuous in church! So make no mistake—an acute shortage of men singers is no mere ecclesiastical matter.

Meanwhile, this keen Dover choir, which was all-male until a decade or three ago, now comprises nine sopranos, three contraltos, one tenor, and NO bass. Few members read music, and it is difficult to find time to teach the two lower parts much meaningful harmony, particularly as there is no bass foundation. Peter therefore chooses the repertoire carefully, and is beginning to producing from his singers lovely, rich. White Technique-based unison tone, occasionally moving (intentionally!) into two, even occasionally three parts. More men, especially at least one bass, are being sought, urgently! When things are more secure, ways will be investigated into beginning a separate boys' choir there. Meanwhile, the only way to produce an SATB choir is to invite visiting singers in for special occasions, though this is no real solution. It never is.

Let us each acknowledge these problems, which are legion, nation-wide, resolve to address them as best we can, but now move on. In recent years, certainly through circumstances rather than intention, Jane Ashley and your Registrar have found themselves in the position of having to provide most of the student singer-participants in our EGWS concerts. Therefore, a representative proportion of their students have already been heard by those loyal members who support our events. Because of this, and the sheer variety of PG’s students, none of his will be mentioned by name this year. He apologises for this even as he answers a telephone call from yet another enquirer!

Just in case you may have forgotten—though we keep telling you!—study of White's Technique is equally advantageous and its approach important for the spoken word. As an experienced actress herself, Gwen Methley specialises in this genre, though of course, like their teacher, her pupils sing, too. We enjoyed the performances of a number of them in concerts until recent years, and we hope to see and hear their successors in the near future.
Gwen's pupils continue with success in public examinations in both speech and singing. This year Rose Hatcher has attained her LAMDA Bronze Medal for Acting and Prose; Paul Brown, who suffered from a facial physical disability, but who has conquered it, helped by the methods of a certain Mr Ernie White, awaits his result as I type this, as do a few other pupils for Silver or Bronze. Gwen's students often achieve solo work on the theatre stage. This year we must mention Jessica Richards, Allan Whatling and Elizabeth Hopkinson in this regard; while Katherine Driscol is a teacher in youth workshops and community groups, but most impressively, perhaps, is a free-lance circus artist in Bristol, London, Amsterdam and in France! She has been accepted at Darlington Hall and Marjon College to study Drama, and Drama in the Community.

Gwen herself continues to entertain in concerts around Cornwall and occasionally over the Tamar! She is indeed a marvelous example of the longevity of vocal powers bestowed by a thorough understanding of White's Technique. So there it is. Surely all this sounds exciting? Most of those reading it will be EGWS members. If we haven't seen you for years, we thank you for their continued support from afar. But do please try to get to the next event—you are missing great things! And spread the word!