The foundation stones of vocal instruction are musicianship, vocal technique and
communication. A voice teacher is expected to be a master of these, but as a house requires rooms upon its foundation, a voice teacher is obliged to own qualities exceeding these essential elements. He or she must possess a love for humankind, must draw upon a passion for life and must maintain a lifelong inquisitiveness into the limitless potential of the art and the unexplored reasoning of its pedagogy. In addition, as much as one must be in command of all of these, these precious possessions are quite superfluous if one is not in command of oneself.
Whether in café or cathedral, the most capable instrument of human expression, the human voice, relates sorrow, fear, despair—hope, aspiration, love. With the loftiest occupation of singing in mind, Oscar Saenger invokes Carlyle in his book, How to Sing, “Entrusted to the care of each human being is this instrument which, as Carlyle pointed out, has the power to lead us to the edge of the infinite and to enable us momentarily to gaze beyond.”
Saenger taught Joseph Regneas, Regneas taught Phyllis Curtin and she taught me. Humbled by my pedagogical forebears, daunted by the task of following in their footsteps; however transformative my work may be in unveiling artistic vision, liberating the voice, freeing the dramatist—my role as voice teacher is to unlock a door to the soul, a more life-giving view of art and humanity.