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Sobre amplificación (y su efecto en el estilo de canto y emisión de la voz):
El interesante libro de Mark N. Grant, "The Rise and Fall of the Braodway Musical" tiene un capítulo dedicado a la orquestación y a la historia de la amplificación en los teatros de Broadway, y cómo ha cambiado el sonido de los espectáculos, que está bien.
Incluyo unos comentarios sobre el asunto de Ken Bloom y Frank Vlastnik (autores de Musicales de Broadway) en el curso de un Q&A establecido con lectores del N.Y.Times:
Question - Why is everything so loud to the point of discomfort? I don’t recall musicals in the 60s and 70s, and maybe even the 80s being so loud. Was every one miked back then and I just didn’t realize it?
Answer
- Ken says: Karen brings up good points about the sound in a Broadway theater. Back in the late 1960s, I remember sitting in the second balcony (remember when the first balcony was called a balcony, not a mezzanine?) of the National Theater in Washington, D.C., straining to hear the performers. But those lucky or wealthy enough to sit in the orchestra section had no problems hearing the performances. Now, I don’t want to go back to those days, but I agree that theater miking has gone overboard. The reasons given by today’s producers and sound designers is that audiences, used to hearing music on CD and in large stadium concerts, are used to amplified sound. I’m not against being able to hear well but I think the urge to over-mike a show has other ramifications.
For one thing, performers back in the deep, dark days of the last century were used to projecting their voices to the far reaches of huge theaters. That effort also gave energy to their performances. Look at Al Jolson or Ethel Merman in early films and there’s electricity coming from the screen. These performers, brought up in an era before miking, had to literally use their muscles to get across their characters. Today’s performers hardly have to push sound past their vocal chords and their performances suffer. The mixer controls the balance, constantly ratcheting up the sound. Which brings us to a third problem with over amplification: the confusion of volume with emotion. Today’s power ballads substitute ever higher key changes and volume with true emotion. Is there a more emotional song in Broadway history than “If I Loved You” from “Carousel”? Can you think of a quieter, more delicate, more sincere love song?
These power ballads evolved from the 11 o’clock numbers in traditional musicals. “Rose’s Turn” from “Gypsy” isn’t a true power ballad because, though the intensity of emotion was ratcheted up –the volume wasn’t. It took Patti LuPone in the recent revival to make that song a power ballad – and losing control of the song, in my opinion. The success of Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion’s “The Impossible Dream” from “Man of La Mancha” is to blame for all the power ballads that have come along.
- Frank says: I agree with Ken, although I think by bringing up “If I Loved You” from “Carousel,” I’d have to counter that “Soliloquy” was, in its way, a power ballad of its time. One of the things about the musical stars that Ken is talking about (Merman, Jolson, etc.) was that they played most of their shows “in one,” or right down at the footlights, providing a perfect spot to belt out a song. And Mary Martin, who didn’t have what I consider a huge voice, had one of her greatest moments when she sang “That’s Him” in “Once Touch of Venus,” seated on a chair at the footlights (most probably directly in front of a floor mike, which were used regularly since the early 1940s).
But as the technology of scenery has developed from a series of drops and traveler curtains into the hydraulics and computer-operated scenery used today, directors and choreographers have use of a stage’s depth much more than they did fifty years ago. (I, for one, can live with miking if it’s used in conjunction with the stage magic that a Hal Prince or the late Michael Bennett would create) And I disagree that today’s performers don’t have or use the muscle to project their voices; on the contrary, I see shows all the time where my vocal cords bleed in empathy when I hear human voices being pushed to (and often beyond) the limits of what they should be expected to do eight times a week. I think it’s one of the things responsible for certain actors getting a reputation for missing more performances than they used to; and it’s one of the things that concerns me about young performers, who blow their voices out by the time they’re 35, all in the name of the “money” note in “Defying Gravity”. There have been some shows recently (“The Pajama Game” revival, “The Light in the Piazza,” “Curtains” and “Grey Gardens”) where I didn’t notice the miking at all; that, to me, is when amplification is truly successful: when the theatergoer is completely unaware of it.
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