10 Little Charlatans
Fraud or charlatan? What’s better do you think?
The first time I came into contact with the word “charlatan” in a meaningful way was when reading Anna Schoen-René memoire America’s Musical Inheritance: memories and reminiscences (1941) —which you can find on the download page. She positively rails against them!
It seemed like such an archaic word; one that is spoken while wearing a three-piece suit and smoking a pipe, its three syllables rolling off the tongue in derision.
CHAR-LA-TAN!
When is the last time you heard it spoken in a sentence? Who uses it anymore? “Fraud” is more common now, right?
The 10 points below were referenced in the last 24 hours as part of scrolling through social media and a casual conversation with a colleague; my colleague using the word “fraud,” while I dug up “charlatan.”
10 Little charlatans
The voice teacher who promises singers easy high notes in a week.
The voice coach who asserts his summer program will introduce you to all the right people and [wink wink] start your career.
The piano teacher [oh, this is ubiquitous] who says you can learn to play like a pro in “just one week.”
The piano teacher who features a woman throwing music up in the air while saying: “You don’t need to read any music!”
The vocal pedagogy course creator who asserts her science-based course will bring you up to speed and enable you to teach. [Y’all gonna write me back about this, but my reading of science says the inculcation of facts relating to anatomy, physiology and acoustics cannot teach you to sing. I don’t think it can teach you to teach either. Shoot me!]
The course creator who says: “Why spend all that money on private lessons?”
Another course creator who writes: “You don’t have to make any appointments. It’s convenient. Just click on whenever you want! There’s no commitment.”
A third course creator who asserts: “You don’t have to practice.”
The voice department head who fires a fine coach to bring in his incompetent buddy.
The Ivy-League voice teacher who tells her student: “Sorry we didn’t get to work on technique this semester.”
What is the primary concern in each case? Is it life-long learning, the acquiring of craft, or even music appreciation? I’d say no. What you have here is a grab for cash. That’s fine in a capitalist society, right?
A hundred years ago [more like a hundred and twenty years ago] there was a lot of talk from self-assigned gatekeepers about protecting the public from charlatans via certification. It’s one of the reasons teacher organizations were formed in the first place: the National Association of Teachers of Singing being formed in 1906 in New York City with Hermann Klein as its first Chairman [see my little book for the lowdown]. The push for certification failed in 1909. By 1917, the organization had changed its name to the New York Singing Teachers Association. NATS as we know it now? It was formed in 1944.
I suspect certification will never happen. We can’t even get Congress to deal with copyright law as it pertains to the public domain. Should it happen? That’s a whole other question. My thought on the matter? It’s a moot point.
[You’ve heard about this, right? Millions of books can’t be accessed online—you only have a partial view—because Congress won’t do its job.]
What is our current environment? It looks much the same as it did in 1906, only the medium of expression has changed. Then it was newspapers. Now it is social media. Then as now, anything goes. You can put out anything: say anything, do anything, and be anything you want to be. Is this good? Many would say yes. It’s the reason people come to America. Others will say no. It cheapens the art form. The buyer must beware.
The above simply confirms the classic statement: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” —Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr.
