10 Little Charlatans
Fraud or charlatan? What’s better, do you think?
The first time I came into meaningful contact with the word “charlatan” was when reading Anna Schoen-René's memoir 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 spoken while wearing a three-piece suit and smoking a pipe, its three syllables rolling off the tongue in derision.
CHAR-LA-TAN!
When was 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 while scrolling through social media and in a casual conversation with a colleague. My colleague used 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 features a woman throwing music up in the air while saying: “You don’t need to read any music!”
The vocal pedagogy course creator 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 anatomy, physiology, and acoustics facts cannot teach you to sing. I don’t think it can teach you to teach, either. Shoot me!]
The course creator says: “Why spend all that money on private lessons?”
Another course creator writes: “You don’t have to make any appointments. It’s convenient. Just click on it whenever you want! There’s no commitment.”
A third course creator asserts: “You don’t have to practice.”
The voice department head fires a fine coach to bring in his incompetent buddy.
The Ivy League voice teacher tells her student: “Sorry we didn’t get to work on technique this semester.”
What is the primary concern in each case? Is it lifelong learning, the acquiring of a 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 was 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 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 concerning the public domain. Should it happen? That’s a whole other question. My thoughts on the matter? It’s a moot point.
[You’ve heard about this. 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 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. 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 confirms the classic statement: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” —Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr.