The Heart of the Garcia Method
A very interesting article was published in the Journal of Singing last year. It addressed Anna Eugénie Schoen-René's legacy by featuring information gleaned from a particular archive.[1] Curiously, it did not give the reader what this writer found in that same archive in 1997—the heart of the Garcia method, which has never been revealed until now.
Princeton, 1985
“Alright. Slap your cords together like that!” Margaret Harshaw hurled at me after I sang the second high E-flat of a Bach aria in a practice room at Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey.
“How many lessons have you had with Milnes?”
I only knew Sherrill Milnes from his recordings and held my breath in anticipation of the next volley.
“He ruined his voice with all that hooking! I wouldn’t do it if I were you!”
Then, out came the hammer and tongs.
“If only you would not open the front of your mouth because when you do, your lower jaw comes forward, your tongue gets in a bundle, the larynx flies up, the arches come down, and you go forward in your mouth!”
“It must open here,” Harshaw said, placing her right hand, thumb, and index finger at the base of her tongue.
Then she showed me how.
The originality of her procedure had an immediate impact. Finding a written record of it? That took twelve years.
Manhattan to New Haven, 1997
I sat beside Cori Ellison—New York City Opera’s dramaturge—during a dress rehearsal for Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, talking about Margaret Harshaw, her teaching, and lineage. Cori, who also had lessons with Harshaw and understood the historical importance of her teaching, suggested I write an article for Opera News. I had reservations about the idea since Harshaw—still living—did not talk about vocal technique publically, nor did most of her students. Even so, the suggestion was compelling. I would have to research, but where should I start? Cori suggested the Juilliard School of Music, where Harshaw’s teacher, Schoen-René, taught. Oddly enough, while I had been researching Harshaw’s lineage at the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, it hadn’t occurred to me to go across the plaza!
After making an appointment with the head librarian, I went to Juilliard. I first saw a document relating to Schoen-René’s memorial service, then two scrapbooks full of fascinating personages (read my blog post, The Assignment, here). One of them, Marshall Bartholomew, led me to Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where I found a cache of Schoen-René materials comprising handwritten notes, manuscripts, and documents housed within the Marshall Bartholomew Papers; materials that no one had seen—my knowledge of the material’s importance leading to its designation as the Anna Eugénie Schoen-René Papers.
[Marshall Bartholomew was a professor of voice at the Yale School of Music and the founder of the Yale Glee Club. He had a life-long association with Schoen-René, having gone to Berlin as a young man to study composition. Over the next four years, he functioned as Schoen-René’s studio accompanist and studied voice with her as a tenor while inculcating methods that would later make the Yale Glee Club world famous.]
What did I find within the Anna Eugenie Schoen-René Papers, specifically relating to Harshaw’s procedure for opening the throat and starting bel canto tone?
The answer requires context.
The author holding the Anna Eugénie Schoen-René Papers file folder.
Paris, 1841
Manuel Garcia observed in A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing (1841/1872) that the actual opening of the mouth was the pharynx—the back of the mouth behind the tongue—which includes the pharyngeal arches. Garcia was very particular about the arches in a section titled “The Study of Tones,” noting that after holding the tongue, “relaxed and immobile (without lifting it either by its root or by its tip),” it was then necessary to “finally, separate the base of the pillars and soften the entire throat. In this position, inhale slowly and for a long time.”
After you are thus prepared, and when the lungs are full of air, without stiffening either the phonator [1872: throat] or any part of the tongue, but calmly and easily, attack the tones distinctly with a light stroke of the glottis on a very clear [a] vowel. That [a] will be taken well at the bottom of the throat [1872: right at the glottis], in order that no obstacle may be opposed to the emission of the sound. In these conditions the tone should come out with ring and roundness.”[2]
According to Garcia, separating the base of the pillars of the arches is key to creating a bel canto tone. However, he does not give the reader a procedure for achieving this.
The Heart of the Garcia Method
What procedure did Margaret Harshaw show me? A simple technique, really, yet one that is profound in its implications.
She had me humming in a particular manner. I learned later that humming was not the point.[3] Rather, it was how I was to hum, with my tongue in an arched formation—the middle of the tongue placed firmly on the hard palate, the tip nestled behind the lower front teeth, and the base of the tongue quietly, yet decidedly, separating the arches—which only becomes apparent when the tongue is deftly lowered as the mouth is opened.
“This is how you hum,” she said as she drew an arch across her cheekbone with an index finger while simultaneously wrinkling her nose, which drew her upper lip into an arch. Amazingly, Anna Eugénie Schoen-René recorded this technique in her handwritten notes in German, which I have translated into English with italics for emphasis.
Deep position of the larynx dark impression. Garcia, the first three lessons should be the most important for a singer, should always if any trouble arise go back to the first instructions: breathing, tone-position of the arched tongue and mouth, chest voice should only be created as a means of expression…pure vowels and no ba, la, wa, ma.[3]
Garcias' proprietary technique has never been written down or transmitted outside the studio. It appears here for the first time, notwithstanding the historical record, which provides hints in the teaching of Wartel and Rudersdorff, musical descendants of the Garcias who have been recorded using closed-mouth exercises.
Implementing Garcia’s technique requires great skill from the teacher and the singer. The canny reader will note that it adheres to Garcia’s original instructions, written in 1841, insofar as the base and tip of the tongue is not lifted. Instead, movement of the tongue takes place from the middle.
This post is singular in its importance. Please share it widely.
“I did not change one iota of the Garcia’s teachings. Why would I? It cannot be improved upon!” — Anna Eugénie Schoen-Rene
Bechtel, Lydia. “Pay It Forward Pedagogy: How Anna Schoen-René Brought the Garcia-Viardot Method to the United States,” Journal of Singing, Vol. 79, issue 5, May/June 2023.
Garcia, Manuel. A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing (1841/1872), Frist Part, Complete and Unabridged, collated, edited, and translated by Donald V. Paschke, 1982, p 41-42.
Pauline Viardot-Garcia told an uncredited interviewee—who I believe to be Katharine Evans von Klenner—that her father, Manuel Garcia, did not teach his students to hum. “She sang at the age of six, and remembers being impressed and affected by the words “vengence” and “remorse,” &., while having no idea of their meaning. She accompanied her father’s lessons at eight, being herself at this time one of his most faithful pupils. She remembers him standing at the end of the piano writing while she played her exercises, and at the close placing the manuscript before her, to be correctly read at first sight, or to be studied with a view of correcting some fault or strengthening some weakness. He also composed thus little songs for her to sing. He wrote constantly exercises to fit the needs of his pupils. She does not remember a “humming exercise.” His idea always was to make a voice clear and equal. Breathing was the basis of all his work.” — “Pauline Viardot’s Family (from personal conversations),” The Musical Courier, January 12, 1899, p. 16.
Anna Eugénie Schoen-René Papers, Yale Library, New Haven, CT.
