4 ¿QUÉ ES LA MODERNIDAD?
1. EL JOVEN MAR
Part One of this dissertation has presented the historical background and biographical context to enable an informed examination of the changing manner of female
vocalisation in the period 1940-1955. In particular, the preliminary component of the thesis underlines Mary Martin’s ability to produce an integrated vocal style that adapted to technological developments occurring at the time. Martin’s life has been viewed through two different lenses—the public world of the media and the private world of personal recollection—confirming this performer’s influential place in the world of entertainment and celebrity.
Martin approached her chosen career with single minded determination that was
supported unquestioningly by first her parents and sister, and ultimately by her husband. She had a strong desire both to please her audience and to find her métier, which
motivated her to learn many different styles of performance from a very young age. Additionally, her aptitude for vocal mimicry203 and her teachers’ early encouragement to apply classical training to popular repertoire meant she was able to move between different production techniques with relative ease. By the time of her debut on Broadway, Martin was already a flexible performer. She had developed a vocal
technique that included the effective use of the microphone, the phrasing and delivery of
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Martin claimed to have learned her craft at the movies and won prizes for “singing exactly like Bing Crosby” (Martin 1977, 29).
blues songs, yodel techniques, and counterpoint singing—any of which she could present on demand.
Additionally, Martin’s carefully orchestrated media presentation shaped her public image from the moment of her discovery on the Broadway stage. However, rather than remaining static, that image changed and matured as Martin reinvented herself to accommodate fluctuating audience and performance demands.
Three of the main forms of musical theatre in the United States of America up to the end of World War I—comic operetta, the musical play and the revue—have been explored. Analysis of extant recordings within the present research has established the acoustic of three vocal styles used by women in these genres—the classical voice, the light lyric soprano, and the coon shouter or belt—revealing the roles these women played as reflective of the vocal styles they employed. The comic operetta’s heavy classical soprano was predominantly found in the heroine of romantic tales set outside the American experience. This voice type displayed a strongly resonant fundamental, an even and regular vibrato, and a legato performance style. The lighter, lyric soprano was employed by the modern American girl found in the musical plays that were beginning to become more relevant to life in the United States of America. Less legato than the classical soprano, the lighter voice of the musical play adopted clear
enunciation of lyrics and occasional embellishments to the vocal line. The belter played the older, ribald and more experienced roles—frequently in the black face familiar from the minstrel shows of the previous century. Successful performers rarely deviated from the character-type that had made them popular and their presence on the stage, even performing unrelated songs within a show, increased the cachet of the production. These three archetypical vocal styles were those that most influenced the continuing development of the American musical theatre. On stage, these performers relied on classical vocal training or the ability to shout in order to be heard in the theatre and over the accompaniment. Once a voice was no longer audible from the stage, a performer’s career was effectively over.
The early decades of the twentieth century brought with them dramatic advances in technology that were to change the sound, delivery and audience expectation of the musical theatre performer beyond imagining. An examination of electric recording and the rapid uptake of broadcasting and playback technology highlighted the inevitable
changes engendered by the new technology, establishing that, unlike any generation before her, Mary Martin had the musical world brought to her home. She did not need to travel to hear voices from distant locales, nor did she need to search for different popular or classical styles. Including a vocal style that developed directly from the use of the microphone—the croon—varied forms were all delivered to her home and to the new movie theatre in the local town. Martin adopted the croon in the course of her quest for a vocal technique that would allow her successful entry to the entertainment world. Her development of this technique will be examined in detail in Part Two of this dissertation.
An examination of the lives and vocal techniques of three performers who enjoyed immense popularity in their lifetimes—Edith Day, Helen Morgan and Ethel Merman, 204 —demonstrates the hallmarks of their success as a combination of remarkable natural ability and extraordinary skills—whether trained or untrained. However, the inability to modify their vocal techniques to adapt to technological advances, to integrate new vocal styles to appeal to a wider popular audience, or to alter their stage presentation to account for their changing abilities or performance environments limited their success in the broader entertainment industry.
Edith Day’s lissom beauty, sparkling personality and agile lyric soprano voice won the hearts of the New York stage and London’s West End. However, the spectral analysis of her recordings demonstrates that as she grew older, her voice developed a heavier, less flexible mezzo soprano timbre. She was no longer suited to the role of the young soubrette, and was unable to alter her performance to accommodate the demands of the new, intimate style of musical theatre.
Helen Morgan’s light soprano timbre and melancholic torch song style illustrates the gradual blending of classical vocal techniques with the increasingly popular light jazz stylings. Analysis of her recordings suggests technological developments and the transformation of intimate torch songs into the low croon of the microphone singer— aligned with this singer’s failing health and lack of vocal training—prevented her from following the stylistic transformations evident in contemporary musical theatre.
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Ethel Merman brought life to many Broadway roles that continue to be revived in the twenty-first century. The loud, unique timbre of her voice was audible to the very back row of the theatre. However, her old-fashioned vaudevillian delivery and choice of just one particular vocal style at the expense of others meant her success in theatre was restricted to particular character types; many other roles were closed to her. The
examination of Merman’s early cinematic appearances and analysis of her vocal style in those films has established that she originated as a torch singer. Acoustic analysis has shown that, although she continued to sing in that style throughout her career, her vocal control was not sufficiently effective for it to remain a viable or operative part of her vocal technique.
Although faced with the same challenges as these three women, Martin was able to modify her vocal character in order to take advantage of the technological and social changes occurring around her. By adopting a variety of vocal techniques from disparate performance situations and including them as sustainable parts of her performance practice, Martin laid a firm foundation to build an integrated vocal style that was readily adapted to a wide range of performance spaces and technologies. Part Two of this dissertation explores Martin’s use of diverse performance and vocal techniques in separate performance settings, as well as her development and integration of those techniques in a single environment.