The interrelation of singing and speaking

It seems to me that the main thing in common in all forms of art and expression is the ability to communicate something; whether it’s a conversation, a picturesque piece of art, or the vivid sound of music. In all cases the communicator impresses their views on the receiver and thus a social bond is created between them.

The traditional form of singing is Bel canto, which is widely acceptable as being the classical way of singing and translates literally as ‘beautiful singing’. This is the way that a singer would be taught in a classical singing lesson. In music the voice has two instruments, language and voice, but ‘language’ in music can mean a totally different thing to speech in that it need not be comprehensible words but rather articulated sounds and noises that a performer can draw upon in performance. Music has moved on from just using the voice to sing. The term ‘music’ can be loosely described as any noise or sound made from any given thing: Whether people wish to listen to it is questionable. If a contemporary composer wishes an audience to grace a premiere of his work with their presence, then he must create a piece of music, with whatever sounds he desires, that entices people to pay good money to hear it. As long as a piece is ‘beautiful’ in any way, people will receive it favourably. A hundred years ago, the question of what counted as music would have been reasonably straightforward, but in the present day there is no definitive answer. Sound and noise’s relationship is just as similar as singing and speaking, they are distinct and yet the same.

When using speech and voice together, a performer must make the decision of whether speech is more important than the voice, voice is more important than speech, or they are equal in status. If speech is considered most important, then the voice is merely an instrument to convey the meaning of the words. An example of this is in ‘Choral Speaking’, when a choir of speakers recites words. This might not be considered music by many people, but it does utilise the same techniques as all other instances of using the voice, including singing. It requires the performer to support their voice in their stance and breath, forming sounds with their mouth, tongue and lips. Even the physiology used is exactly the same for singing and speaking. You create sounds by passing air through your larynx (vocal folds); these vibrate and resonate sound waves up your throat and out your mouth. To create different pitches, which is essential in both singing and speaking, a performer changes the length and tension of his vocal folds. So when a person makes any sound and then raises the pitch, the vibrating frequency will increase. These different frequencies are essential in creating emotion behind a speech or a song; otherwise the sound will be incredibly monotonous. To create a louder sound you must pass more air down the throat, which forces the vocal folds to clap together faster and harder, therefore creating a louder sound. By pushing less air out the ‘clapping’ is weaker and therefore produces a quieter sound. So with ‘Choral Speaking’, all members of the speaking choir are in fact physiologically singing, therefore they should be perceived as a choir like any other.

Some cultures believe singing and speech to be separate despite their physiological similarity. Speech is used in everyday communication and to declare that the population are in fact singing to each other every moment of the day seems a ludicrous statement. According to these cultures it is possible to combine words with music and thus create songs, but speech in the middle of a song is still speech and does not count as music. One difference that is described is that of sustained pitch, in that singing sustains pitches longer than speech: this is the thought in our own culture. However, this is not a common trait in all languages. Though all cultures have different thoughts at any moment in time, these thoughts will change and swap between cultures over time and a composer of the present day can only choose which cultures he wishes his ideas to impress.

Considering the question of the difference between singing and speaking, I conclude that speaking in our culture may not have a sustained pitch such as traditional singing (bel canto), but it could be considered as much as an art as singing. The complex nature of singing does require the mastery of muscles and airflow to create a sustained beautiful sound and this takes years of practice but, as we are a social world, we have had plenty of speaking practice. They are distinct and yet the same. Our culture believes them to be different but in fact they are both means of communication and it is through communication and through art that we receive enjoyment, which is one reason why we do it in the first place. It may seem to many cultures that music is taking a new path into unknown territory, but in fact we are just heading back to where we started, where society began, where humans copied animal sounds to communicate, where there was no difference in speech or song: the birth of civilisation.