O Canada!

During the past weekend as we observed Remembrance Day I was having several memories that didn't necessarily go with the solemnity of the occasion.Growing up my brother Erik was famous in our neighbourhood for scaring the bejinkers out of the lady next door by singing O Canada at top of his lungs into her dryer output pipe on the side of her house. Who knew that doing the laundry could elicite such strong feelings of patriotism?  My son Julian, as a child, also rejoiced in his rendition of the national anthem which included the line ' O Canada, our home and mative land!'. Spell check didn't like that one bit...

Which brings me to an exercise that I created and have been using with singers for quite some time now: the O Canada exercise. A number of years ago I had the pleasure and privilege of improving my teaching chops by filling in for a sabbatical leave at Mount Allison University. I did not have a lot of experience with undergraduates at the time and it was a real challenge to learn what their needs were in terms of vocal development.  I wanted to impress upon them the importance of trusting thought and emotion being conveyed through tone. Because this was a young group of singers I wanted to do this through repertoire that didn't 'distract' them with complexity of the musical or linguistic variety.

I came up with the idea of having them sing O Canada which, hopefully, they had known since childhood and could sing without being self conscious . I wrote a series of situations on individual pieces of paper that they would select and then have to embody while singing. For example:

You have just been rescued  from a burning building and feel relief, gratitude followed by the shock  of realizing what just happened to you.

OR

 You've just won a major prize and are elated then troubled as to how to spend the prize wisely.

OR

 You've just broken up with your significant other, you are calm and then overcome with concern about having done the right thing.


While this is an exercise for the singer in simply letting subtext flow through you while singing a very familiar song it is also interesting for the other singers observing. They are trying to read and guess what is being portrayed. The goal, it must be said, is not to guess correctly but instead to reflect what you see and hear. We have had some big laughs as others create a whole opera in their head from what they saw and heard in O Canada.I encourage the performer not to resort to too much gesture and trying to act out the scene but rather to let the thoughts pervade their sound and see what the result is.

In the interim I have used this exercise with more advanced singers at the University of Toronto where I teach as well as at my summer program in New Brunswick.  I was thwarted once when I had a singer from Bahamas who didn't know O Canada and I had to resort to Amazing Grace. It was also remarkably effective. So many interesting things come up including the unconscious instinct to change the thought with the change of harmony.

 At its heart, this is an exercise in trusting your talent and allowing integration of sound and emotion to happen. Our job, as singers, is to express and allow our audiences to project onto us what they need to see and hear. This is possible only when our own subtext is supremely clear and well conveyed.