Singing is one of the sweeter mysteries of life. The mystery is also deeper when you consider how little we really know about an act that has been fundamental and urgent to humankind for its entire existence. How little we know scientifically, that is. Certainly far more is known about the much-studied speech mechanism and related matters.

Singing teachers and other vocal experts can get to be good at description but the analysis of what happens and how, goes only so far. The puzzle starts with the impulse that leads a person to sing, spontaneously. Is it an imitative act, the infant learning to croon after the mother’s example? Or, if left with no exposure to singing, might the child not vocalize instinctively? Then later, a grown person’s discovery of the voice and conscious singing, a partial discovery of the self, is an equal wonder.

At its basis, singing has always seemed to me a sensuous matter. A singer is a person entranced with the feel and sound of his or her voice. That physical awareness comes first. The musical values, the beautiful and expressive uses to which the singer learns to put the discovered instrument, come next. Without the initial entrancement however, the discovery of the grateful, even seductive physical experience, the vocalizer does not become a singer. Children, learning little tunes in the earliest school grades (if they’re lucky enough to be in a school that offers that essential experience), are learning to sing but won’t become singers until much later, those of them that happen to get their whole singing part of their bodies into the act.

Then suddenly, for an all too-precious few, a light clicks in their minds, a “wow, what’s this?” happens and the voice becomes “imbodied.” It’s a resonating thing, as the areas in the so-called “mask” (behind the face) and the chest start acting as resonating chambers, and the body becomes a musical instrument. Something similar happens when young instrumentalists, at some early stage in their development, hit on a tone or tones from their instruments which, for the first time, they feel sympathetically in their bodies. They feel, or are on the first steps of the path towards feeling, that the instrument is an extension of the body.

A similar sense of physical recognition occurs to a listener when the sound of a great singer’s voice enters into the listener, giving the illusion that that voice from up there is resonating in the auditor’s own body. It is a sense that the singer is singing through you. It is a willing surrender and a possession. That was a significant part of the experience of listening to and being sung through by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson last Sunday at UC’s Hertz Hall (See Stephanie Friedman’s review in this issue). Hers is a voice that resonates in the listener. Doesn’t matter if the particular listener is a soprano, tenor, or baritone, her mezzo soprano, particularly in the rich lower range, takes possession.

From that, the artist goes on expressively, interpreting the poetry with nuances that were, from Hunt Lieberson, increasingly possessive. It is an exquisite and seductive art.

Of course in all of this, the singer’s ears are absorbing the voice’s song, confirming, measuring and guiding. Because the hearing of one’s own voice is deceptive however, the teacher has helped the singer hear the “right” or “best” tone and associate that with the feeling of the singing that produced it. It’s not easy.

Many years ago, I did some research into 18th century documents on the subject of singing, hoping to discover the teaching methods that produced the extraordinary singers of that period. Nothing. The treatises are all on technique in dealing with the intricate performance practice, specifically how to ornament and nuance the vocal line in those styles. I had to conclude that the teachers of the vocal greats didn’t train undeveloped voices but rather worked with “naturals,” individuals discovered in boys’ and girls’ choirs, who showed remarkable vocal endowments early.

During the three centuries since, the picture changed. Those relatively few with in-born, naturally exceptional voices, are discovered, developed, encouraged, and become the greats. Those of them, that is, who have also the head, the heart, spirit and ambition to become whole artists. The greatest number of others who are not born with potentially exceptional voices, but become enchanted with what they had, felt and heard, find the teachers and ways of developing their gifts. Some reach very high careers. Untold hundreds of thousands, the rest of us, satisfy that need to sing chorally, an outlet that fulfills musically and in that other primary way, physically. The chorister doesn’t truly hear his or her own voice, and if trained to blend in section, will be listening to those around him and not trying to sing out to be heard individually. But, that singer will feel the resonance, the surge of breath through the body and all its resonating cavities, and the release. What got him or her there in the first place.

It would be interesting to hear Hunt Lieberson discuss her discovery of her voice. Her mother, Marcia Hunt, was a very fine singer here, and doubtless the sound of that was deeply imprinted. Daughter Lorraine started out as an instrumentalist, as many singers have, and perhaps the resonance of her viola as an extension of her body triggered the vocal nerves.

I think she was (is) a “natural.” There are doubtless many with potentially important natural voices but who never discover it in themselves and never had the fortune to be a school or church choir where a perceptive teacher would have picked it up. In the course of comings and goings, I have accidentally heard voices, in the street, in the gym, that showed real potential. How many of those spontaneous singers had the heart, head and spirit to fulfill that vocal potential, even if discovered and encouraged, is another matter. The message is simple. Boost the school choirs, singing in every school, especially in elementary grades. Help make singing a central part of our culture. It is not today. Go to a ball game and you will hear a pop singer/entertainer crooning the national anthem in a most distorted, uncommitted way, and no-one, but no-one among those passive ten thousands joining in the singing of the “Banner.” Don’t talk patriotism and love of country if the voices aren’t behind it.

Once, while in Bergen, Norway, at a national festival, tens of thousands standing up and down the square at the center of which was the royal family, I heard the sound of the whole crowd singing all seven or eight stanzas of the Norwegian anthem. It was an experience never to be forgotten. Singing takes the heart, the head and the spirit, and it’s as physical as cheering.

(Robert P. Commanday, the senior editor of San Francisco Classical Voice, was the music critic of The San Francisco Chronicle, 1965-93, and before that a conductor and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.)

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