Mezzo-soprano Justina Gringyte reflects exclusively for BBC Music Magazine on the joys and challenges of singing Mahler.
'Mahler is unlike any other composer'
Mahler is unlike any other composer. I keep returning to him time and time again - just in the last few months I have sung both his epic Eighth Symphony and his unbelievably deep Third Symphony (just released on YouTube, with the Basque National Orchestra conducted by Robert Treviño). Every time it’s a transformative and - I’ll come back to this word later - “cleansing” experience.
Mahler loved the mezzo voice, and he gives us so many opportunities as singers. But to really better understand how to sing Mahler’s incredible music, I’ve developed five ‘golden rules’ that really help me as a mezzo-soprano to dive deeply into his world, and maybe these might also give some insights into not only how we sing Mahler - what he demands that we give of ourselves - but how we can all experience his music.
Five rules for singing Mahler
Rule 1: an unusual preparation
Mahler creates so many effects that rely on tempo - sudden contrasts, or giving a lot of space in the tempo, or the opposite, suddenly going very fast indeed. This means that you have to know what you’re going to do at all times and be very clear on that side of things.
So when I prepare Mahler, I always first prepare at the piano. Piano is quite a percussive instrument, so it clearly marks the tempo for you. Whereas if you rely on the orchestra alone, things can get a bit fuzzy and you can lose your discipline. So: start with the piano.
But whereas a singer would usually use a piano score when singing with the piano, which only shows you the singer’s notes and the piano’s notes, when it’s Mahler I need to always have the orchestra in my mind. And that means using a full orchestra score. Because you have to have a sense of how the voice is going to merge with all of those wonderful orchestral effects, and the full scale of the moment, be it massive or hushed.
Sometimes it's even like singing chamber music, with just a handful of instrumentalists, rather than the whole massive orchestra, playing alongside you. So - sing with the piano, but work with the full score! Which is actually a kind of Mahlerian contrast in itself!
Rule 2: Become the colour
Practising at home is important, but it’s only when you hear the orchestra that you actually sing Mahler. It’s not just that your ears hear it, but your body also internalises the remarkable colours that emerge on stage, and it understands at a very deep level that your own voice is not separate to that, it must emerge from within it.
With Mahler there is a certain sound, and you have to meld together with it, become one with it. You’re not a soloist being accompanied, and your vocal colour must be dictated by the colours of the orchestra. It must never be about you, about your vocal line. It’s about everyone and everything resonating on the highest level possible.
Rule number 3: The vocal part is often the heart
Mahler often introduces the mezzo voice at the heart of the symphony. I mean that in both senses, that it can be structurally in the centre (as with the Third Symphony) and everything is constructed around that moment, and also that it’s the heart in the sense that the voice gets to the deepest message, to what he wanted to convey and what he was feeling in the piece.
So you carry Mahler's most precious and meaningful ideas, about the universe, life, loss, love, death, eternity itself; It feels like everything when you sing it. To get to that place as a performer one must always be very aware of what comes before and (if there is an afterwards!) what comes afterwards. The heart is intrinsically connected to the rest, and defined by it, and it all exists together.
Mahler often quietens everything down before the entrance of the voice, and this can come after even after a whole hour of waiting for your cue! It's a dramatic moment, visually (as you rise to stand and sing) and vocally, because Mahler makes it dramatically obvious just before you come in, that something very different is about to happen.
And yet, amazingly, the singer's entrance is usually not a hard attack, but something that emerges softly almost imperceptibly, as if out of a mist. It's very mysterious and very solemn, soft and contemplative like the shining of a candle in a dark space. That is a huge moment, and a huge responsibility for a singer to take on, but we must also take it on, move everything further to a very deep place. And we must do it without any vocal 'special effects', just by being vulnerable and honest and ourselves.
Rule 4: The text is more than the text
The text is the text, but I believe Mahler wants us to understand what’s behind the text, or more, what is the point of the text.
I've noticed that great Mahler conductors are always very profound and often well-read people. And that’s not surprising, because Mahler needs us to understand the philosophy, the subtext, social and religious context, a whole view of the world, even of the universe, that lie behind the words.
So as a performer you need to try to know about as much of this as you can, to try to awaken your inner philosopher! Because if you don’t deeply understand the text, how can you convey it to the audience.
Rule 5: It's not about you (but it is)
Singing Mahler is all about being exposed. Exposing yourself to the tremendous sense of awe that he can create with just a few notes, to the way he holds the sound with no frames, the way he creates an orchestration of softness, depth, profundity. You have to connect with his sound-world and in the end there’s only one way to do that - you must bring yourself, your own life experiences and even your soul - but in a way that is without ego.
Having said that, it’s not a therapy session! Although it is therapeutic, and somehow cleansing. But it's really about offering all of those things and releasing them into the core of the music, with expectation of getting anything back. There's no room for shallowness, no room for showing off. It's the deepest of depths, it's all-encompassing.
So much for the 'golden rules'! They prepare you, they get you a certain way along, but then there are those unforgettable moments where Mahler transcends them all. In the Third Symphony for instance, to take one single word, I sing, “Oh Mensch!” (“oh man”), and Mahler writes for those words to be repeated several times.
What must it mean to me as a singer to sing “Oh Mensch”? When I find myself standing before an audience of thousands, with the orchestra behind me, and I say these naked and strong words? Am I calling out to all of humanity - to mankind? And how must it change every time I sing them? There’s so much in these words. Must we all be thinking of our children, our grandparents, our friends, someone who is being born in that moment, or those who have passed? “Mensch”.
All of that demands all of you, in the moment, exposed in front of those thousands of people. And when we as performers can offer that, then we might be able to achieve the sense of meditation, the concentration, the energy, to let the sounds - and the great natural resonance that Mahler requires - emerge. That Mahlerian resonance, somehow, is our true nature, and what else is Mahler about, for artist and audience, if not life, at its most natural and true?
- Justina Gringyte is a former International Opera Awards 'Young Singer Of The Year', was most recently seen in the UK as Carmen with Scottish Opera, and is currently singing the role of Amneris in Verdi's Aida with Lithuanian National Opera