As a singer, nothing gives a bigger compliment than the tears of the audience. The tears mean that you have transcended the technicalities of singing (such as breath support) and have made music– music that reaches their souls. Hence, in order to accomplish this lofty goal, singers have tried various ways: moving their bodies and limbs, inhaling expressively, adding kaleidoscopic visual effects etc. What is the most effective way then? Or rather, is there away ? Or is it completely aleatory or even mythical?
To answer this question, I would like to postulate something about “being touched”: namely, the audience cannot be self-conscious and be touched simultaneously. They have to focus on something else, something not themselves so as to be touched and I would like to list three observations here which lead me to this conclusion.
The first belongs to a situation when the minds of the audience minds are so occupied with their own business that they stop listening. The performance onstage can be as heart-wrenching as possible, yet it will just fall on deaf ears if the audience just keeps worrying about their bank accounts, for example. However, I do realize the existence of some counter-examples where extremely touching performances have been given in the midst of World War II, when people are extremely concerned with their safety. Yet these counter-examples, in fact, serve to strengthen my point since those performances were touching because they transported the audience out of the war, out of their present predicaments, out of themselves, albeit temporarily.
The second stems from my own life experience: a performance which is full of mistakes technicality-wise (such as wrong notes, wrong entrances), for me, is hard to be touching. The reason for this is because these mistakes are making me more conscious of my own musical knowledge – “that note should be a F instead of a G and the singer is singing it wrong!” A performance will stop to be touching if it keeps reminding me of my own familiarity with the repertoire.
The last observation is typified by the following thought: “the performance to which I devote my attention is technically flawless, yet it is not touching at all!” The reason for that, I suggest, is that although the performance is technically flawless, it jars you aesthetically and makes you aware of your own aesthetic judgements. As an illustration, let’s say a singer “straight tones” (stops the natural vibrato of the voice) once every three notes in a Schubert art song; subsequently you may think “that is not the way to sing Schubert!” This thought inherently triggers your aesthetic judgment, calls to mind your ideal way of singing Schubert – in short, it reminds you of you and hence, it stops to be touching.
How can singers, then, direct the consciousness of the audience away from themselves so as to touch them? The key is to lure them gently into your own world onstage and I will talk about this in the sequel.
對於歌唱家來說，觀眾的眼淚代表了最崇高的讚美。觀眾的眼淚意味著你已經超越了歌唱的技巧層面（例如氣息支持），創造了真正的音樂 – 一個達到人靈魂深處的音樂。因此，為了實現這個崇高的目標，歌唱家嘗試了各種各樣的方式：移動他們的身體和四肢、吸氣時充滿感情、歌唱時在背後增加如萬花筒般的視覺效果等。那麼最有效的方法是什麼？有辦法可以一定感動到觀眾嗎？或者感動與否是完全隨意的甚至是像迷一般的嗎？
為了回答這個問題，我想先提出一個我自己的看法：觀眾是不能同時在想關於自己的東西的時候被感動的。他們必須專注於自己以外的東西，才能被感動。我想列出三個令我得出這個結論的觀察 。
第一，當觀眾滿腦子在想自己事情的時候，他們是很難去被感動的 。舞台上的表演可以是扣人心弦，但如果觀眾只是擔心他們家中的財政狀況，那麼他們是不會被感動的。然而，我也知道一些反例的存在，例如在第二次世界大戰期間(當很多人擔心自己的安危的時候)有一些非常感人的表演。但是，這些反例其實是有助於我的觀點: 因為這些表演令觀眾忘了自己是身處戰爭當中的(儘管是暫時的)，所以這些表演令人感動。
第二個源於我自己的人生經歷：對於我來說，一個充滿錯誤（如唱錯音、拍子等）的表演是很難去感動我的。原因是這些錯誤使我意識到我自己的音樂知識，例如“那個音符應該是F而不是G，歌唱家唱錯了！”因為它令我意識到我自己對那些歌曲的熟悉情度，所以感動不了我 。
最後一個情況可能大家常常經歷：“雖然表演在技術上完美無瑕，但它根本沒有感動到我！”為什麼呢？原因可能是表演雖然在技術上完美無瑕，但它對音樂的處理手法，讓你意識到自己的美學判斷，審美觀。例如，如果有一個歌唱家在演唱舒伯特藝術歌曲的時候，每三個音中有一個 straight tone（停止了嗓子自然發出的震音），那麼 你可能會認為“這不是演唱舒伯特的方式！”這種想法觸發了你的審美判斷，讓你去想演唱舒伯特最理想的方式– 換言之，這個表演讓你想起了你自己，因此它感動不了你 。
那麼，歌唱家如何把觀眾的意識從他們身上移開呢？關鍵就是在舞台上引誘他們進入歌唱家自己的世界，我將在下一篇談論如何做到。