Weekly Voice Insights #98 -What Did She See?

Borrowed Lessons, Earned Character

 

Greek Glossary

• ἀρετή (aretē): excellence, virtue
• ἀλλότριον (allotrion): belonging to another, not your own
• οἰκεῖον (oikeion): one's own, proper to oneself
• πρόοδος (proodos): progress, advancement
• μίμησις (mimēsis): imitation
• ἕξις (hexis): habitual condition, acquired state
• τῦφος (typhos): conceit, vanity, inflated pride

What Did She See? (Aretē)

Near the end of my time at the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists in Chicago, I met with Ardis Krainik for my final exit interview. During our conversation she remarked that I had the volontà. I appreciated the compliment, although I also remember thinking in very practical terms. I had just completed the program, and what I really needed was a job.

Only years later did I begin wondering what she may have recognized. Her comment seemed to point beyond talent or musicianship toward qualities that had developed over time. That question fits naturally with this week's Stoic reading. Epictetus asks us to distinguish between what belongs to us and what belongs to something outside ourselves. Excellence is not something we borrow for a moment. It is revealed through the way we repeatedly choose to think, work, and respond.

Borrowed Beginnings (Mimēsis)

Every discipline begins with imitation.

Long before we develop our own ideas, we borrow from people who have already traveled the path ahead of us. We listen to teachers, observe colleagues, imitate performers, and follow exercises developed through years of experience. Voice study is no different. At first, we are learning another person's understanding so that we can gradually develop our own.

Preparing the Foster 200 recital reminded me of that process. Stephen Foster's melodies, poetry, and stories are not mine. I spent weeks reading the texts, memorizing verses, studying the historical background, and living with those songs until I understood them more completely. 

By the time I stood before the audience, I was no longer trying to remember lyrics from a page. The preparation had allowed me to communicate ideas that had become part of my own understanding.

Practice and Progress (Hexis and Proodos)

The recital confirmed something I have experienced many times as both a performer and a teacher. Repeated practice changes more than our level of skill. It gradually changes us.

Audience members selected songs in an order I could not predict. Between selections we laughed, talked about history, and explored the stories behind the music. At one point I momentarily lost a line of text and realized that I had left behind the iPad containing every lyric as my backup. I smiled, told the audience I was "surfing without a net," and kept going.

Driving home afterward, it occurred to me that the recital had depended far less on memorization than on weeks of disciplined preparation. The work of reading, repeating, studying, and thinking about those songs had made them available to me when I needed them. That is what the Stoics describe as hexis—an acquired condition that develops through consistent practice. Progress (proodos) is not measured only by what we know, but by what has become sufficiently familiar that we can draw upon it naturally.

The same process appears in teaching. At first we consciously remember every instruction we have been given. Over time those ideas become part of the way we think, listen, and respond.

What Becomes Our Own? (Oikeion and Allotrion)

After the recital, I was sitting at the table with my journals when a woman came over to speak with me. A friend had brought her from a retirement community. She told me how meaningful it had been simply to be in the presence of live singing. She spoke about feeling the vibrations of the human voice and described the experience as energizing. As a retired nurse, she reflected on how beneficial experiences like that could be for a person's well-being.

Our conversation reminded me that the purpose of preparation is never simply to accumulate knowledge or demonstrate skill. Everything I had practiced found its purpose in serving another person.

Stephen Foster's words will never become mine. He wrote them, and they remain his. My responsibility is different. Through careful preparation, I can know those words so well that they are no longer confined to the printed page. They become thoughts I am able to communicate with honesty and conviction, allowing the audience to experience them as living ideas rather than simply lyrics being recited.

What belongs to me is not the text itself, but the preparation, the understanding, and the choices I make in presenting it. What belongs to the audience is equally important. Each listener brings a lifetime of experiences, memories, and emotions to the performance, and each person is free to receive those words in a different way. My role is to present them as clearly and honestly as I can, leaving room for others to make their own connections.

Perhaps that is what Ardis Krainik recognized all those years ago. I cannot know exactly what she meant by volontà, but I can see that years of disciplined work have shaped not only how I sing, but how I prepare, teach, communicate, and respond to the opportunities placed before me.

We begin by borrowing from others. Through thoughtful practice, some of those borrowed ideas gradually become part of who we are. That is where aretē begins to emerge—not as something we claim, but as something we have patiently cultivated over time.

Check-In

• What qualities in my life have become part of who I am through repeated practice?
• What am I still borrowing from others, and how might I make it genuinely my own?
• What commitment could I practice consistently enough that, over time, it becomes part of my character?

Find the DYAV newsletter, website, blog, reflection journal, and Voice Insights archive below:

https://linktr.ee/DYAVwithElias

or scan

#DevelopingYourAuthenticVoice #DYAV #Stoicism #VoiceTraining #DeliberatePractice