Their Master’s Voice

A black grand piano dominates the stark set. At stage-left is a chair and a desk with a music stand, scores and a box of tissues. The expectant buzz of the capacity audience’s pre-performance chatter becomes enthusiastic applause when the diva finally enters. Determinedly smiling, patently nervous student singers follow in sequence.

Terrence McNally’s hit play “Master Class,” right?

Wrong. You’re at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, sacred ancestral ground of the music master class, and the diva is the real thing: legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne.

The passion for communicative art, the fierce concentration and the cathartic collisions at the intersection of text and music, are the same as in the play. But the emotional atmosphere is much lighter: Horne’s intensity comes out as ebullient zest.

“I don’t underestimate the difficulty of what the students are doing and I work always from the positive,” Horne says afterward. “I treat it like a lesson--trust me, this is how I teach privately--but you can’t deny that the audience is there. Certain things are said, little jokes are made with them in mind. And sometimes I will ask the audience for its response to something I have a singer try.”

And if you are in the audience for the real thing, you will learn much more about the interpretive life of a musical phrase--in this case, a Mahler song--than you will about the inner life of the celebrity teacher.

“I’m amazed at just how rewarding it is to see someone else achieve,” Horne says. “I’ve been dealing with my own ego my whole life--let’s face it, the diva thing, you know?--but there’s none of that here. Teaching has been a revelation. I get out of it the wonder and joy at seeing the absorption of the lesson and the progress of the student.”

In Horne herself, the modern master class may have come full circle. Young musicians have always studied with masters, of course, but the public master class--part recital, part lecture-demonstration, part motivational seminar--seems to have evolved around mid-century. It developed in a number of places eventually--most famously in the extensive master classes of Maria Callas in the early 1970s, given new dramatic life in McNally’s play--but also at the forefront of this new combination art was Lotte Lehmann, a celebrated singer who was one of the founders of the Music Academy of the West 50 years ago.

“I think we are in the hallowed grounds where it all started,” Horne suggests. “Lotte Lehmann really pioneered master classes as we know them. I took my first with her at USC when I was 17, then others at Caltech, and then I came here.”

Now Horne is director of the vocal program at the academy, after two summers as director-designate. In addition to Horne, academy alumni returning for this anniversary season include soprano Benita Valente, tenor Frank Lopardo and baritone Thomas Hampson, all of whom will be teaching vocal master classes (see sidebar Page 53).

‘This institution’s main thrust is the master class,” acknowledges academy President David Kuehn. “We do some orchestra concerts, an opera, and chamber music every week, but that’s still only about a dozen events, compared with 150 to 170 master classes, vocal and instrumental, so you can see where we put our energy.

“It gives the students a bridge between the studio lesson and the full-fledged concert. For our audience, it gives folks a chance to see how difficult it is, training as an artist, and it gives them a background in the music unlike any they can get elsewhere. This is very important if we’re going to keep our art form alive among consumers of music. I think it’s important for us to train the audience.”

Although the term “master class” is sometimes used for classes where the audience is only other students, a public audience is a defining feature in most minds.

“It’s all semantics,” Horne says, “but I’ve started calling the ones with only other students ‘seminars.’ ”

Pianist Martin Katz, himself a Lehmann pupil and an acclaimed accompanist who has been in Los Angeles the past two weeks giving master classes and performing at the UCLA Summer Songfest, agrees that the audience is a crucial aspect.

“I know that I behave very differently in a class than in a private lesson,” he says. “I try to include the audience, to teach them something as well as the person on stage. I work hard to find a balance, a melange of the general and the particular. It’s never as specific as a [private] lesson, because I am too much of a showman to bore the audience.”

On the other hand, Katz does have some reservations about the label “master.”

“I don’t like the term,” he says. “I taught the same things when I was 30 as I do now at 50. Was I a master then? I usually call them just classes.”

Call them what you will, but masters--acknowledged, veteran performing greats--are another defining trait of these events, not least in the minds of student participants.

“It’s exciting when you have someone with the stature and experience of a Marilyn Horne, who has so much to offer--she’s been there and done it,” says academy student Randall Jakobsh, a bass-baritone from Canada.

“There’s a big difference between a voice teacher and a performer such as Marilyn Horne,” concurs baritone Brian Leerhuber, a UCLA alum. Both had just sung enormously taxing Mahler songs for the capacity crowd at Horne’s class.

“It comes down to who the students really admire,” says Scott Tennant, a member of the much-admired Los Angeles Guitar Quartet who attended many master classes in his teen years and now gives them himself. He has recently returned from a two-week festival in Brazil and in August will teach and perform in the weeklong Healdsburg Guitar Festival in Northern California. “Naturally they choose their heroes.”

Playing before an audience, knowing one of your heroes is waiting to pick apart your performance, is no easy thing.

“You have to leave your ego at the door,” says Jakobsh, who found Horne challenging him to try a different sort of vocal production at the crest of one phrase. When he seemed doubtful about the results, she appealed to the audience, which vociferously approved the new sound. “You’re there to get the teacher’s input, after all.”

“It’s a very scary form of torture,” adds Leerhuber. In his song there are three different characters speaking, and Horne encouraged him to explore both vocal and gestural means of distinguishing them. “You have to leave yourself vulnerable. You have to know not to take anything personally. Some people do get very defensive.”

“My first master class was with Alirio Diaz when I was 12 or 13, and then there were others with Oscar Ghiglia, Michael Lorimer and others--the old Segovia school,” Tennant recalls. “I would get really, really ill beforehand. Once I did the first couple of classes, however, I realized they tended to pity the youngest ones, and I used the pity aspect whenever I could.”

Not surprisingly, the teachers prefer working in festival settings and summer programs to one-shot master classes. The extended time frame allows them and the students to adjust to each other and develop more informal, collegial relationships. And since a large part of their job consists of inspiring their students to take risks interpretively and technically, it is also not surprising that highly successful teachers exude great passion and enthusiasm.

None more so than Horne.

“They say a singer dies twice, the first time when he quits singing,” she reflects. “I’m in the twilight of my singing years, and I came to the realization that I don’t have to lose it. I can sing everything again through these students. As singers, we are really blessed with repertory--we have the world. I can relive it all, even music I didn’t sing as a performer.

“Can you imagine how lucky I am? It’s like a gift.”

Master Classes

There are 56 remaining master classes scheduled at the Music Academy of the West, 1071 Fairway Drive, Santa Barbara, through Aug. 16. The following is a selected list, for more information, call (805) 969-8787.

Baritone Thomas Hampson, Wednesday, 3:10 p.m., Abravanel Hall, $15.

San Francisco Opera stage director Lotfi Mansouri, Friday, 3:10 p.m., Abravanel Hall, $15.

Pianist Jerome Lowenthal, Aug. 4 and 11, 1 p.m., Abravanel Hall, $10.

Cellist Peter Rejto, Aug. 6, 1 p.m., Lehmann Hall, $10.

Violist Donald McInnes, Thur., Aug. 7 and 14, 3:10 p.m., Lehmann Hall, $10.

Violinist Zvi Zeitlin, Aug. 11, 3:10 p.m., Lehmann Hall, $10.

Tenor Frank Lopardo, Aug. 13, 3:10 p.m., Abravanel Hall, $15.

Mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, Aug. 16, 2 p.m., Abravanel Hall, $15.