EVA STONE-BARNEY | An Eco-Critical Approach to the Classical Vocal Recital

Eva Stone-Barney explores the potentialities created by the vocal recital in shaping our shared climate future.

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Classical Vocal Recitals as Critical Discourse: Context

Where classical music performances are concerned, recitals are usually about as straightforward as it gets: a 21st century audience member who has bought a ticket to see a solo recital enters into a concert hall, or other performance venue, expecting to find chairs facing a bare stage, on which a piano and bench have been placed at the center. Usually, the lights will go down to signal the beginning of the event. Once the performance has started, a soloist and their collaborator (usually, a pianist) will walk on stage, at which point the attending public begins applauding. The soloist positions themselves either at or in front of the piano. The recital begins.

Originally, this formula developed out of a combination of 19th century musical events (such as the salon, English Benefit Concert, and German Liederabend) and circumstances. It has since moved into and back out of classical conservatories, where aspiring musicians present recitals to demonstrate their musical competency and professional viability, and has taken hold in concert halls of all shapes and sizes. Throughout its history, recital performance conventions — including the repertoire presented — have responded to changing social, political, and economic conditions in Europe and in North America, as well as to innovations in recording technology.

In recent years, soloists have looked to the recital as a means of personally engaging with contemporary social, political, and cultural issues. Through curation and recombination, they both utilize and challenge the conventions of recital presentation, as well as the spaces and contexts in which these events most frequently take place.

This mobilization of the recital format by singers dates back to the 1870s and 1880s, when “song recitals […] were one of the most ubiquitous forms of entertainment in the United States,” writes Heather Platt. ¹ At this time, singers began to take greater interest in the programming of their solo performances, choosing to explicitly infuse personal artistic intention and identity into recital programmes by including their own compositions and songs from their native countries. Esteemed recitalists of the time such as George Werrenrath, for example, programmed Scandinavian folk songs. ² Jenny Lind, meanwhile, programmed Swedish ones. ³ , ⁴ German singers George Henschel and Max Heinrich, who were invested in the promotion and proliferation of German music and musical culture, placed an emphasis on Lieder in their repertoire selection. ⁵ Broader nationalist political projects, which were personal to these singers, became intimate musical themes on the concert stage. The recital has long since been a tool for musicians, businesspeople, journalists, publishers and lovers of classical music. As soon as they emerged into public musical and social life in the 1830s, recitals grew popular on account of their multiple practical applications. While these uses vary significantly depending on place and time, its utility has long been a cornerstone of its appeal. This has remained the case.

In recent years, performers have looked to the solo recital to push beyond traditional western classical performance expectations, utilizing the traditionally rigid confines of a well-established style of musical presentation to exercise creativity and self-expression, working with and through the very constraints they aim to challenge. While recitals have been thematized and organized around specific figures, concepts, and tropes, since the 19th century, recitals programmed around/about social and political issues have become increasingly commonplace since. In the 20th century, baritones Paul Robeson (in 1947) and William Warfield (in 1953) travelled to Panama to give recital performances in support of labour unions, and in celebration of the country’s political independence, respectively. ⁶ More recently, artists such as Rhiannon Giddens and Davone Tines have created recital-style performances that aim to collapse the distance between their personal experiences and the conditions of contemporary social life. In many cases, these recitals have diverged from the traditional classical recital format and repertoire. ⁷

The Covid-19 pandemic had a significant impact on the lives of performing musicians. Faced with little-to-no live performance opportunities, many developed skills in producing, filming, and recording their own private performances so as to continue sharing music with a listening public. By virtue of the limitations gathering in large groups, these projects often oriented themselves around solo or chamber works, and took the form of recitals. During this period, technological mediation further enabled the destabilization of the recital format undertaken by these artists, allowing for expression of “performer identity” (as opposed to its erasure by both classical repertoire and performance practices), through pre-recorded performances, or other digital delivery methods. In some cases, performers have done more than just express their identity — they have used transformed recital practices, in their multiple dimensions, to engage in social, political and cultural education, commentary, and even criticism or argument.

Building on theories of voice and identity developed by Nina Sun Eidsheim, Adriana Cavarerro, Katherine Meizel, and Brian Kane, and the concept of recombinant media as described by Marshall, P. David, I will explore the recital as a mode of classical vocal performance with both artistic and political potential, mobilized in performance by tenor Isaiah Bell to address relations between human and non-human being in the context of the climate emergency.

Isaiah Bell and The Small Rain

Canadian tenor Isaiah Bell’s The Small Rain is one of two “hybrid concept recitals” that he created for Early Music Vancouver and Ottawa Chamberfest during the COVID-19 pandemic.The Small Rain features Bell alongside keyboardist Alexander Weimann. “A musical exploration of the self,” the performance combines Canadian folk songs; Baroque repertoire by Purcell, Handel, and Cavalli; Classical and early Romantic pieces by Haydn, Schubert and Bellini; modern English art songs based on texts by ancient Chinese poets Li Po and Tu Fu; and Bell’s own poetry. ⁸ Combined, these pieces “examine our relationship with nature, our own personhood, and the existential questions in between.” ⁹

Bell invokes his own subjectivity in a musical-poetic conversation about human and non-human relations. Through curation and recombination, he utilizes and challenges the conventions of recital presentation to emphasize the intersections between contemporary social and political life, and this localized musical event. The musical works featured on the recital are woven together by fragments of Bell’s own free-verse, impressionist poetry – these poems create a through-line between pieces in various genres, while also providing poetic translations of the music’s texts. His poems interrogate relationships between humans and the natural world, relative to Bell’s personal and artistic experiences and positionality. While the spoken word interjections seem primarily aimed at connecting musical ideas, they also disrupt the conventional musical flow of the classical vocal recital, which at its apogee historically restricted voiced sounds to singing. This serves to assert Bell as a more-than-musical being, who exists beyond and outside of his singing voice.

“While the spoken word interjections seem primarily aimed at connecting musical ideas, they also disrupt the conventional musical flow of the classical vocal recital...”

“Nature,” for Bell, exists both as a term for the environment, and to describe a broader understanding of humanity. He at once aims to spark conversation around human responsibility towards nature, and nature’s stewardship of human beings, as well as a different, but related, conversation surrounding broader themes of isolation and belonging, specifically as they relate to Bell’s personal lived experiences as a gay man. Schubert’s “Wasserflut,” Bellini’s “Vaga luna,” and the French-Canadian folk song, “Ah toi, belle hirondelle,” and their accompanying poetry, for example, create a set that depicts loneliness and unrequited love, both quelled and exacerbated by nature. This sense of loneliness and isolation related to sexuality, as expressed in images and experiences of the natural world, recurs later in the recital, when Bell sings Britten’s "The Last Rose of Summer." While these pieces are not explicitly about human sexuality, their inclusion in a recital that Bell himself describes as “a diary” invite them to be read thusly. ¹⁰ With that said, Bell insists that the overall goal of The Small Rain is to “transcends the personal,” – his performance of Cavalli’s “Piante ombrose” and poem that precedes it, achieves this, representing a meeting point between themes of environmental preservation, and degradation, and personal, more inward experiences of loneliness. ¹¹

It goes without saying that there are risks to projects that endeavor to employ images and constructions of nature to communicate ideas related to human experience and existence. As described by Timothy Morton, artistic movements across history and around the world have conceived of the non-human natural world, the environment, as a romanticized other, an object of human admiration and longing. ¹² Often, these romantic depictions assume a gap between humans and “the environment,” instead of treating human beings as enmeshed in ecological relations with non-human beings, systems and things. Such is the case in much of the repertoire that Bell has programmed as part of A Small Rain, which positions humans (usually the speaker, in these cases) as apart from the natural world, looking to it for comfort, or using images/depictions of non-human living and non-living beings to explain or understand human experiences.

In Ecology without Nature, Morton suggests that these artistic constructions fall short of allowing humans to develop an “ecocritical thinking.” He is critical of what he calls “ecomimesis,” which purports to provide a direct experience of “nature” itself, without the distorting influence of aesthetic strategy or technique. In Morton's view, the ecomimetic pretense of a pure, unmediated encounter with an external “nature,” and the refusal of aesthetics, are ultimately self-defeating. He writes, “by setting up nature as an object ‘over there’— a pristine wilderness beyond all trace of human contact — [ecomimesis] re-establishes the very separation it seeks to abolish.” ¹³ Morton prefers an ecological aesthetic that dissolves the binary between a distinctly human subject and the environment or “nature” as object, which then would be capable of presenting humans and non-humans in constant, co-constitutive relations and communication.

By framing pieces with his own poetic translations of their texts, though, Bell attempts to think – to sing – eco-critically. He presents his lived, human experiences as intertwined with and constructed by his experiences as part of his environment. For Bell, this relationship to nature is deeply personal: in an interview with Early Music Vancouver, he connects his desire to situate himself as part of his environment to his experience living on Vancouver Island. He goes as far as to say that the goal of The Small Rain is to express the value and importance of being connected to his environment, describing the “sense of release” humans experience when they are “connected to a larger ecosystem,” “in the woods,” for instance. There is a connection, says Bell, between “really physically [engaging] with the natural world around you [and] singing” – a “physical practice” that demands the singer be “integrated into the world.” ¹⁴ “Liebliche Wälder,” “La Plainte du coureur-des-bois,” Haydn’s “Das Leben ist ein Traum”: as musical objects unto themselves, these pieces romanticize nature in precisely the ways Morton warns against. And yet by recontextualizing these texts with his own words, within the format of the classical recital, Bell offers us an alternative reading of these depictions of human and non-human relations.

“Liebliche Wälder,” for example, from the first act of Handel’s Almira, is book-ended by two poems in which Bell obfuscates any separation between him (the speaker) and the forest (his surroundings). Here, nature is not othered; on the contrary, the character Bell embodies and his environment are intertwined. “My brain / soaks down into my body / to empty my skull / that it may collect / nutrients / from falling leaves / and croaks of ravens,” he says before the aria. ¹⁵ Brain, body, leaves, earth, and birds are connected here, creating one continuous organism. After the aria, he continues “not having counted / my faults, the woods have no need / to forgive them.” ¹⁶ The text of “Liebliche Wälder,” meanwhile, provides a romanticised depiction of non-human beings, separate from the speaker, who seeks comfort in a forest. “Beloved forest, shady fields, / Cool my heart's unbearable pain!,” he sings. ¹ By combining this text with his own writing, Bell proposes an alternative artistic representation of human and non-human relationships, inviting listeners to go beyond the ecomimesis Morton warns against.

Reappropriated and recombined by Bell, their figurative natural imaginings are intended for literal interpretation, flattening the ontology between human and non-human beings to open up a dehierarchized dialogue between the natural world and human experiences of loneliness, love, and personal identity. In this way, Bell invites listeners to consider the natural images in these works (woods, water, forests, leaves, ravens, flowers) not as static objects (tools with which to understand human experience), but as beings connected and equal to both himself, and other humans.

Bell’s eco-critical vocal recital explores issues of personal identity in dialogue with broader environmental concerns, maximizing the potential of the recital to do something challenging (presenting repertoire that has historically done the very thing Bell is trying to avoid, the aestheticization of the non-human) and unconventional. Bell is far from the only person who has used the vocal recital to make a statement related to his own identity, articulated within the context of environmental crisis. Also for Early Music Vancouver, Cree Métis baritone Jonathon Adams created Le Rossignol Sauvage, a recital that explores the complexities of their experience as an Indigenous classical singer specializing in early music, and their relationship to the natural world, through the programming of French Baroque repertoire and traditional Cree songs. More typically adherent to the standard classical vocal recital format, Joyce Di Donato has toured EDEN since 2021. Although much less explicitly political, her recital combines educational initiatives for youth with classical repertoire abridging environmental themes, to present a reflection on generational experiences of human and non-human relationship building. While it is difficult to say whether these two examples endeavor to pose the same eco-critical questions as Bell’s work, they certainly choose to position themselves at the centre of ecological conversations, and use vocal music to do so. Does Di Donato’s EDEN succumb to Morton’s fears about ecomimesis on account of its heightened theatrics, elaborate lighting, and extravagant scale? Do Adams’ and Bell’s recitals avoid these perils because of their paired-down, pre-recorded format? Can any classical vocal recital that does not actively address the material implications (i.e. carbon footprint, and broader ecological impact) of its presentation really be eco-critical?

“Can any classical vocal recital that does not actively address the material implications of its presentation really be eco-critical?”

By presenting canonical operatic and art song repertoire in thematized recital programs, often challenging the conventional delivery of the classical vocal recital, these artists connect their own personal identities to the ecological landscapes in which they live in work. Whether this work avoids the pitfalls of romanticization is difficult to say, and to a certain extent, lies in the hands of the listener. That said, it has certainly become popular enough to be considered a trend in recital-giving, the impacts of which remain to be seen. In Solarities, the After Oil Collective — “an ongoing series of research events designed to explore, critically and creatively, the cultural politics of energy use in the context of climate change and energy transition” — argues that “stories [offer] immense possibility [and] provide powerful means of creating different words and making new futures, and of seeing the present in new ways.” ¹⁸ At the very least, the act of telling stories on the recital stage that creatively centre non-human beings is an engagement in a broader social discourse, which insists we consider the “present” of classical vocal music as being in conversation with climate futures.

Notes

1. Heather Platt, “‘Something New in the Musical Line’” American Music 38/4 (2020), 480. ↩
2. George Werrenrath (1838-1898) was a classical tenor from Denmark. Werrenrath sang in operas and oratorios, and was among the first singers to perform art song recitals in the United States (George Werrenrath Obituary. New York Times, June 5, 1898.) ↩
3. Heather Platt, “‘Something New in the Musical Line’” American Music 38/4 (2020), 468. ↩
4. Austin B Caswell, “Jenny Lind’s tour of America: A discourse of gender and class”, Festa musicologica: Essays in honor of George J. Buelow, ed. Thomas J. Mathiesen and Benito V. Rivera. ↩
5. Heather Platt, “‘Something New in the Musical Line’” American Music 38/4 (2020), 470. ↩
6. Katherine Zien, “Race and Politics in Concert: Paul Robeson and William Warfield in Panama, 1947–1953.” The Global South 6, no. 2 (2012): 107–29. ↩
7. This text is an excerpt of a larger piece on emerging media and new approaches to the classical recital. While I describe Isaiah Bell’s project in detail here, he is but one of many singers engaging in this type of socially and politically engaged recital presentation. Other recent examples of this trend include Davone Tines’ Recital No. 1: Mass; Rhiannon Giddens’ There is No Other; The Likht Ensemble’s Blonde Zosia; Jonathon Adams’ Le Rossignol Sauvage, all of which investigate contemporary social and political issues, in relation to performer identity. ↩
8. The Small Rain promotional materials, Early Music Vancouver. Accessed June 3, 2023 ↩
9. Ibid. ↩
10. Bell, Isaiah. Programme Notes for The Small Rain. Isaiah Bell, Alexander Weimann. Early Music Vancouver: The Chan Centre for Perfoming Arts, May 5 2021. ↩
11. Bell’s poem, before Piante ombrose, reads: “this world, which contains everything sometimes shows as sun, sometimes as smoke here we are today in the middle of its end or so it seems to me as my eyes water with the burnt-up particles of our living world what merciless god eats up this earth, turning woods to hot, thirsty stone? Where are the shade trees? I moan for the lovely flowers now burnt to ash.” ↩
12. Timothy Morton, Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007, 125. ↩
13. Ibid, 125. ↩
14. Bell, Isaiah. Programme Notes for The Small Rain. Isaiah Bell, Alexander Weimann. Early Music Vancouver: The Chan Centre for Perfoming Arts, May 5 2021. ↩
15. Ibid. ↩
16. Ibid. ↩
17. Ibid. ↩
18. After Oil Collective, “Storytelling and Worldmaking,” in Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice. University of Minnesota Press, 2022, 61. ↩

Works Cited

• After Oil Collective, “Storytelling and Worldmaking,” in Solarities: Seeking Energy Justice. University of Minnesota Press, 2022, 61.
• Bell, Isaiah. Programme Notes for The Small Rain. Isaiah Bell, Alexander Weimann. Early Music Vancouver: The Chan Centre for Perfoming Arts, May 5 2021.
• Caswell, Austin B. “Jenny Lind’s tour of America: A discourse of gender and class”, Festa musicologica: Essays in honor of George J. Buelow, ed. by Thomas J. Mathiesen and Benito V. Rivera. Festschrift series 14 (Stuyvesant: Pendragon Press, 1995) 319–337.
• Cavarero, Adriana. For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2005.
• Eidsheim, Nina Sun. “Race and the Aesthetics of Vocal Timbre.” Chapter. In Rethinking Difference in Music Scholarship, edited by Olivia Bloechl, Melanie Lowe, and Jeffrey Kallberg, 338–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.
• Eidsheim, Nina Sun. “Widening Rings of Being: The Singer as Stylist and Technician.” In The Race of Sound: Listening, Timbre, and Vocality in African American Music, 177–200. Duke University Press, 2019.
• Kane, Brian. “The Model Voice” in “Why Voice Now?,” edited by Martha Feldman. Journal of the American Musicological Society 68, no. 3 (2015): 671-677.
• Leppert, Richard D. “Introduction” in The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
• Marshall, P. David. “Renewing Cultural Studies: Essay 1: Recombinant Culture”. M/C Journal 3, no. 6 (2000).
• Meizel, Katherine. Multivocality: Singing on the Borders of Identity. Oxford University Press, 2020.
• Morton, Timothy. Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
• Platt, Heather. “‘Something New in the Musical Line’: The Emergence of the Song Recital During the 1870s and 1880s.” American Music 38/4 (2020): 454–84.
• “The Small Rain.” Early Music Vancouver. Accessed June 3, 2023. www.earlymusic.bc.ca/events/small-rain-feat-isaiah-bell-tenor-alexander-weimann-keyboard/
• Weber, William. "Recital." Grove Music Online. 2001; Accessed 16 Nov. 2021.
• Wirzba, Norman. “Timothy Morton, Ecology Without Nature: Rethinking Environmental Aesthetics” in Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture 2, no. 4 (2009).
• Zien, Katherine. “Race and Politics in Concert: Paul Robeson and William Warfield in Panama, 1947–1953.” The Global South 6, no. 2 (2012): 107–29.

April 28, 2025