MAKING MUSIC - A letter by Gun to the colleagues of the teacher's association

Music, profession and career told from Gun Kronzell's perspective

M A K I N G M U S I C

Reflections over my career and life as an artist

Published letter / article to 'STÄMBANDET' - The Magazine for the Swedish Vocal & Speech Pedagogue Association from 2003.

By Gun Kronzell-Moulton, Operatic Mezzo-Soprano, Concert- and Oratorio-Singer , Professor of Solo Voice at the Vienna Academy of Music and the Performing Arts. English translation by Herbert Moulton. Further translations and additions by Charles E.J. Moulton

Dear Colleagues!

I'm delighted to have a chance to write to you again. It's been over ten years since my last article. At that time I told you about my work in Vienna as Professor of Voice at the State Academy of Music.

Now I intend to take you on a little journey of reminiscence, hoping to touch on some of the people who have influenced me most as human being, singer, and pedagogue.

During my student time in Stockholm --- up until 1958 --- I was privileged to work with many fascinating people:

One of these was Ǻke Nygren, unforgettable for his lessons in Speech Technique, as well as for his uncanny ability to remember each and every student he ever had. Shortly before his death he attended a recital of mine at Waldemarsudde, after which he came back, shaking with laughter: "Have you seen the mistake in the programme?"

What they had done was write 'Rangström's The Only Student (Den Enda Studenten)' instead of 'The Only Hour (Den Enda Stunden)'. A fortnight later he was dead from a heart attack. A splendid and unforgettable man.

Wilhelm Freund was an unbelievably fine teacher of German Lieder, as well as an outstanding personality. Every time I travelled down to Germany he asked me to bring him some Pumpernickel and Harz cheese.

Bernhard Lilja taught Solfeggio Ear Schooling at the Academy and was one of my very favourites, not only for his splendid instruction, but also because his lessons were always so hilarious. We roared with laughter through most of them.

From Isa Quensel I learned a great deal --- a magnificent woman full of temperament and a passion for fair play. She was a fabulous actress and speech pedagogue and I know I would never have become such a successful actress as a singer if it hadn’t been for Isa.

My final year in Stockholm brought me to the legendary Russian pedagogue Madame Andrejewa de Skilondz: a fascinating atmosphere steeped in Russian culture provided by her two round little sisters, an Angora cat and a Pekingese on a silken cushion. Surely many of you are with the many intriguing tales about the Madame, who, when still very young, sang with Caruso.

Torsten Föllinger, my dear old friend and collegue, whom I met during a course being given by Professor Josef Witt in Stockholm, has, with his tremendous enthusiasm and knowledge of human nature, always meant more to me than I can say.

Part of my income during my student days came from church music. Often I'd go to various organizations and ask if I could sing at a church service or concert. Many times, especially out in the country, I came home with a sack of coins from the collection!

Naturally all the student concerts at the old Academy were worth hearing: almost every week a delightfully mixed program of classics. One concert I recall in particular featured Georg Riedel playing his famous double-bass. Lasse Länndahl is another one.

In 1959 a Ruud Scholarship enabled me to travel down to Wiesbaden to study with Professor Paul Lohmann, one of the individuals who influenced me most. I still use many of his exercises in my work. The extraordinary thing is that, after so many years, their meaning suddenly becomes so crystal clear that you know precisely what he wanted from them. Paul Lohmann was a true sorcerer, with a vast amount of humour.

With every new engagement I took pains to find a teacher with the wisdom to guide my voice in the right way. In Bielefeld there was Herman Firchow, who, besides being a source of valuable advice, had a family who soon were among my best friends ... and good honest friends are something we all need.

Every Sunday during these three years in Bielefeld found me working at Bethel, the renowned institution for mentally handicapped children. This provided a perfect balance with my work at the theatre and gave my life a secure and solid meaning.

The four succeeding years at Hanover were the busiest of all, with my repertoire expanding to include many of the great Wagner- and Verdi-roles such as Ortrud, Brangäne, Eboli, Ulrica, Abigaille, Azucena, and Preziosilla .

At the same time --- in order to keep the voice healthy and fresh --- I studied Brahms Lieder with the legendary pianist Sebastian Peschko, who had been the regular accompanist of Heinrich Schlusnus. He had me write down everything we did together, and for this I shall be eternally grateful as these notes have been a source of untold benefit ever since.

As voice teacher in Hanover I had Otto Köhler, a worthy colleague, then seventy years of age and still singing splendidly at the opera. Sometimes we did vocal exercises for four hours together --- Heaven! Later, when I was engaged in Graz and at the Volksoper in Vienna, I went to Kammersängerin Hilde Zadek, who always came to all my premieres, and has continued to do so to my student concerts in Vienna.

Quite soon after our son Charlie's birth in September of 1969, I was asked to create the role of Adriano in a new production of Wagner's RIENZI, with the strongly imaginative Stage Director from Vienna's Burg Theater, Adolf Rott --- a marvellous role and a fantastic assignment, but extremely dramatic and taxing for the voice, especially so soon after my caesarean! So, I turned to Professor Eugenie Ludwig (Christa's mother), whose wondrous head resonance exercises brought the voice clear up to the high C, even with a heavy cold!

In Graz we shared a two-family theatre house with the Australian soprano Althea Bridges, and her Danish-born husband. And precisely in September 1969 each of us gave birth to a son at the very time we should have been appearing as Leonora and Azucena in a new Trovatore-production. You can imagine how popular that made us with the management!

We spent the ten years dating from 1974 in Göteborg, where I was engaged at the Music Acedemy, and, with my husband, wrote and staged a Children's Play named LONG LIVE THE TROLLS! , where Charlie also had his professional stage debut as the clumsy troll Klampe-Lampe. I also taught disc jockeys on the Stena Line-ferries, as well as teachers to Chinese immigrants.

Besides all that, I jumped at a day's notice at the Gothenburg Opera into the role of Ulrica (Mamzelle Arvidsson) in Verdi's MASKED BALL, singing it in Swedish for the first time, after having already performed it in both German and the original Italian. Added to that, there were every summer intensive church music courses, hard work, but fun and rewarding.

All these varied activities gave me a ready-made and invaluable backlog of experience when I was made a fulltime Professor of Voice at Vienna's State Academy of Music and the Performing Arts in the autumn of 1984 --- this, after a trial lesson before some thirty voice teachers --- both gratifying and rewarding .

At first I was so taken with all the various nationalities around me at the Academy that I took on a class of twenty different students, but with the passage of time I narrowed it down to only those I myself had prepared or who had convinced me of their future potential .

Entrance examinations in Sweden are considerably more difficult than in Austria, as we Swedes are a singing people with a singular feeling for speech and song. However, it's also clear that to sing German as, say, Fritz Wunderlich did is indeed wonderful. He once confided that he sang German as if it were Italian!

Since the fall of the Wall our problems have been entirely different here. Russians, Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians, Croats, Slovenes, and the like are all extremely talented and musically prepared, but with so little money that the barely come up to the existence-minimum.

To return now to some welcome visitors:

Torsten Föllinger sometimes journeys down here to help us achieve more vocal freedom, as well as self-esteem.

The Russian basso Nesterenko gave a course for our students, an outstanding singer, who also presented me with a book of exercises for the bass voice, which had been used in Russia since 1915.

Ingrid Bjoner was also here a few years ago for a seminar and impressed everyone with her depth of understanding, especially for individual students.

For a few years I had a brilliant young Hungarian girl as a student, who suddenly became Luciano Pavarotti's right hand and general Girl Friday for a period of seven years, travelling with him the world over. Thanks to her, not only did I have free tickets for his concerts and opera performances, but also had many opportunities to meet with him and attend some of his rehearsals, not only instructive but endlessly fascinating.

The positive advantages of living in Vienna are not so much the old-fashioned teaching and traditions, but the enormous bill-of-fare readily available in terms of international concerts operatic performances, theatre and dance events of every possible type. We have also enjoyed several visits by Kjell 'Mr.Choir' Lönnâ and his large, delightful and enthusiastic singing ensembles. Besides performing 'Haus-Musik' in the Swedish Embassy (as I have done numerous times), the success they scored in St. Stephen Cathedral verged on the sensational. Then, too, Stockholm's Radio Orchestra, Drottningholm's Baroque Ensemble, and also the Maestro Eric Ericsson, with whom I sang in the 50's, all of whom have concertized here to great applause. And it's always a joy to meet with any of them are my old colleagues from home.

My husband Herbert Moulton has long been associated with ORF School's Radio, as well as with both English-speaking theatres, the International (where he played everything from Shakespeare to Wilder and Orwell and the Uncle in Charlie's Aunt) and Vienna's English Theatre, the latter serving high-quality performances from London (Ayckborn, Shakespeare, Christie) or the States (such as Second City) for large and distinguished public. He has a versatile background in all fields of art : as a playwright and actor , singer of everything from simple folk tunes to 'Grand Opera' and has done commercials and been in films with the likes of Audrey Landers, Alan Rickman, David Warner, Clint Eastwood and Zsa-Zsa Gabor.

Inspired by all this and early stage-work as well as years of concerting in his back-pocket, our son Charles E.J. Moulton's career has advanced from theatre projects and small roles in Vienna's Chamber Opera (Offenbach, Gershwin, Vives, etc.) to a two-and-a-half year's run of Roman 'Rosemary's Baby' Polanski's Broadway-destined World Premiere 'Grusical' DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES, written by Webber-collaborator Jim Steinman . At present he is playing the first cast role of The Big Bopper in Hamburg's long running musical BUDDY in Germany, from which he recently took time off to fly down to Vienna for two concerts as bass-soloist in Joseph Haydn's THE CREATION (once in the Haydn Museum, the baroque house where Papa Haydn wrote the piece) then to Sweden for a tour of church concerts with famous Swedish all-round saxophonist Johan Stengård, followed by a most rewarding week at a Master-Class outside Oslo in Norway, a seminar featuring the eminences of Ingrid Bjoner and Håkan Hagegård . He spent a half year cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean seas as a singing soloist, after which he joined the company of Jesus Christ Superstar in the Bad Hersfelder Festival. Before joining the Dutch Stage Holding Corporation to play Scar and Pumbaa in Disney's THE LION KING in Hamburg, he was soloist with the city’s Mozart Orchestra, performing Rossini and Bizet.

One great blessing for me is having had the good fortune to meet and get to know a magnificent Franciscan monk in Salzburg back in 1953. He has ever since enriched my life with good advice and the deep understanding that a true Christian vocation can provide.

As a resting-place next to the productive lives that we all have enjoyed, mine is, has been and always will be my home town of Kalmar. This city, with its grand 12th century castle and seaside lifestyle and my many friends and relatives, has been my lifelong summer-home and will always be so. Since my 1998 retirement I have enjoyed not only more freedom as a pedagogue and singer but as a globetrotter as well, travelling not only more to Sweden but to my friends in Germany, Hungary and Ireland as well. Living in Vienna, Austria is, on the other hand, also a blessing. I can, therefore, heartily welcome you here and to my Studio in the second district with all God's blessings.

As I think back over my life, I see now how tremendously important it is to never lose sight of why we do what we do. Why we are engaged in Making Music. This is not only a nine-to-five job. If it were we might as well stand as cashiers in a mall. It is an attitude, a vocation, a life-style. We search for the deepest part within us and dwell within its mysteries, taming our technique, bettering ourselves as people to make us finer as artists, generously sharing with others the benefits of our experience, giving our public love and joy with it all and leaving our hearers nobler with the experience. Art is calling forth emotions and making people believe in life again. As such, and if done right, this is the noblest of all professions.