A blog by a voice teacher was recently posted (and since retracted) on why students shouldn’t study classical singing. Needless to say the article received a tremendous amount of vitriol from many classical singers and teachers, and caused the author to finally remove his post.

It got me thinking: What IS classical singing?

Is it a technique or is it a style of singing?

I don’t presume to be able to answer those questions definitively, but I’d like to explore both ideas.

The first thing to do in any argument is to define TERMS, so we can have a productive argument.  We have to agree on what it is we are talking about when we argue so that we don’t become derailed by personal biases, cognitive distortions, and logical fallacies.

Firstly, classical ‘technique.’

What does classical technique mean?

There has never been a consensus from teachers on what actually constitutes a…