A Poem for Women’s Day

 

I choose not to wear frilly clothes, paint my nails or spend hours having my hair done

So, am I still a woman?

I like adventure, to walk for days into the wilderness

To kayak un-chartered seas, to swim unknown channels. 

So, am I a woman?

I can’t identify with the visual constraints that the media imposes on women

 I don’t want to waste my time with appearances.

 Instead I want to compose symphonies and operas.

So, am I a woman?

Actually, I don’t feel much like one especially since becoming older.

So, what am I?

I am just a human being who wants equality. 

Watch the performance 

https://vimeo.com/615142400

Soundscapes, Music, Video, Performance: SEAWOLF (Susannah Self)

A woman emerges from a pile of rubbish like Erda in Wagner’s Ring. Extended vocalisations interface with sea sounds and film. International composer/singer Susannah Self performs as SEAWOLF to combine physical theatre with punchy minimalist music. “I know that my body excites women, body excites men”. The Anatomy of a Woman, once the focus of male artists, is re-conceived to allow us to become authentically embodied. Inspired by artists Yayoi Kusama, Billie Eilish and Pina Bausch, HER BODY is the antidote to traditional operatic interpretations of what it feels like to be a woman.

 

 

So, you want to be an opera singer? 2 min read.

 

 An overview from the Voice Whisperer. 

 

It seems and is appealing, what’s not to like. Being paid to sing a solo role in a top opera house is a peak experience, a total high, addictive. But then there are the accumulated years of time spent alone in isolation, 25 in my case. The living in glamorous cities (Ghent), the elegant parks with naked sunbathing (Berlin), the soigneé fountains in shady boulevards (Lyon), the bike rides along vineyard-cuddled rivers (Luxembourg), the midnight skiing (Salzburg), the 3.00am frites with mayonnaise (Antwerp) and the haute cuisine (Strasbourg). Glamorous (the curtain calls) and lonely (night after night alone in a foreign apartment), stressful (over-demanding directors and conductors), modified by surprisingly personable co-cast colleagues (generous and empathetic).

Singing Madame Flora in Antwerp for Music Theatre Transparant 1997.

My breakthrough moment to singing in real opera houses.

If you are able to get your voice technique ready for purpose you will then need to venture out to auditions. Your voice will need to have a firm core, a centre which can soar over the orchestra. This is not a question of volume but of resonance which comes with a free function, resulting in a natural ring. 

 

Put a wine glass too close to your chest and it will no longer ping.

Tighten the surrounding muscles against your voice box and you have a clamped sound.

 

Unfortunately, a lot of conservatoire voice training places too much emphasises on fussy technique, too much over-control so that voices are perfectly formed but have no carrying power.

 

My primary teacher Josephine Veasey emphasised the necessity of

 

1. Core singing. 

2. Speaking on the pitches rather than singing.

 3. Great rhythmicality. 

 

"You’ll never get a job, Susie, unless the tone is right." 

 

Josie would say in her appealing East End accent. And she was right - somehow by dint of my insane level of determination I achieved the required sound. This was much to the surprise, even annoyance, of my professors from the Royal College of Music where I had sung as a treble choral scholar.

Singing Medea by Michael Christie in Extraordinary Women: Self 1991

 

Auditions became my friend in the end. This was as a result of my hard won totally secure vocal technique combined with a rebellious attitude of self-love and self-reliance. There is no room in this game for self-criticism.These self-determined qualities are paramount as one of the worst aspects of being an opera singer is that at whatever level you are singing at, you are liable to be pushed and pulled, bullied and abused by:

 

1. Sadistic casting agents and management.

 

2. Your own agent.

 

3. Directors who don’t know what they want.

 

4. Conductors suffering from sadistic projection.

 

The Crazed Conductor

 

He is a stray dog running from the street down the steps into our yard.

 He is in pain.

 His eyes are crazed, his belly inflamed. 

I have never seen such suffering.

Sharp twigs are sticking out at all angles from his stomach.

 

 

He is the conductor at the opera in Strasbourg,

 

He tyrannises me and all singers.

 

“You’re flat

 I don’t like the tone of your voice”

 

He bellows like a Alsatian dog.

 

But this is a dream and I gain the upper ground.

 

I stick up to him.

 He calms as

I remove the wounds, stick by stick from his dogged belly.

 

Analysis: Self,2019

 

https://vimeo.com/359964166?share=copy

 

Of course, there are some lovely ones too! So if singing is your passion then you must do it!

However it is best to be prepared for the reality. It is also important to develop your own artistic agenda and entrepreneurship so that you are not simply a hostage to fortune. 

 

So do you still want to be an opera singer?

 

My advice would be that if it is your passion, that if nothing else would satisfy you as much, then go for it.

Make sure you have the best personal support from the best singing teacher that you can find also from a musical career/voice coach like myself, The Voice Whisperer, to guide you into success.

 

The Voice Whisperer 

Offers meaningful career support for professional singers via

 

Residential consultations in Coastal Norfolk,

Day experiences in Ely,

Extended sessions near the Wigmore Hall in London

 

Email

selfmademusic@aol.com for more details

 

Dr Susannah Self has sung many solo roles for The Royal Opera House Covent Garden, The Vlaamse Opera, Opéra du Rhin, Lyon Opera, in the opera houses of Salzburg and Luxembourg as well as Katisha in The Mikado in London’s West End. For the Royal Opera House’s Garden Venture she created HEROIC WOMEN which went on to tour to the Far East, Syria, USA and Europe.

 

Susannah Self is a British singer who also sings Mistress Quickly in Salzburg, her Mrs. Grose was as good as any I have heard.

Hugh Canning, Opera Magazine, 2005

 

 

IDENTITY one minute read

 

I am an old composer.

I am an old woman.

My bones though feel fresh. 

I have travelled far and yet I am nowhere near my destination. 

My breasts are still pert, my breath fresh, my libido intact.

I am an old composer.

I am a poet.

 

 I am a cherry picker of dreams and I pick my nose at night.

I am gay in my heart but in reality, I am straight.

I identify as a successful male composer

And yes, I would have liked to have a penis 

But that was really because I wanted the power that men have, that men still have.

I am an old composer. 

Fuck I am a woman. 

 

Most featured art music composers are still young men. 

The teachers of composition departments are mostly middle-aged white men. 

Sure a few women get a show. 

But did you know that only 11% of new art music featured on the BBC is by women?

But there are more women composing than that, I can assure you.

 

I walk by the roaring symphony of the North Sea every day

I am whole without accolades. 

I have a male composer soul-mate who sustains my vision.

 

I am an old woman composer 

Who identifies as a young successful male composer 

Help me!

No forget that, I will help myself 

I am worth it. 

I am a god, if only you knew!

Sunken Cities 8' for string quartet composed by Dr Self

https://soundcloud.com/selfmademusic/sunken-cities-8?si=41163cb0d0434afaa15bffb8f0a6fd80&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

 

Holkham Bay, North Norfolk

We agree to meet at 6.00am in the secret club house.Two Minute Read

I meet a tall, slim, mature man with long, wavey, fair hair. He has the feeling of a magician or a form of Dr Who. I am deeply attracted to him and he drives me in a sturdily armoured 4 x 4 truck along the side of a beautiful, clear, pollution-free river. It is summer and there are large oak trees set slightly away from the grassy banks that caress the winding river. The bank that we drive along is rocky and rough at first but then smooths out to grass and makes an easy ride. 

The Scene: Self, 2024.

We arrive at a club house in the woods, were I discover that the elegant man I am attracted to is a composer. He is meeting a choir to talk about a commission. We are so excited by each other that we agree to meet in secret the next morning at 6.00 am in the club house to have sex. He gives me a four digit code to the club house which is 4121.   

This is the dream I had last night. It was I fancy about the male soul that lives within me. He is a composer, he is my muse. He is also my husband, my lovers, my friends who support me and my infinite  imagination. If a male artist has a female muse then it is fitting that a woman needs a male muse. I am not transgender however I identify as male composer because I am outspoken and compose muscular music as well as beautiful music. I like pithy music drama like Martha's Rant in my opera The Butt which I composed for Musiktheatertage in Vienna in 2016.

https://youtu.be/ZAGo-Jmiv9w 

Dr Self conducting in Vienna 2016

But the dream has some other pointers. The infinite stream of clear and gorgeous music ideas that I have, the beauty of nature, the fact that being an artist is a rocky road sometimes. But most intriguingly of all that to get into the clubhouse, where I can join with my soul composer, I need a code.This final point reminds me how difficult it is to find the way into the accepted profession of composers. I still feel like on the outside but I am working on it!  

Her Self in Mexico

On Resonance: Two Minute Read

When you strike a tuning fork, its resonance continues for a very long time. This is also what happens with experiences. So my musing this morning is about the beautiful loft flat in Ghent at Claudine Bovyn's Beguinage tucked into the centre. The resonances continue: the creaky wooden floors, the slightly pooey smell from the drains below, the vast Norwegian sledge bed and the view of the famous three church towers from the loft window. To know that Van Eyk's iconic altarpiece was only as minute away filled me with delight.

Detail from Van Eyk's Altarpiece, Ghent

But even more during these months spent living in Ghent was the feeling that as an artist that anything in my imagination was possible. It was a time of multiple contracts singing for the Vlaamse opera. But I also composed my second symphony Memories, Dreams, Reflections in that enchanted loft . Days of waiting to be called to rehearsal facilitated this so that I interfaced composing with gentle walks down the main canal where Maeterlink would have wandered.

Memories

https://youtu.be/0EerLaeHKP8

Dreams

https://youtu.be/taT26j1fhTA

Reflections

https://youtu.be/VLUqLMu_0Xo

Now some considerable time later the resonance of the Ghent experience strikes as I sit in another version of that loft, The ARC in coastal Norfolk. It is A Room of My Own as Virginia Wolf would describe it. I have all day to compose and drink in the stunning view of the water meadow interlaced with walks by the sea. 

The ARC, Artists Retreat Centre, February 2024

The Norfolk Coast

 

 

On Dealing With Rejection. Two Minute Read.

This may not sound like a very positive post but in reality rejection always offer the opportunity for something new and potentially better to happen. Its the silver lining to an awkward feeling inside oneself,

What did I do wrong ?

As a composer I am used to the endless rejections for applications. I have a graveyard, but actually I am quite proud of it because it is a place where each beautifully crafted gravestone holds the story of my ideas expressed so as to fit in with the criteria of an outside brief. I have tended this garden with great care, no attempt is a waste of time. However obviously it is quite hard to squeeze yourself into jeans that are too tight! But every now and then I get lucky such as a competition won: The Lockdown Diaries for Skipton Camerata,

The Frontline Worker, Self, 2021 on Youtube

https://youtu.be/I2M1TZkx2MA?si=K4kRhBbhgwu-vxou

or a recent shortlisting and interview for a composition teaching post at Durham University which although I didn't get I enjoyed the process. It is exciting to feel one is accepted however the cost to oneself from the squeezing can be detrimental. One eminent composition supervisor for my PhD revealed that his life had been made a living misery by International opera houses producing his children's opera on multi-occasions whilst ignoring the deeper angle that the opera expressed. He seemed near mental collapse and made me swear that for my PhD opera Quilt Song, I would follow my own nose in every respect. I oversaw every aspect of the production even down to the funding for which I raised 25 K independently. This choice avoided for example an Arts Council application which is very tough to fit into and anyway is not allowed when you are in full time education. 

Ten Minute introduction to Quilt Song with interviews, Self, 2018, 

https://youtu.be/Yu2LeU87oHw  

But rejection can come in other more painful forms such as from friends or situations. Sometimes I find it very tough to personally cope with especially if I know the rejection is because of lack of duty of care. For example last summer a difficult situation arose with a holiday organisation that I was working for so that I had to resign my post on account of a disagreement over water safety. My integrity and training would not allow me to let people in my care swim unsupported by back-up boat round a dangerous island in the Aegean sea. I sadly had to withdraw on a point of principle. It was the right call but tough to have to reject a situation I love so much because of unethical practice. However the outpouring of love and support from people that I know within the organisation led me to experience that rejecting a situation however painful can have very positive outcomes.I am now free for the summer!

Island Tree, Self, 2023

If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again! 

Robert Bruce, King of Scotland

The truth about rejection is that in life it can facilitate a very necessary prompt towards inner growth which can ultimately lead to more self empowerment. Last Autumn I invested in five coaching sessions with a top coach in my field. The outcome was that with her guidance, I realised the huge value of creating and manifesting my own projects over fitting into other organisations criteria. While it is lovely to be acknowledged by official bodies the down side is that they may, well frankly force you to twist your ideas to fit in with theirs. This can leave you in a depressive heap such as the composer who fashioned his well deserved 5 minute Proms commission to fit in with the symphonies in the programme and made a hash of it. Instead my wonderful coach helped lead me to the conclusion that I am on the right track and that official acceptance is the icing on the cake. Manifesting a performance of my Sea Requiem in Ely Cathedral last year resulted in a fabulous review in Musical Opinion something most composers only dream about! 

Sea Requiem was a substantial score, yet the material flowed naturally… the extended silence which followed this conclusion…. was a tribute to the audience’s rapt concentration and the cumulative effect of Susannah Self’s fervent, directly expressive music

Paul Conway, Musical Opinion 2023

SEA REQUIEM on you tube

https://youtu.be/3l0WV7o2aOQ 

Being Her-Self In Mexico

Two minute read on composing the Stabat Mater last summer

Stabat Mater was composed on the Greek island of Skyros during the summer of 2023.

Like a hermit, I composed daily in a bamboo hut with the help of an electric fan to keep me cool.

Out of the door I could see an idyllic sea bay beyond the pine trees.

The Stabat Mater text drew me into a deeper understanding of how the Virgin Mary must have felt at the foot of the cross.

I began to imagine not only her sorrow but also that of Mary Magdalene who was there too.

Therefore the soprano soloist represents the Virgin Mary and the alto soloist, Mary Magdalene.

I also chose to weave into the work some verses of the "Planctus Ante Nescia", another Medieval poem. This was to secure a more intimate view of the Virgin Mary's experience at the foot of the cross.

My overall compositional methodology was to develop the work organically, working from the centre and then outwards on both sides. This was to emulate the way in which an egg develops. In truth the work was composed in full score in a short period of ten days. The claustrophobia of the little hut combined with the exquisite beauty of the seascape drove me into an accelerated rate of output, so much so that on the last day I finished the work by staying up all night accompanied by the Skyros Skops owls. The next day I returned to our cottage beneath Ely Cathedral. The whole sequence of composing the Stabat Mater emulated within in me a dream-like state so that as I rehearse the work, I am scarcely aware that I have composed the music but rather sense that it has composed me! My heartfelt love and thanks goes to my composer husband, Michael Christie for his exquisite editing of the score and preparation of the parts. Also my deep gratitude to The North Sea Orchestra and Voices and the Ely Collegium for their commitment to singing a new work. This setting of the Stabat Mater is designed to go with the orchestration of the Vivaldi Gloria. I am indebted to my sponsors for being able to première the work in the Lady Chapel of Ely Cathedral on 13th April 2024.