Werbeck Singing at Lila Music Centre: allowing the voice to sing
…the human voice needs no training, it is already there, finished and perfect as an entity. What the voice is waiting for is liberation. We should speak of freeing the voice, or better yet uncovering the voice, and not voice-training.
~ Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström, creator of the Werbeck Singing Method
Massimo Pintus offers Werbeck singing instruction to beginners and advanced singers at Lila Music Centre. Massimo trained in Sweden for four years (2001 - 2005), attending the Forum For Musical Development (Forum För Musikalisk Utvecling) School in Järna. He explains his inspiration to do this work:
“To me, Werbeck singing is a path toward wholeness, employing one of the most beautiful gifts given to us: our own voice. So much of our beings moves through our voices. Dwelling for a few moments with our voice in its most basic elements - Sound, Breath, and Forms - is a meaningful thing for us to empower ourselves to do. We start a very intimate relationship with our whole body. We start tuning our body as an instrument so that every cell is part of the singing. We are capable of allowing our own inspiration to resound right through our whole being.”
Werbeck Singing Method: a brief history
Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström was born in Sweden in 1879, and she was born a singer, who found ease in every aspect of singing. She once said, “Singing was simply my element. I simply could not grasp how people could become ‘hoarse’ or ‘tired’ from singing – for me it was just the most direct expression of my whole, untroubled child’s being.”
When Valborg entered the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm as a 15-year old pupil, she met her first obstacles when singing customary vocal exercises. Throughout her studies, her voice was gradually compromised and she developed illness and paralysis in her vocal cords and neck. She persevered as a member of the Court Opera in Stockholm, but by 25, her voice was disappearing and she responded by developing her own approach to singing. She gradually regained her voice, created her own singing method, and carried on in a successful opera career, which culminated in a new school of singing, a “School for Uncovering the Voice.”
In the Werbeck approach, singing is not regarded as a “product” of certain organs or parts of the body, but as an expression of the entire human being. One’s voice may be obstructed by physiological and other hindrances, and this method strives to eliminate them. The goal is simply to allow the voice, present in every human being, to be revealed.
