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Combined page (2026-10-21). Original essay first; 2 rant variants appended below under “Variant:” headings — Voice Teaching: A History of Hypocrisy; The Great Classical Singing Swindle. Edit down before setting Ready to Publish.

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The Perennial Sport of Trashing “New” Music

Bel canto as a case study, not the main event

For centuries, respected musicians and teachers have complained that singing is going downhill. Different century, same eyeroll. The script rarely changes: the present is corrupt, the past was golden, and only the current author can rescue a “lost art.” Bel canto isn’t the cause of this behavior; it’s just the favorite cudgel. The bigger pattern is a reflex to sneer at new musical ideas while burnishing one’s authority.

I don’t teach classical singing. I was trained classically, I performed and taught it, and then I moved into other genres with a focus on musical theater. Early on, I preached the familiar line that “classical technique is the foundation of all good singing.” I don’t anymore. I think choir directors and voice teachers who push that as a universal truth are committing educational malpractice. Most of them aren’t villains; they’re pawns in a very old war over artistic dominance, pedagogical control, and cultural relevance. Caring about singers’ health is good. Equating “health” with one style is not. And yes, money and power sit in the background quietly counting ticket sales and lesson fees.

What follows isn’t an attack on classical singing. It’s a reminder that elite gatekeeping and moral panic about “modern” technique have been around forever. Bel canto just happens to be the poster child.

1) The oldest refrain: “Modern music is ruining the voice”

Across eras, the same complaint keeps surfacing: new styles (or new teaching) are destroying vocal art. A few hits from the timeline:

• 1723: Pier Francesco Tosi is furious at greedy teachers and sloppy style, saying modern masters will accept any paying student, even if it “ruins the Profession.” He notes composers now write out ornaments because singers don’t know where to place them, casting himself as defender of the “ancients.” (Tosi, Observations on the Florid Song.)
• Mid‑19th century: Gioachino Rossini blames a “decline of vocal art” on the disappearance of the castrati, arguing that once they were gone, tenors mis‑trained female voices and wrecked technique. The moral: the past was better, and modern practices broke the chain. (Emil Behnke, The Mechanism of the Human Voice.)
• 1880s: Francesco Lamperti opens The Art of Singing by declaring a “terrible state of decadence.” He blames the new operatic style and vows to “avert the ruin of voices” by preserving fundamentals. The “save the art” pose is already a well‑worn costume. (Lamperti, The Art of Singing.)
• Early 20th century: E. F. Herbert‑Caesari rails against modern “fads” and “false methods” that, he says, are ruining voices everywhere. Again: the world is falling apart, but the author, luckily, can fix it. (The Voice of the Mind.)
• Late 20th century onward: Belting panic. By the 1980s and 1990s, the villain is Broadway belting. Many classical pedagogues declare it ugly and dangerous, summarizing it as “aesthetically offensive and deleterious.” The rhetoric mirrors Tosi, Rossini, Lamperti: the new thing is a threat; we must protect the art. (See Norman Spivey’s 2008 overview in Journal of Singing.)

And outside the conservatory? The same vibe. I once chatted with three seniors swapping stories; someone mentioned her father’s big‑band days, and another immediately lamented the loss of “good music.” That could have been 1723, 1883, or 1983. “Modern music” has been ending civilization since music started.

2) Bel canto: the cudgel of choice

What is bel canto? According to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, “Few musical terms are so loosely used or open to as many interpretations as ‘bel canto.’” Translation: it’s slippery. James Stark puts it neatly: “Bel canto is a term in search of a meaning,” covering several “golden ages,” multiple techniques, and a range of stylistic idioms. The literal translation is “beautiful singing.” The practical translation is “a label people wave around to win arguments.” (Jander, Grove; Stark, Bel Canto: A History of Vocal Pedagogy.)

The term is spectacularly overused. Teachers and choir directors drop “bel canto” to signal authority. Anyone who spends more than twenty minutes reading about it sees the cracks. Still, authors keep writing as if there were one coherent, eternal bel canto method. Cornelius Reid, in Bel Canto: Principles and Practices, opens with a flourish about the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries having clear rules “in agreement with Nature’s laws,” assuring steady progress for “every student” at a rate “commensurate with his talent.” That last pronoun isn’t a neutral stylistic relic. In the world he idealizes, men were the students being trained, and the singers at the center of the tradition were often not men as we understand the term.

Reid’s system is tidy and persuasive on its own terms. It has also been assigned to generations of students, which helps explain why so many people talk as if “bel canto” named a single, fixed thing. Conviction, however strong, doesn’t rewrite history. And history says bel canto isn’t one thing. What everyone can agree on: it’s not pop.