Florence Foster Jenkins: "The Glory (????) Of The Human Voice" by Bernhard Unterholzner

At the beginning of Florence Foster Jenkins' album the queen of the night conjures the vengeance of hell. And indeed, entering the sonic inferno of "The Glory (????) Of The Human Voice", the distinguished listener has to abandon all hope. The twelve songs, originally independent recordings from the 1930s, which were reissued on CD, form a potpourri of well-known canonical classical works as well as new compositions by Cosmé McMoon, Jenkins' pianist. For example the recordings contain Lyadov's "Muzikalnaya tabakerka" (A musical Snuffbox), also known as "Opus 32 for piano", Johann Strauss' "Mein Herr Marquis" (My Lord Marquis) from the operet "Die Fledermaus" or Mozart's "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" (Vengeance of Hell stirs within my Heart), the most well-known aria from the Magic Flute. So Jenkins reinterprets classical mainstream. However, through her very special ways of interpretation and performance she foils this impression and creates something very different.

Florence Foster Jenkins was more than once titled a diva1, which was mainly due to her stage presence and to the overall integration of her personality into her work. One treat that is normally attributed to persons called 'diva' is a certain waywardness. This applies not only to Jenkins' fancy stage performances but to her way of singing as well. Her capricious performance took not only her audience by surprise, but from time to time also her pianist: On various occasions McMoon audibly struggles to counterbalance the singer's arbitrary changes in speed and rhythm. Moreover Jenkins has serious problems to strike the right tone, especially in the higher regions of the scale. This feature is constructed as no less than a special quality of Jenkins' singing instead of being seen as a deficiency. Contributing to that view are anecdotes of the singer's steadfast optimism in judging her own abilities. For instance the episode of a taxi crash, after which Jenkins thanked the driver with a box of expensive cigars for being now able to sing "a higher F than ever before."2

1 Albeit sometimes in less flattering contexts: See Daniel Dixon: Florence Foster Jenkins - The Diva of Din, quoted from http://www.maxbass.com/Florence-Foster-Jenkins.htm, 10/27/2008. 2 See Francis Robinson: Liner notes from the CD The Glory (????) of the Human Voice, quoted from Later this quality of her singing develops into an unique selling point, as the title of another reissued recording, "Murder on the High C's" indicates. On the cover of the collection of old recordings reviewed in this article already the flashy typographic element "(????)" in the title questions the glory of Jenkins' voice quite bluntly. In short, defining Florence Foster Jenkins as a soprano with "complete lack of rhythm, pitch, tone, and overall singing ability"3 is common sense.

However, this view is too short-sighted to explain the phenomenons of her contemporary success and her long-lasting appeal to a certain group of listeners. As a consequence of the judgement of Jenkins’ singing qualities, reasons must be found elsewhere. As Adorno noted, the "female voice easily sounds shrill"4 when it is reproduced from a record. He attributes this to the disembodiment of the voice by the grammophone, stating that for being complete a woman's voice "requires the physical appearance of the body that carries it"5. Another problem Adorno saw with the grammophone was the deconstruction of absolute pitch.6 However, these problems hardly applied to Florence Foster Jenkins. She sounded shrill anyway and was mostly out of pitch. So on the one hand we could put forward the argument that Florence Foster Jenkins sounds on a record comparably less off-key, as every female singer tended to sound shrill. On the other hand she carried this distortion to an extreme that renders obvious that her recordings weren't slightly out of pitch within the range of normal technical problems. Listening to her singing the audience could draw two conclusions: Either the grammophone is broken or it must be the record itself. By this the recordings of Florence Foster Jenkins make the medium visible and draw attention to the apparatus.

By the time Jenkins recorded her first piece in the 1930s, records were popular with a broad audience and the singer was already well-known for her stage appearances, which she started in 1912: "As her reputation mounted, it was inevitable that Madame Jenkins should be asked to record. This she did, incomparably. (...) 'Rehearsals, the niceties of pitch and volume, considerations of acoustics, all' wrote an official of the recording company, 'were thrust aside by her with ease and authority. She simply sang and the disc recorded'."7

http://www.maxbass.com/Florence-Foster-Jenkins.htm, 10/27/2008. 3 See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins, 10/27/2008. 4 Theodor W. Adorno: The Curves of the Needle. In: Theodor W. Adorno: Essays on Music, pp. 271-276, p. 274. 5 Ibid., p. 274. 6 See ibid., p. 275. 7 See Daniel Dixon: Florence Foster Jenkins - The Diva of Din, quoted from http://www.maxbass.com/Florence- Foster-Jenkins.htm, 10/27/2008. Once again treats, which were normally seen as shortcomings, were hailed when it came to Florence Foster Jenkins. The crucial point here is that she "simply sang". While the majority of recordings showed a tendency towards more perfection and – as Adorno called it - plasticity8, Jenkins breaks this artificial component away and provides the audience with a direct access to her through a medium which in other instances creates distance. Of course this feeling of a direct approach to some kind of realness wasn't raised by the recordings alone, numerous anecdotes about Jenkins and the fame of her stage shows contributed to it as well. Not that there weren’t any rumours about her career being completely staged. However, the singer always managed to display herself as credible, as being convinced of what she’s doing and by this she produced authenticity. Many contemporary accounts speak of the singer's devotion as well as her conviction that she was indeed a great singer. As her pianist put it: "Nothing could stop her. She thought that she was a great artist."9 And it was exactly this conviction that – paired with her persistency – gave Foster Jenkins her special aura. Whatever critics said, the singer went on with her show: "Some may say that I couldn't sing, but no one can say that I didn't sing."10 All in all the excentric authenticity of her person appealed to the public rather than her singing. Florence Foster Jenkins loved her work. And while she was serious about it, her audience wasn't. However, people did not attend her shows to watch her making a fool of herself. The way the audience received Jenkins' shows can be better described using Susan Sontag's concept of "camp"11. While the singer tries (or at least evokes credibly the impression) to create serious art, she exhilarates her audience by failing glamorously. In Jenkins' case the way of failing makes the difference: "When something is just bad (rather than Camp), it's often because it is too mediocre in its ambition. The artist hasn't attempted to do anything really outlandish."12 Thus Florence Foster Jenkins' attempts to create something very special eventually indeed created something very special. Even though the outcome was achieved in a different way than originally planned, she was a great entertainer due to her passion. As a journalist wrote, "her happiness was communicated as if by magic to her listeners . . . who were stimulated to the point of audible cheering, even joyous laughter and ecstasy by the inimitable singing."13

8 Theodor W. Adorno: The Curves of the Needle. In: Theodor W. Adorno: Essays on Music, pp. 271-276, p. 271. 9 See Daniel Dixon: Florence Foster Jenkins - The Diva of Din, quoted from http://www.maxbass.com/Florence- Foster-Jenkins.htm, 10/27/2008. 10 See ibid. 11 See Susan Sontag: Notes on "Camp", quoted from http://interglacial.com/~sburke/pub/prose/Susan_Sontag_- _Notes_on_Camp.html, 10/28/2008. 12 Ibid. 13 See Daniel Dixon: Florence Foster Jenkins - The Diva of Din, quoted from http://www.maxbass.com/Florence-Foster-Jenkins.htm, 10/27/2008.