BIOGRAPHY OF LAJOS SZAMOSI

Lajos Szamosi was born in rural Hungary in 1894. At a very young age, he realized that he wanted to sing and received his first instruction from the cantor in his village. After the end of the First World War, when Szamosi was in his early twenties, he and his parents moved to Budapest, where he was able to continue his studies with a well-known singing teacher.

Szamosi became aware that although he received high praise for his singing, a "throaty" quality somewhat marred its timbre. The flaw was minor, but it bothered him, and, since his teacher in Budapest was not able to help him with this, he eventually sought help elsewhere. Between 1923 and 1930, Szamosi traveled to Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Paris, but even the most highly respected teachers in those cities had nothing to suggest. Everyone he consulted told him that despite the slight defect in timbre, his singing was musical and beautiful, and they advised him to go out in the world and begin his career. Szamosi could not accept this; he began to search for a solution on his own.

Around this time, Szamosi heard about a new institute in Munich, the Institute for Voice and Speech Therapy, under the direction of Professor Max Nadoleczny. At this institute, doctors and researchers developed new ways of treating damage to the vocal organs, and many people, including singers, actors, teachers and priests, came there for help. Szamosi obtained permission to observe the sessions. It seemed to him that methods capable of healing actual damage due to unhealthy functioning should also be helpful in cases where the vocal functioning was simply not optimal. This became a basic element of his evolving approach. Eventually, on the basis of what he had learned at the institute, Szamosi began taking students and gradually, carefully, applying the new methods.

In those formative years of the 1920's, and throughout his life, Szamosi immersed himself in the highest standards of music making.

He heard as many concerts as possible by conductors Bruno Walter, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Erich Kleiber, Siegfried Ochs, Otto Klemperer and others. He absorbed the qualities and attitudes of the greatest singers of his time: Sigrid Onegin, Maria Ivogun, Friedrich Schorr, Tito Schipa, Amelita Galli-Curci, to name only a few. For a while he studied with Lilli Lehmann (Meine Gesangskunst), from whom he learned a great deal artistically. All these experiences profoundly influenced his musical and aesthetic sensibility, and helped define his standards and his ideals.

During this time, another fundamental insight came to Szamosi in an unexpected way. Every year, no matter how much he traveled, he returned to Budapest to sing for the Jewish High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Once, toward the end of the demanding Yom Kippur service, Szamosi began to experience extreme vocal fatigue. It seemed to him that if he sang one more note in his accustomed manner, he would lose his voice completely. Of necessity, without knowing exactly what he did, he gave up his accustomed manner and continued to sing, but in a completely unfamiliar way. The sensations he experienced were disorienting, but the sound he heard appalled him. What he heard was a voice that seemed reduced to a breathy wisp, mere empty air... He was mortified.

When the service was over, Szamosi was utterly confounded to see that everyone in the congregation, including the rabbi, was beaming at him. They all congratulated him. They said they had never heard him sing so beautifully, and that it was all the more amazing since his voice had found this new radiance at the end of the service. The gulf between what his audience described and what he had heard of his own singing was so enormous and incomprehensible to him that Szamosi was convinced they were all mocking him. It was not until his wife (who had an unerring ear and did not pay compliments lightly) also told him he had never in his life sung so well, that he began to realize he had stumbled upon a great discovery. He asked his wife to listen while he sang first the old way and then the new way, alternating back and forth. The new way sounded to his own ears like empty air, but invariably his wife said, "That's it. That is how you should sing."

Through this experience, Szamosi came to understand that it is physically impossible for a singer to hear his own voice the way the audience hears it. The consequences of this insight were far-reaching. He realized that he would have to reevaluate and completely change his relationship to the sounds and sensations that had previously guided him. He came to a new understanding of the physiology and acoustics of singing, and to another essential element in his work with students: he taught singers that no matter how beautiful the sound as heard from inside might be, to be guided by it or even to listen to it actively was both deceptive and inhibiting. Later, he learned that the Italian singing masters had said the same thing centuries before.

As Szamosi began to think more and more deeply about singing, he expanded his studies. He explored all the neighboring disciplines (anatomy, physiology, psychology, aesthetics) that might shed further light on the nature of singing and music. For a time, he delved into the new psychoanalytic approach of Freud, which greatly deepened his insight into the psychological dimension of the subject. He realized that the psychological and the physical could not in practice be separated, and that, in order for singing to be optimally free, masterful and expressive, obstacles on both planes had to be resolved.

Another important influence on Lajos Szamosi's thinking was the work of Paul Bruns, a singing teacher famous in Germany around the 1920's, who wrote several influential books. The central idea that Szamosi took from Bruns had to do with what Bruns called "minimal air". In his book, "Minimal Air and Support" (Minimalluft und Stütze), Bruns argued against the common practice of pumping the lungs full of air, and in favor of singing with the "reserve" air that remains in the lungs after a normal exhalation.

Lajos Szamosi returned to Budapest in 1930. His fascination and enthusiasm for solving the problems that singing presented had grown, and so, although he had succeeded in correcting the original impediment to his career as a singer, he suspended those plans and devoted himself to teaching.

In the years before the Second World War, Szamosi taught privately in Budapest, gradually developing his ideas and his methods. He was greatly assisted during this time by an accomplished pianist and singer, Theresa Vajda Blumova, who today is a highly respected teacher, still active in Prague at the age of 92. They organized house concerts, at which they brought many obscure treasures of early music to light, at a time when such researches were just beginning. Many musicians who later went on to distinguished careers came to Szamosi's home to hear or participate in these concerts. Some of them, including the pianist, George Sebök, considered Szamosi one of the most important influences of their musical lives. The house was also frequented by distinguished scientists, painters and writers, so that the Szamosi home was an extraordinarily rich environment both musically and culturally.

The Szamosi family survived the Second World War in Budapest. Afterwards, they spent several years in Bucharest and in Rome, where Szamosi enjoyed great success in the press. L'Osservatore Romano, among others, wrote very favorably about him. In 1950, the Szamosi family returned to Hungary. Several months later, the conductor of the Hungarian army's male chorus offered Szamosi the position of singing teacher to the chorus. The concert that they then gave was an extraordinary success. One reviewer wrote that nothing approaching such a quality of singing had ever before been heard in Hungary from a male chorus. He mentioned particularly the strength of the voices and their perfect blending. Later Szamosi took a position at the Conservatorium Bela Bartok in Budapest.

In 1956 and 1957, the family managed to escape from Communist Hungary. Szamosi went to Vienna, where for several years he was able to teach at the Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst. His son, Edvin, joined him there in 1959 and became his father's assistant. After Szamosi retired, he continued to teach privately for many years. During this time he founded the Collegium Canticorum, which held concerts in various halls in Vienna: the Schubertsaal of the Konzerthaus, the Instituto Italiano della Coltura, and others.

Lajos Szamosi died in 1977 at the age of 83. Two of his four children, Edvin and Hedda, have continued to develop the approach that he originated.