Talk:Kurt Moll

His range

Kurt Moll was an infra-bass, not a basso profundo--his range was LOWER than typical basso-profundo, and (paradoxically) his tone was bright, not dark or hollow-sounding like a typical basso-profundo. Boris Christoff, Gottlob Frick, Fyodor Chalyapin, Martti Talvela, Paata Burchuladze--these are what basso-profundo sounds like. Not Kurt Moll.

An anonymous editor: 90.137.147.205, who may or may not be the same as 90.137.184.251, seems to disagree with me. I hereby invite him/her/them to explain why, and to seek consensus.

HandsomeMrToad (talk) 01:38, 15 March 2017 (UTC)

Greetings, HandsomeMrToad.

I apologize for not explaining my revisions earlier. I've never edited Wikipedia before, so I didn't know about the "Talk" feature. Motivated by mr. Moll's recent passing, I wanted to improve his Wikipedia page by correcting what, to me, seemed like incorrect and/or potentially confusing information.

Firstly, regarding the fach question - Kurt Moll's voice falls neatly into the basso profondo classification. He was the basso profondo par excellence of his generation. "Infra-bass", on the other hand, is not a recognized voice classification in classical vocalism. Neither Boris Christoff nor Fyodor Chalyapin were bassi profondi, and this is well-known. Also, your idea of what a basso profondo voice sounds like is incorrect - a singer need not sound hollow or overdarkened to be considered a basso profondo (none of the singers you listed sounded or sounds hollow, but we might argue that Burchuladze tends to overdarken his vowels). In this respect, a singer's color will be as much the result of the technique he is using, as it will be the result of the nature of his individual instrument. Kurt Moll sang with a technique that employed bright, open vowels, never excessively covering, not even above the secondo passaggio. That's what makes his voice sound "bright", to your ears.

Secondly, as I've already written, "octavist" is not a voice type, it's a choral part, most often associated with Orthodox liturgical music. Kurt Moll never sang as an octavist. His career was that of an operatic soloist, not a chorister (naturally, he did sing in opera choruses when he was young, but opera choruses don't normally employ octavist sections). Besides the fact that labeling a famous operatic soloist as an "octavist" is incorrect and unnecessarily confusing, some people might find it to be a bit of a faux pas, as being an operatic soloist is often considered to be a more prestigious position, compared to being a chorister.

I also believe the sentence about mr. Moll not singing Wotan, Hans Sachs or Hagen because he was not a "thunderer" is both incorrect and misleading. He didn't sing Wotan or Hans Sachs because those are bass-baritone roles. It's a quite different tessitura from the Wagner roles which were appropriate for his voice, like Gurnemanz, Daland or Marke, for example. As for Hagen, in the interview with Bruce Duffie, he explains he avoided it because he didn't feel it was appropriate for his vocal color (color is not to be confused with volume) and artistic temperament. Saying he was not a "thunderer" and, therefore, didn't sing those roles is a bit like saying mr. Moll had a small voice, which couldn't be farther from the truth, as anyone who has heard him live can attest to. You don't make a big career singing Wagner in large houses, if you have a small voice.

Filipseverbass (talk) 14:37, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

Howdy, Filipseverbass, no problem, apology accepted unconditionally and without reservation or offense!

Well, you may have a point about the term "infra-bass". But as I recall, in the Duffle interview Kurt Moll also acknowledged that Hagen is a "voice killer", said that it is "rough on the voice", and said: "You need a kind of a raw voice, one that’s like a knife. You need to almost yell more than sing. You must cry out rather than sing in a bel canto style," (which is a little odd, considering that the greatest Hagen of Kurt Moll's generation, Matti Salminen, describes himself as a "basso cantabile") and acknowledged that only "certain special voices ... can stand the punishment of this role." It's not too much of a stretch to describe those special voices as "thunderers".

And while you're right about Sachs and Wotan being bass-baritones rather than basses, in fact many true basses sang them, including Josef Greindl (Sachs and Wandrer), Hans Sotin (Wotan), Otto Edelmann (Sachs and Wotan), Karl Ridderbusch (Sachs). And Kurt Moll did occasionally sing bass-baritone and even baritone roles, albeit small ones: the Night-watchman in Meistersinger and Monterone in Rigoletto. (Aside: did you know that the great basso profundo Ludwig Weber once sang Fritz Kothner the baker, at Bayreuth?)

So I'll concede infra-bass, although I think it describes his voice better, but maybe keep "not a thunderer". Although maybe it's not necessary if we include the description of his timbre as "purring" and "contrabassoon-like".

RE: "anyone who has heard him live". I did, twice, only once singing though, at the Met, doing Ochs. I had kind of a special experience; I was a penniless student with a top-tier back row ticket, and during the intermission after Act 1 I met a couple who had come because Pavarotti was listed in the cast, as the Italian Tenor. They were operatically-illiterate, had come to hear the famous tenor whom even they had heard of, and had stayed late at dinner and missed the first act. They were very sad when I told them that they had missed Pavorotti's two minutes and that the great man was probably on his way home to bed. I tried to explain that there were much better vocalists in the cast, including Kurt Moll and Kiri te Kanawa, but they weren't interested, left, and gave me their first-tier-front-row-dead-center ticket stubs! Yay. The other time I heard Kurt Moll was a master-class he gave at Carnegie Hall after he retired from singing. He was very nice to the students, nicer (I thought) than they deserved.

His weakness, which of course I can't include in the article because it's just my unsourced opinion, was that he was completely unable to make himself sound nasty, crude, or savage. He always sounded like a genius with a warm, sympathetic personality. This was a real handicap when he sang Hunding, Fafner, and even Osmin, which was one of his signature roles. His Commendatore was sympathetic rather than menacing. The only time I've ever felt really frightened by him was listening to his recording as Monterone.

By the way, TALK pages are supposed to be discussions of how to improve the article, not general discussion forums of the subject. So I'm being a very naughty Toad by writing the two above paragraphs, and this one too, so I hope you read them soon as they will probably get deleted by an angry master of the Wikiverse. BAD Toad! NAUGHTY Toad! GO TO YOUR ROOM! HandsomeMrToad (talk) 16:10, 16 March 2017 (UTC)

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