Werbeck singing
This approach to singing is based on the belief that every human being has their own unique singing voice. Through uncovering, or unveiling, our voices, we can learn to connect more fully to that which wants to speak through our voices: to those deeper, inner ideals and impulses we are looking for in our lives.
Werbeck singing is for everyone. Whether you are a formally trained professional singer or someone who has never had the courage to sing, Werbeck singing is for you.
The School of Uncovering the Voice is a wide range of therapeutic singing exercises that bring balance to our physical, social, and emotional selves in order to connect more fully to our inner ideals and impulses.
WHo was Werbeck?
Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström (1879 – 1972) was a renowned Swedish opera singer at the turn of the 20th century. She was a gifted singer from birth. Her voice knew no bounds and she had no difficulties with her breathing technique. She could sing a high A with ease and fast coloratura melodies that were technically challenging. She was employed by the Royal Opera of Sweden and toured extensively throughout Europe, performing on many of its great operatic stages.
However, although her studies with experienced teachers had guided her to a successful operatic career, these methods of instruction also endangered her natural voice. In the spring of 1905, she suffered paralysis of the vocal cords and was neither able to speak nor sing.
This crisis was to be a turning point. She withdrew from the stage, and began to study and reconnect with the voice she remembered from her childhood. She searched to find a relationship to singing that would never again damage her vocal cords.
In the process, she acquired a true and profound understanding of the human voice that could serve others as well. Based on her own experience, and working out of deep study of the human being as both a physical and spiritual being, she realized that the voice does not need any training; it is already present in every human being and rather needs to be uncovered with care. This was the cornerstone of her teaching, to which she dedicated the rest of her life.
Between 1912 and 1924 in collaboration with Rudolf Steiner, Valborg Werbeck-Svärdström developed a new singing schooling she called “die Schule der Stimmenthüllung” (the School of Uncovering the Voice), drawing on the insights of spiritual science. The School of Uncovering the Voice provides a new, spiritually enlivened interpretation of the processes involved in singing. It develops knowledge of the essential nature of song and summons us to work for the purity and preservation of true singing.
Toward the end of her life, Werbeck was very careful regarding who would take up the work of the school after her. One of her students was Jürgen Schriefer, who continued her work and was Christiaan Boele's teacher. The School is now an international movement, with programs offered throughout the world, many by Christiaan Boele himself.