ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the impact of traditional voice evaluation (TVE) on vocal formation and vocal education. It considers how conservatoires and academies of music deal with vocal evaluation and how people within the profession of singing are affected by their training and subsequent categorization. The chapter focuses on the research methodology of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis from social psychology. It identifies the components that make up the singer and the singing voice and explores how individuals feel about the TVE labels. The chapter suggests that the analysis is based on the data from a series of 40 interviews, with 20 students at conservatoire level and 20 professional singers, working and studying in Portugal, England and Austria, where answers to the questions outlined were sought. The singing student works deliberately at cultivating self-awareness: awareness of the body, of its structure, of its gesture and movement, and of the qualities of the voice.
