Draft:Berton Coffin

Berton Coffin (April 11, 1910-January 28, 1987) was an American voice teacher, vocal pedagogue, author, researcher, and lecturer. Known as one of the leading internationally known acoustical researchers in the field of vocal pedagogy, he spent the majority of his career as Chairman of the Division of Voice in the College of Music at University of Colorado, Boulder. He contributed significantly to the literature of his field, authoring influential titles such as The Singer's Repertoire (1960), The Sounds of Singing: Vocal Techniques with Vowel-Pitch Charts (1976), and Coffin's Overtones of Bel Canto: Phonetic Basis of Artistic Singing with 100 Chromatic Vowel-Chart Exercises (1980).

Biography

Early Life and Education

Berton Coffin was born on April 11, 1910, in Fairmount, Indiana to Charles Levi Coffin and Hazel Painter Coffin. He was raised with an understanding of Quaker principles; his strict Quaker upbringing informed his eventual professional reputation as an intensely moral and ethical man, one who valued beauty, peacefulness, and a dedication to helping others.

While he began his collegiate studies in the field of physics, Coffin eventually earned a bachelor of arts degree in English from Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana in 1932, and subsequently a bachelor of music degree from Chicago Musical College in 1935. He married Mildred Wantland in 1936 in McAlester, Oklahoma (their one daughter, Dr. Martha Coffin Evans, resides in Boulder, Colorado, and is retired from her career as an Assistant Superintendent of Educational Services of West Covina Unified School District in West Covina, CA).

Coffin earned a master of music degree from Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in 1938. He subsequently attended Columbia University in New York City, earning a master of arts degree in 1946 and a doctorate in education in 1950, all while singing professionally. His doctoral dissertation was entitled "A Handbook of Materials for Choral Programs: Mixed Voices."

Coffin also studied for a time at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City and at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. His private study with several teachers of singing and vocal coaches included such notables as Graham Reed (assistant to Herbert Witherspoon), Paola Novikova, Mack Harrell, and Werner Singer.

Academic Career

Coffin's academic career began with his appointment as Professor of Voice and Head of Division of Music and Fine Arts at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas in 1936. During World War II, he additionally taught physics in the Army Specialized Training program at Tarleton, and later became a Weights Analyst and Mathematician at Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation in Fort Worth, working on the XB 36.

Following his position at Tarleton, Coffin spent several years singing professional baritone in New York City, including as a member of the acclaimed Robert Shaw Chorale. He left New York City in 1946 to accept a teaching position at University of Colorado Boulder, where he remained until 1977.

During his time at University of Colorado Boulder, Coffin became Chairman of the Division of Voice in the College of Music and implemented one of the first Doctor of Musical Arts programs in the country devoted to the study of both pedagogical research and vocal performance in the same degree. He established the 200-voice Festival Chorus, which was made up of both students and community members and remains a part of the CU's choral program to this day. One notable performance of the Festival Chorus under Coffin's leadership was a presentation of Luigi Cherubini's Requiem shortly after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Through his work at CU, Coffin became recognized as one of the nation's leading internationally known acoustical researchers in the field of vocal pedagogy. He collaborated with researchers around the world, in particular Pierre Delattre, a French phoneticist, with whom he researched vowel formants.

Coffin was a charter member of the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS). He also served on the NATS Board of Directors, was Chairman of the Editorial Board of the NATS Journal, coordinated many summer workshops for the organization, and served as the 13th president of NATS in 1968 and 1969. His NATS presidency was one characterized by renewal and revitalization, as he worked to reform the organization in a number of ways that prepared it for the next quarter of a century. He traveled frequently throughout the United States and Europe, presenting masterclasses in vocal pedagogy principles (dealing with his specialty of the acoustics of the voice and the pitch of vowels). He presented his ideas via lecture-demonstrations at several NATS conventions.

Coffin left his post at University of Colorado Boulder in 1977. That same year, the Berton Coffin Scholarship for graduate students in the College of music was established, and Coffin and his wife Mildred were the first dual recipients of the Robert L. Stearns Award for distinguished service to the university. One of Coffin's acclaimed former students, Dr. Barbara Doscher, took over his position when he left.

Post-Academic Career

In 1977, after Coffin left his post at University of Colorado Boulder, he and Mrs. Coffin moved to Europe, where he established a private vocal studio for professional singers in Vienna, Austria, as well as for those from German opera houses. He taught some of the most illustrious singers in Europe, including Jérôme Pruett, Kenneth Garrison, Fran Luban, Gail Steiner-Neubert, and Lars Waage. He was also a member of the voice faculty of the American Institute of Musical Studies in Austria for seven summers, from 1976 to 1982.

Coffin's later career included some residencies and visiting professorships, such as University of Cincinnati, Ohio, College of Music in 1981-1982 and Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas in 1982-1985. He put a halt to his travels in 1985, due to ill health, and returned to Boulder, Colorado, where he resided until his death in 1987. However, he continued to work as a private voice consultant and pedagogical writer in his final years at home.

Shortly following his passing, the faculty of the University of Colorado College of Music selected Coffin for their first "Distinguished Faculty Award" in 1987, awarding him posthumously.

Areas of Study and Publication

The books Coffin authored or coauthored provide a living memorial to his dedication to seeking truth in the vocal field, as he saw it, as well as linking the art of the old singing masters of the past 250 years.

Although he used technical/scientific methods to prove his theories, Coffin was not a vocal scientist. He wanted practical tools for teaching singing that were valid. He felt that no teacher has ever known too much about the teaching: "A knowledge supplementing an intuition is surely the most effective way of forming an art." (NATS Bulletin, December 1969)

Coffin became widely known for his chromatic vowel chart, which was originally published in his The Sounds of Singing: Vocal Techniques with Vowel-Pitch Charts (1976). He prepared a new, expanded vowel chart for Coffin's Overtones of Bel Canto: Phonetic Basis of Artistic Singing with 100 Chromatic Vowel-Chart Exercises (1980). Through these publications and his vowel chart, he stressed the phonetic basis of artistic singing as reflected in bel canto, which he stressed as basically a linguistic musical art: vowels have pitch, the melodic line has pitch, and there is sympathetic resonance. He provided many exercises in musical notation that, through the use of acoustic phonetics and register, would make the voice stronger and more musical according to the precepts of bel canto.

Major Publications

Coffin, Berton. The Singer's Repertoire (4 vols.) (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1960).

Coffin, Berton, and Werner Singer. Program Notes for the Singer's Repertoire (Metuchen NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1962).

Coffin, Berton, Ralph Errolle, Werner Singer, and Pierre Delattre. Phonetic Readings of Songs and Arias. 2nd ed. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1982).

Coffin, Berton, Werner Singer, and Pierre Delattre. Word-by-Word Translations of Songs and Arias: Part I – German and French (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1966).

Coffin, Berton. The Sounds of Singing: Vocal Techniques with Vowel-Pitch Charts (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing, 1976).

Coffin, Berton. Coffin's Overtones of Bel Canto: Phonetic Basis of Artistic Singing with 100 Chromatic Vowel-Chart Exercises (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1980).

Coffin, Berton. Coffin's Sounds of Singing: Principles and Applications of Vocal Techniques with Chromatic Vowel Chart. 2nd ed. (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1987).

Coffin, Berton. Historical Vocal Pedagogy Classics (pub. posthumously) (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1988).

Awards

1977: University of Colorado Boulder – Robert L. Stearns Award for Distinguished Services (jointly with his wife Mildred)

1987: University of Colorado Boulder – Distinguished Faculty Award (first recipient, posthumously)