Charles Le Brun
"Weeping
then he who weeps has his eyebrows depressed towards the middle of the face, the eyes almost shut, very wet and sloping down at the outer corners, the nostrils swollen, and all the muscles and veins of the forehead very prominent; the mouth will be half open, with the corners lowered and making folds in the cheeks; the under lip will appear turned out and pressing on the upper; the whole face will be wrinkled and puckered, and the colour very red, especially around the eyebrows, eyes, nose, and cheeks."1
A SHORT REFLECTION ON EMBODYING GRIEF/FEAR
As the first time I practiced embodying Grief, I found it easy to channel a bodily sensation of the passion. Only this time, the musical phrase was much longer and therefore, I was in need of some kind of development. Firstly, the phrase required a more energetic airflow in the singing than the natural Grief provided. I solved this by adding a more active passion where I needed to, being Fear. From this rather dramatic starting point, influenced by Le Brun and Charleton's descriptions of Weeping, I allowed the passage to develop into a more calm, earnest and deep Grief, as it was my intention to end the song this way. The melodic and lyrical repetitions in the music somehow strengthened the deep and unavailable misery I channeled, leading to a decrease in my will to make dramatic gestures. The dramatic gestures might have been what Hill is warning against when instructing actors in expressing Grief: without a clear image and perception of the emotion, the voice will not be able to utter the true expression.
Footnotes:
1: LeBrun 1698, translated in:Montagu 1994, p. 138