The Centre was founded by Alfred Wolfsohn in Berlin during 1935 and re-situated in London during 1943, where he and his contemporaries and successors developed principles and practices that provided the foundations for the use of an extended vocal technique.
[8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] The Alfred Wolfsohn Voice Research Centre can be divided into six phases, each one characterized by a distinct locus of attention, but all of them emergent from a shared commitment to a common ground.
In 1914, Alfred Wolfsohn was conscripted to military service, and after discharge became disturbed by auditory hallucinations of vocal sounds that he had heard wounded and dying soldiers make.
[25][26][27] During this phase Wolfsohn made notes about his experiences during the war, his views about the capacity of the human voice to extend beyond the range commonly heard in speech and song, and the impact of his lessons upon those he taught.
[28][29] During the early part of this phase Wolfsohn believed that Sigmund Freud's notion of catharsis was the most appropriate framework within which to situate and by which to explain the therapeutic effects of his teaching.
[30][31] Consequently, Wolfsohn began to focus less on facilitating in his students an emotional release or catharsis through the voice, and more on helping them give vocal expression to mental imagery, including the characters and animals that they reported encountering in their dreams.
Under Wolfsohn's tuition, Jenny Johnson developed a vocal range of almost 6 octaves,[37] as well as a flexibility of timbre that allowed her to give dramatic expression to many different characters, and to sing parts from operas written for soprano, tenor, baritone, and bass.
Jung described Active Imagination as the means by which mental images are expressed and become outwardly manifest, and pointed to paintings, fairytales, myths, and religious symbolism as examples.
[47] The Centre's attempts to communicate directly with Jung failed, and the approach to vocal expression demonstrated by its attendants attracted more attention from those interested in its potential use in experimental music and theatre than in psychotherapy.
Phase 3 of the Alfred Wolfsohn Voice Research Centre was characterized by a concentration on exploring the artistic use of the founder's extended vocal technique, by rehearsing and presenting short demonstrations, including songs, poems, and improvised performance pieces to invited guests, including Yehudi Menuhin, Laurence Olivier, Peter Ustinov, Bertold Wiesner, Edward Downes, Hermann Scherche, Julian Huxley, and Aldous Huxley.
[56][57][58][59] During the latter part of this phase, Roy Hart, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art who had started attending the Centre in 1947, began to give acting classes for actors and drama students at venues across London, appropriating and extending techniques that he had learned from Wolfsohn.
Newham subsequently extended the techniques pioneered at the Centre to formulate a therapeutic methodology drawing upon guided meditation and ideokinesis incorporating prayer as well as song, while contextualizing these developments in the tenets descendant from the Analytical Psychology established by Jung.
[69] Having been renamed the London Voice Centre by Paul Newham, it closed in 1999 when he left and some graduates of its programs established a US-based school with the aim of continuing his teachings.
[70] The influence of the Alfred Wolfsohn Voice Research Centre remains evident across discreet disciplines as a result of the diverse ways in which its attendants have inherited and adapted the work initiated by its German founder in 1935.