"Preposterous ass! that never read so farTo know the cause why music was ordain'd!Was it not to refresh the mind of manAfter his studies, or his usual pain?"
"Preposterous ass! that never read so farTo know the cause why music was ordain'd!Was it not to refresh the mind of manAfter his studies, or his usual pain?"
There can be no doubt whatever that music has the most remarkable effect, not only on our minds, but on our bodies. Physiologists tell us that different kinds of mental activity are carried on in different parts of the brain, and that, in order to recover from fatigue, we need not rest altogether, but merely take up some other kind of work. Hundreds of times I have found that, however much I may be fatigued by a day's brain work, I can play all the evening, or attend a concert or opera, without in the least adding to my fatigue. On the contrary, in most cases it disappears altogether, the music acting on the mind as a surf bath does on the body. Like many others, I have found that the best way to cure a headache is to attend an orchestral concert. It works like a charm. It stirs up the circulation in the brain as a brisk walk does in the body. Even brain disease is eased in this way. The power of music even to cure insanity altogether, was frequently maintained in ancient and mediæval times. This claim is doubtless exaggerated, yet there is more than a grain of truth in it. There can be no doubt that violent maniacs can be calmed, and melancholy ones cheered and soothed, by music. To get an authoritative opinion on this subject, I wrote to Dr. Hammond. He answered: "I know of no cases of insanity that have been cured by music, but I have seen many cases in which music hasquieted insane persons, exerting the same calming influence that it does on most of us when we are irritated by petty annoyances."
"When we are irritated by petty annoyances." It is then that music becomes a medicine and a moral tonic. Writers on ethics have, hitherto, too much overlooked the moral importance of health. Where there is a lack of health, we rarely find any moral sweetness of temper. The vices may be small and peevish, but in their aggregate they are enough to poison the happiness of the household. If a man comes to ruin from drink and the crimes it leads him to commit, we call him immoral. But is he not also immoral if, from excess of work and worry, and wilful neglect of exercise, rest, and recreation, he breaks down and beggars his family, becoming a burden to them instead of a help? I think he is, and that, instead of pitying such a man, we should censure him. Ignorance of the laws of hygiene, physical and mental, is no valid excuse. He can buy a book on the subject for one dollar. But he does not even need to do that. Music, we read in Shakespere, has the power of "killing care and grief of heart," and what he needs, therefore, is to hear some good music every evening, at home or at the opera. This will draw the blood from the over-worked part of his brain to another part, and by thus relieving it of the tormenting persistency ofworrying thoughts and business cares, enable him to enjoy refreshing, dreamless sleep afterward. In this way music may help to restore his health, cure his dyspepsia, and sweeten his moral temper.
In America, more than anywhere else, is music needed as a tonic, to cure the infectious and ridiculous business fever which is responsible for so many cases of premature collapse. Nowhere else is so much time wasted in making money, which is then spent in a way that contributes to no one's happiness—least of all the owner's. We Americans are in the habit of calling ourselves the most practical nation in the world, but the fact is it would be difficult to find a nation less practical. For, what is the object of life? Is it to toil like a galley slave and never have any amusements? Every nation in Europe, except the English, knows better how to enjoy the pleasures of life than we do. Our so-called "practical" men look upon recreation as something useless, whereas in reality it is the most useful thing in the world. Recreation is re-creation—regaining the energies lost by hard work. Those who properly alternate recreation with work, economize their brain power, and are therefore infinitely more practical than those who scorn or neglect recreation.
The utility and the moral value of refined pleasures is not sufficiently understood. It should beproclaimed from the housetops every day. Bread and butter to eat, and a bed to sleep in, are not the only useful things in the world, but, in the words of Shelley, "Whatever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful." Music is useful because it does this, and it is useful in many other ways. Singing strengthens the lungs, playing the muscles, and both stimulate the mind. Milton, Schiller, George Sand, Alfieri, and other geniuses have testified that music aroused their creative faculties; and in Beaconsfield's "Contarini" occurs this passage: "I have a passion for instrumental music. A grand orchestra fills my mind with ideas. I forget everything in the stream of invention." Furthermore, music is a stepping-stone to social success. A gifted amateur is welcomed at once into circles to which others may vainly seek admission for years; and a young lady with a musical voice has a great advantage in the period of courtship. But most important of all is the moral value of music as anennuikiller.Ennuileads to more petty crimes than anything else; and a devotee of music need never suffer a moment'sennui. There are enough charming songs and pieces to fill up every spare moment in our lives with ecstatic bliss, and to banish all temptation to vice. It is in reference to similar pleasures that Sir John Lubbock, in his essayon the "Duty of Happiness," exclaims: "It is wonderful, indeed, how much innocent happiness we thoughtlessly throw away." The art of enjoying life is an accomplishment which few have thoroughly mastered.
Why is it that most persons are more interested in vocal than in instrumental music? Obviously because, as Richard Wagner remarks, "the human voice is the oldest, the most genuine, and the most beautiful organ of music—the organ to which alone our music owes its existence." And not only is the sound or quality of the human voice more beautiful than that of any artificial instrument, but it is capable of greater variation. Although a good artist can produce various shades of tone on his instrument, yet every instrument has a well-defined characteristictimbre, which justifies us in speaking, for instance, of the majestic, solemn trombone, the serene flute, the amorous violoncello, the lugubrious bassoon, and so on. The human voice, on the other hand, is much less limited in its powers of tonal and emotional coloring. It is not dependent for its resonance on a rigid tube, like the flute, or an unchangeable sounding-board, like the violin or the piano, but on the cavity of the mouth, whichcan be enlarged and altered at will by the movements of the lower jaw, and the soft parts—the tongue and the glottis. These movements change the overtones, of which the vowels are made up, and hence it is that the human voice is capable of an infinite variety of tone-color, compared with which Wagner admits that even "the most manifold imaginable mixture of orchestral colors must appear insignificant."
Notwithstanding that the superiority of the voice is thus conceded, even by the greatest magician of the orchestra, we daily hear the complaint that the good old times of artistic singing are gone by, and have been superseded by an instrumental era, in which the voice merely plays the part of the second fiddle and is maltreated by composers, who do not understand its real nature. So far is this opinion from the truth that it must be said, contrariwise, that it is only within the last century—I might almost say the last half century—that composers have begun fully to recognize the true function of the human voice and its principal advantage over instruments.
What is this advantage? It is the power of articulating, of uniting poetry with music,definite words with indefinite tones. Every instrument, as I have just said, has a characteristic emotional tone-color. But the emotions expressed by them arevague and indefinite. A piece of instrumental music can express an eager, passionate yearning for something, but it cannot tell what that something is—whether it is the ardent longing of an absent lover, or the heavenward aspiration of a religious enthusiast. The vocalist, on the other hand, can clearly tell us the object of that longing by using definite words. And by thus arousing reminiscences in the hearer's mind, and adding the charm of poetry to that of music, he doubles the power and impressiveness of his art.
Now, a very brief sketch of the history of solo singing will show that this special advantage of the human voice over instruments was, if not entirely overlooked, at least considered of secondary importance in practice, until Gluck and Schubert laid the foundations for a new style, in which the distinctivelyvocalside of singing has gradually become of greater importance than the instrumental side; as we see in the music-dramas of Wagner, and the Lieder, or parlor-songs, of Schumann, Franz, Liszt, and others.
Althoughfolk-songappears to be as old as the human race, the history ofartisticsong, or song written by professional composers for the concert hall, can be traced back only about three centuries. Before that time vocal music was generally polyphonic, that is, for several voices; and acontrapuntal style of music had been introduced into Italy from the Netherlands, which was so complicated and artificial that the poetic text had no chance whatever of asserting its rights and being understood. Now, the modern opera, which was originated about three hundred years ago by a number of Florentine amateurs, although it sprang from a desire to revive the ancient Greek drama, in which music was united with poetry, represents at the same time a reaction against this unintelligible Netherland style. The new opera at first went to the opposite extreme, making the distinct declamation of the text its principal object and neglecting vocal ornamentation, and even melody, on purpose. The famous vocalist and teacher, Caccini, although he taught his pupils how to sing trills and roulades, declared that they were not essential to good singing, but merely a means of tickling the ear, and, therefore, generally to be avoided. He taught the Italian singers how to express the passions, and reproduce the meaning of the words they sang—an art which, according to the Roman, Pietro della Valle, was not previously known to them.
The dry declamation of the first Italian operas, however, was not supported by a sufficiently rich accompaniment to be enjoyable after the first sense of novelty had passed away; and even the gifted Monteverde's ingenious innovations in instrumentalcoloring and in the free use of expressive discords, could not ward off a second reaction, in favor of song pure and simple, which set in with Scarlatti, the founder of the Neapolitan school, whose first opera was produced a little over two centuries ago. From this time dates the supremacy, in Italy, of thebel canto, or beautiful song, which, however, gradually degenerated into mere circus music in which every artistic aim was deliberately sacrificed to sensuous tone-revelry and agility of execution, the voice being treated as a mere instrument, without any regard for its higher prerogative of interpreting poetry and heightening its effects.
This period of Italian song prevailed throughout Europe until the time of Rossini. And in all the annals of music there is nothing quite so strange as the extraordinary craze which existed during this time forthe instrumental style of vocalism. A special class of singers—the male sopranists—was artificially created, in order to secure the most dazzling results in brilliant, ornamental vocalization. Various kinds of trills, grace notes, runs, and other species offioriture, or vocal somersaults, were introduced in every song, in such profusion that the song itself was at last barely recognizable; and this kind of stuff the audiences of that time applauded frantically. Everybody has heard of the vulgar circus tricks performed by the most famous of thesopranists, Farinelli—how at one time he beat a famous German trumpeter in prolonging and swelling his notes, and how, at another time, he began an aria softly, swelled it by imperceptible degrees to such an astounding volume, and then decreased it again in the same way to pianissimo, that the public wildly applauded him for five minutes. Thereupon, Dr. Burney relates, he began to sing with such amazing rapidity that the orchestra found it difficult to keep up with him. Dr. Dommer justly comments on this story that, for such racing with an orchestra, a singer would be hissed to-day by musical people.
It was not only quick and animated songs that were thus overloaded with meaningless embroideries by the sopranists and the prima donnas that followed them. Slow movements, which ought to breathe a spirit of melancholy, appear to have been especially selected as background for these vocal fireworks. I need not dwell on the unnaturalness of this style. To run up and down the scale wildly and persistently in singing a slow and sad song, is as consistent as it would be for an orator to grin and yodle while delivering a funeral oration.
A question might be raised as to how far the great Italian composers are responsible for this degradation of the vocal art to the level of the circus. The public, it might be argued, wanted theflorid style of song; and if Rossini and Donizetti had refused to write in the style admired by them, they would have been neglected in favor of other and less gifted composers. I do not agree with this reasoning. Rossini and Donizetti have revealed enough genius in some of their sparkling melodies to make it probable that, if they had not so often stooped to the level of a taste corrupted by the sopranists, they might have raised the public to a higher standard of musical taste. Rossini, in fact,didintroduce many reforms in Italian opera. He enriched the orchestral accompaniments, removed some of the superfluous arias, and for the first time wrote leading solo parts for the bass—an innovation for which he was violently attacked, on the ludicrous conservative ground that the bass could only be properly used as a basis of harmonies. But Rossini's greatest merit lies in this, that he refused to write for the sopranists, and would not even let them sing in those of his operas which were brought out under his own supervision. Furthermore, to prevent the singers from spoiling his melodies with their florid additions, "he supplied his own decorations, and made them so elaborate that the most skilled adorner would have found it difficult to add to them" (Edwards). For thus emancipating the composers from the tyranny of the singers Rossini deserves great credit, and still greater honor is due himfor having shown, in his "William Tell," which he wrote for Paris, and in which he discarded the florid style, that when hedidhave a public which appreciated simplicity of style and dramatic propriety in music, his genius was equal to the occasion. It is a great pity that he did not write several more operas in the style of "William Tell," for it is the only one of his works which has preserved a portion of its former popularity in Paris and elsewhere, thanks to its regard for dramatic propriety.
Like the composers, the singing teachers in Italy consented to adapt their method to the universal clamor for decorative, florid singing. The audiences did not seem to care at allwhatwas sung to them, as long as it was sung with sensuous beauty of tone, and facility of execution; consequently sensuous beauty of tone and facility of execution were almost the only things that the teachers aimed at. This is illustrated by an anecdote concerning the famous teacher Porpora and his pupil Caffarelli, which, although doubtless exaggerated, nevertheless describes the situation graphically. Porpora, it is related, gave Caffarelli a page of exercises to which he confined him for five years. And at the end of that time he exclaimed: "You have nothing more to learn! Caffarelli is the first singer in the world!"
As if facility of execution or technical skill were not the mere beginning of vocal culture—thefashioning of the instrument, as it were, with which the singer must subsequently learn the higher arts of expressing human emotions in tones, of phrasing intelligently, and of pronouncing distinctly, so that the poetic qualities of the text may be appreciated.
In looking over specimens of the vocal music written by Porpora and his contemporaries, we find passages in which a single syllable is extended over one hundred and fifty-eight, and even a hundred and seventy-five, notes. A more atrocious maltreatment of the text, and misconception of the true function of the human voice, could not be imagined. As Mr. H.C. Deacon remarks, "The passages in much of the music of that date, especially that of Porpora, are really instrumental passages ... and possessing but little interest beyond the surprise that their exact performance would create." People did not ask themselves whether it was worth while for singers to go through the most arduous training for five years, for the sake of learning to execute runs which any fiddler or flute-player could learn to play in a few weeks. Look at the fioriture which, to this day, Mme. Patti sings in "Lucia," "Semiramide," etc. She is the only living being who can sing them with absolute correctness and smoothness. Not another singer can do it—whereasevery member of her orchestra can play them at sight. Does not this show, once and for all, that this style ofsinging (which still has numerous admirers) is instrumental, is unvocal, unsuited to the human voice, and should be abandoned forever? Rossini showed his real opinion of it by writing his best and most mature work in a different style; and Verdi has done the same in "Aida" and "Otello," in which there is hardly a trace of colorature, while the style often approaches to that of genuine dramatic song.
The colorature or florid style, however, is only one of the varieties of Italian song. Side by side with it there has always been a charming, melodiouscantabile, which in the later period of Italian opera gradually got the ascendancy. Thiscantabileis often of exquisite beauty, and gives Italian and Italianized singers a chance to show off the mellow qualities of their voices to the best advantage. The very wordcantabileemphasizes, by antithesis, the unvocal character of the old florid style.Fioriturameans embroidery, whilecantabilemeans "song-like." But now, note how the sins of one period are visited on the next. The evils of the florid style did not terminate with its supremacy. They cast a shadow before, which prevented the real nature of human song from being discovered even after the vocal style had become more simple and rational. During the period in which the vocalists were in the habit of singing from a dozen to a hundred or more notes to a single syllable of the text, they, as well asthe public, had become so indifferent to the words and their poetic meaning, that this habit could not at once be altered when thecantabilestyle came more into vogue. The singers continued to be careless in regard to pronunciation of the words, and the opera libretti were so very silly that the public really did not care whether the singers spoke their words correctly and distinctly or not. Hence even thecantabilestyle of Italian song continued to be more or less instrumental in character—telling the audience little more about the text than the flute or the violins told them about it.
Mrs. Wodehouse, in her article on song in Grove's "Dictionary of Music and Musicians," calls attention to the injurious action of Italian opera on the English School by breeding indifference to the text. "From Handel's time until a very recent date," she says, "Italian operas and Italian songs reigned supreme in England; Italian singers and Italian teachers were masters of the situation to the exclusion of all others. And the habit thus contracted of hearing and admiring compositions in a foreign and unknown tongue, engendered in the English public a lamentable indifference to the words of songs, which reacted with evil effect both on the composer and the singer. Concerned only to please the ears of his audience, the composer neglected to wed his music to words of true poeticmerit; and the singer quickly grew to be careless in his enunciation. Of how many singers, and even of good ones, may it not fairly be affirmed that at the end of the song the audience has failed to recognize its language?"
These remarks are quite as applicable to America as to England. We hear singers every week to whom we can listen attentively for five minutes without being able to tell what language they are singing in. Most of these singers were trained by the Italian method: And yet we are told every day that this Italian method, which has so little regard for the distinctively vocal side of singing, is the only true method for the voice. It is time to call a halt in this matter, time to ask if the Italian method is really the one best adapted for teaching pupils to sing in English. That it is the best and only method for singing in Italian, and for interpreting the style hitherto cultivated by the Italians, no one will deny. But whether it is the proper method for those who wish to sing in English, French, or German, and to devote themselves to the modern dramatic style, is quite another question, which must be, partly at least, answered in the negative.
A careful examination of the situation, leaving aside all national prejudice, will show us that each of the two principal methods, as exemplified byItalian and German singers, has its dark and its bright side, and that the cosmopolitan American style of the future ought to try to combine the advantages of both, while avoiding their shortcomings. The dark side of Italian singing has been sufficiently dwelt upon; let us now consider the bright side.
Italy owes much of her fame as the cradle of artistic song and "The Lord's own Conservatory," to climatic and linguistic advantages. Thanks to the mild climate, men and women can spend most of their time in the open air, and their voices are not liable to be ruined by constantly passing from a dry, overheated room into the raw and chilly air of the streets. The Italians are a plump race, with well-developed muscles, and their vocal chords share in the general muscular health and development; so that the average voice in Italy has a much wider compass than in most other countries; and an unctuous ease of execution is readily acquired. Their language, again, favors Italian singers quite as much as their climate. It abounds in the most sonorous of the vowels, while generally avoiding the difficult U, and the mixed vowels Ö and Ü, as well as the harsh consonants, which are almost always sacrificed to euphony. And where the language hesitates to make this sacrifice, the vocalists come to the rescue and facilitate matters by arbitrarily changing the difficult vowel or consonant into aneasy one. In this they are encouraged by the teachers, who habitually neglect the less sonorous vowels and make their pupils sing all their exercises on the easy vowel A. No wonder, then, that the tones of an Italian singer commonly sound sweet: he makes them up of nothing but pure sugar. Characterization, dramatic effect, variety of emotional coloring, are all bartered away for sensuous beauty of tone; and hence the distinctive name for Italian singing—bel canto, or beautiful song—is very aptly chosen.
Now, sensuous beauty of tone is a most desirable thing in music. Wagner's music,e.g., owes much of its tonic charm to his fine instinct for sensuous orchestral coloring, and Chopin's works lose half their characteristic beauty if played on a poor piano, or by one who does not know how to use the pedal in such a way as to produce a continuous stream of rich saturated sound. Hence the Italians deserve full credit for the attention they bestow on sensuous beauty of tone, even if their means of securing it may not always be approved. Nor does this by any means exhaust the catalogue of Italian virtues. As a rule, Italian singers have a better ear for pitch, breathe more naturally, and execute more easily than German and French singers, whose guttural and nasal sounds they also avoid. The difference between the average Italian and German singers is well broughtout by Dr. Hanslick, in speaking of the Italian performances which formerly used to alternate with the German operas in Vienna: "Most of our Italian guests," he says, "distinguish themselves by means of the thorough command they have over their voices, which in themselves are by no means imposing; our German members by powerful voices, which, however, owing to their insufficient training, do not produce half the effect they would if they had been subjected to the same amount of training. With the Italians great certainty and evenness throughout the rôle; with the Germans an unequal alternation of brilliant and mediocre moments, which seems partly accidental."
It is this element of accident and uncertainty that lowers the value of many German singers. Herr Niemann, for instance, has moments—and, indeed, whole evenings—when his voice, seemingly rejuvenated, not only rises to sublime heights of dramatic passion, but possesses rare sensuous beauty; while on other occasions the sound of his voice is almost unbearable. Niemann, of course, is fifty-eight years old, but many of the younger German singers too often have their bad quarter-hours; and even Lilli Lehmann—whom I would rather hear for my own pleasure than any other singer now on the stage—emits occasionally a disagreeable guttural sound. Nothing of the sort in Mme. Patti, whom Niemannno doubt is right in pronouncing the most perfect vocalist, not only of this period, but of all times. I, for my part, have never cared much for thebel cantoas such, because it is so often wasted on trashy compositions. Yet, when I heard Mme. Patti for the first time in New York, I could not help indulging in the following rhapsody: "The ordinary epithets applicable to a voice, such as sweet, sympathetic, flexible, expressive, sound almost too commonplace to be applied to Patti's voice at its best, as it was when she sang thevalseOmbra Leggiera from 'Dinora,' and 'Home, Sweet Home.' Her voice has a natural sensuous charm like a Cremona violin, which it is a pleasure to listen to, irrespective of what she happens to be singing. It is a pleasure, too, to hear under what perfect control she has it; how, without changing the quality of the sound, she passes from a high to a low note, from piano to forte, gradually or suddenly, and all without the least sense of effort. Indeed her notes are as spontaneous and natural as those of a nightingale; and this, combined with their natural sweetness and purity, constitutes their great charm." A few months later, when Patti gave one of her innumerable farewell performances, I was again forced to admit that she is the greatest of living lyric sopranos, but took the liberty to express my conviction that "the charm of her voice is almost as purely sensuous as the beauty of a dewdrop or adiamond reflecting the prismatic colors of sunlight."
Patti, in a word, is the incarnation of the Italian style. Her voice is flawless as regards beauty of tone, and spontaneity and agility of execution. Moreover, she avoids the small vices common to most Italian singers, such as taking liberties with the time and the sentiment of the piece for the sake of prolonging a trill or a loud final high note, and so on. At an early stage in her career she followed the custom of the time, and lavished such an abundance of uncalled-for scales and trills and arpeggios and staccatos on her melody, that even Rossini entered a sarcastic protest; but in her later years she has conscientiously followed the indications of the composers. At the same time, she has shown more and more anxiety to win laurels as a dramatic singer. But here the vocal style which she has exclusively cultivated has proved an insuperable obstacle. Although free from the smaller vices of the Italian school, she could not overcome the great and fatal shortcoming of that school—the maltreatment of the poetic text. She could not find the proper accents required in operas where the words of the text are as important as the melody itself; and she has failed therefore to give satisfaction even in such works as "Faust" and "Aïda," which are intermediate between the old-fashioned opera and the music-dramaproper. I have been often surprised to hear how Patti, so conscientious in other respects, slights her texts, obliterating consonants and altering vowels after the fashion of the Italian school. Having neglected to master the more vigorous vowels and expressive consonants, she cannot assert her art in dramatic works. Her voice, in short, ismerely an instrument. "Bird-like" is an epithet commonly applied to it by admirers. Is this a compliment? A dubious one, in my opinion. The nightingale's voice is very sweet, no doubt, but it is no better than a flute. A bird cannot pronounce words and sing at the same time. The human voice alone can do that—can alone combine poetry and music, uniting the advantage of both in one effect.
On the other hand, have you ever heard anyone compare the voices of Lehmann, Materna, Sucher, or Malten to a bird's voice? Of course not; and the reason is obvious. The point of view is different. Although Lilli Lehmann's voice is almost as mellow in timbre as Patti's, and much richer and warmer, we never think of it as a bird-like or vague instrumental tone, but as a medium for the expression of definite dramatic emotion. And herein lies the chief difference between the Italian and the German schools.An Italian adores singing for its own sake, a German as a means of definite emotional expression.
Now, whether we look at nations or at individuals,we always find that simple beauty of tone and agility of execution in artistic singing are appreciated sooner than emotional expression and dramatic characterization. Hence it is that the Italian school came before the German school. Even in Germany, a few generations ago, the Italian school was so predominant that German composers of the first rank—Gluck, Weber, and Beethoven—found it difficult to assert their influence against it. In Vienna, during the season of 1823, the Rossini furore was so great that none but Rossini's operas were sung; and in Germany almost everyone of the three dozen big and little potentates supported his own Italian operatic company. To-day you look in vain through Germany or Austria for a single Italian company. The few Italian operas that have remained on the repertory are sung in German translations by German singers, and all of these operas together hardly have as many performances in a year as a single one of Wagner's.
Here is a revolution in taste which may well excite our astonishment, and arouse our curiosity as to how it was brought about. It was brought about by the courage and perseverance of a few composers who, instead of stooping down to the crude taste of thefioriture-loving public, elevated that taste until it was able to appreciate the poetic and dramatic side of music; and it was brought about with theassistance of German singers, notwithstanding the great disadvantages, climatic and linguistic, under which these labor in comparison with Italian singers.
Although the Germans are a more robust nation than the Italians, with more powerful muscles and voices, their climate is against them, leading to frequent throat troubles which endanger the beauty of the voice. Hence, the gift of mellow, supple song does not come to them so spontaneously as to the Italians. About a thousand years ago, an Italian compared the singing of some German monks to the noise made by a cart rattling down a frozen street; and even Luther compared the singing in cathedrals and monasteries at his time to the "braying of asses." At a more recent period, Frederick the Great, on hearing of the proposed engagement of a German singer, exclaimed: "What! hear a German singer! I should as soon expect to derive pleasure from the neighing of my horse!" Beethoven knew that the chief reason why he could not compete with Rossini on the stage was the lack of good German singers. He often lamented the inferiority of the German to the Italian singers, and one day exclaimed to the organist Freudenberg: "We Germans have no sufficiently cultivated singers for the part ofLeonora; they are too cold and feelingless. The Italians sing and act with their whole souls." Nevertheless, Beethoven refused to adapt his music to the style ofthe Italian singers—fortunately; for, if he had, it would now be as obsolete as most of Rossini's and Donizetti's.
When Berlioz made his famous tour in Germany, matters had somewhat improved, to judge from the following remarks in his "À Travers Chants:" "They say that the Germans sing badly; that may seem true in general. I will not broach the question here, whether or not their language is the reason of it, and whether Mme. Sontag, Pischek, Tichatschek, Mlle. Lind, who is almost a German, and many others, do not form magnificent exceptions; but, upon the whole, German vocalists sing, and do not howl; the screaming school is not theirs; they make music." Nevertheless, about the same time, Liszt complained that a perfect training of the voice such as he admired in Viardot Garcia, had almost become a legend of the past; and only eight years ago, an excellent German critic, Martin Plüddemann, wrote that "Germany has many good orchestras and not a few excellent pianists, even among amateurs; but a city of 100,000 inhabitants seldom has ten vocalists whose voices are tolerable, and of these two or three at most deserve the name of artists."
When Richard Wagner made his preparation for the great Nibelung festival in 1876, he had the greatest difficulty in securing a sufficient number ofcompetent interpreters for the different rôles of the trilogy, though he had all the German opera companies to choose from. His private letters and essays are full of lamentations regarding the rarity of singers able to interpret, not only his works, but those of Weber, Gluck, or Mozart. Good singers, he says in one place, are so rare that the managers have to pay their weight in gold and jewelry. But the cause of this, he continues, is not the lack of good voices, but their improper training in the wrong direction. German teachers have tried to adapt the voices of their pupils to the Italiancanto, which is incompatible with the German language. "Hitherto," he says in another place, "the voice has been trained exclusively after the model of Italian songs; there was no other. But the character of Italian songs was determined by the general spirit of Italian music, which, in the time of its full bloom, was best exemplified by the sopranists, because the aim of this music was mere enjoyment of the senses, without any regard for genuine depth of feeling—as is also shown by the fact that the voice of young manhood, the tenor voice, was hardly used at all at this period, and later only in a sopranistic way, as falsetto. Now, the spirit of modern music, under the undisputed leadership of German genius, especially Beethoven, has succeeded in first rising to the true dignity of art, by bringing within the sphere of itsincomparable expressiveness, not only what is agreeable to the senses, but also an energetic spirituality and emotional depth." Evidently, he concludes, a singer trained in the spirit of the old-fashioned, merely sensuous music, is unable to cope with modern dramatic music, and the result is the failure and premature collapse of so many promising singers, who might have become great artists had they been rationally instructed.
Misinformed or prejudiced critics have told us countless times that Wagner assigned the voice a secondary place in his works because he cared less for it than for the orchestra, and did not understand its nature and uses. The fact is that no one can read his essays, especially those on Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and on Actors and Vocalists, without being impressed with his unbounded admiration for the voice, and his practical knowledge of its highest functions and correct use. As a vocal teacher, Wagner has perhaps never had an equal. A few words from him regarding tone emission, breathing, or phrasing, have often sufficed to show to a singer that a passage which he had considered unsingable, was really the easiest thing in the world, if only the poetic sense were properly grasped and the breath economized. It is difficult to realize how much of their art and popularity the greatest dramatic singers of the period owe to Wagner's personalinstruction. Materna, Malten, Brandt, Tichatschek, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, Niemann, Vogl, Winkelmann, Betz, Scaria, Reichmann, and many others have had the benefit of his advice; and if Wagner could have carried out his plans of establishing a college of dramatic singing at Bayreuth—a plan which was frustrated by the lack of funds—the cause of dramatic art would have gained immeasurably. We speak with scornful contempt of the Viennese of a former generation, who allowed a rare genius like Schubert to starve; but posterity will look back with quite as great astonishment on the sluggishness of a generation which did not eagerly accept the offer of the greatest dramatic composer of all times, to instruct gratuitously a number of pupils in his own style and those of Gluck, Mozart, and Weber.
Leaving out of consideration the instructions which they personally received from Wagner, the greatest dramatic singers of the time may be regarded as self-made men and women. Experience taught them their art, other teacher they had none; for it is only within a few years that a few teachers have begun to realize that the old methods of instruction are partly incorrect, and partly insufficient for the demands of contemporary art. Such teachers as Mme. Viardot-Garcia and Mme. Marchesi have done much good, and trained many excellent lyricvocalists; but Mme. Marchesi herself admits that the great demand to-day is for dramatic, and not for lyric, singers. Formerly, it was thebravurasinger who bought dukedoms with his shekels; to-day, with the solitary exception of Patti, it is thedramaticsoprano or tenor that gets from $500 to $1,000 a night. When will teachers and pupils wake up and recognize the new situation? When will American girls cease flocking by the hundreds to Milan to learn such rôles asLuciaorAmina, for which there is now no demand, either in Europe or America, if we except the wild Western audiences to which Emma Abbott caters. A goodElsaorBrünnhildewill get an engagement ten times sooner than a goodLucia; and young vocalists whose voices have not sufficient volume and power to cope with German dramatic music, will do well to devote their attention to the better class of French operas, for which there is a growing demand, as the French style has always been much more like the German than like the Italian, owing to the great attention paid by French composers, especially since the days of Gluck, to vigorous declamation and distinct enunciation. Wagner especially recommends the works of the older French schools as a preparation for his own more difficult operas.
Director Stanton, of the Metropolitan Opera House, in New York, is obliged every summer to make atrip to Germany and look about for dramatic singers wherewith to replenish his casts. As a number of American singers have already won fame here and abroad, the time no doubt will come when he will be able to find the dramatic singers he needs at home, and when opera in English will have supplanted foreign opera, so far as the language is concerned. But until that happy epoch arrives every aspirant to operatic honors cannot be too strongly urged to begin his or her studies by learning the French and German languages. Almost all the greatest singers of the century have been able not only to sing but to speak in several languages. Above all things, students of song should learn to speak their own language. Mr. H.C. Deacon remarks that "no nation in the civilized world speaks its language so abominably as the English.... Familiar conversation is carried on in inarticulate smudges of sound which are allowed to pass current for something, as worn-out shillings are accepted as representatives of twelvepence.... When English people begin to study singing, they are astonished to find that they have never learned to speak."
Mr. Deacon's strictures do not apply in all their force to Americans, for the average American speaks English more distinctly than the average Englishman; yet there is room for vast improvement in the enunciation of our singers. Now, the great valueof the German style to English students lies in this, that it emphasizes above all things the importance of correct and distinct speech in song. Julius Hey, of Munich, who has just published a vocal method which will mark an epoch in the teaching of singing, devotes the whole of his first volume to an analysis of the elements of speech, and to exercises in speaking. The second and third volumes contain vocal exercises for male and female voices, while the fourth volume, which has just appeared, discusses the special characteristics of the German dramatic method, and gives detailed instructions for the development and training of each variety of voice, together with an appendix in which some of the most popular operatic rôles are analyzed and described. It is a book which no teacher or student who wishes to keep abreast of the times can afford to be without.
Although Herr Hey is a disciple of Wagner, he is a cosmopolitan admirer of all that is good in every style of the past and present. In the elaborate scheme for the establishment of a conservatory in Munich which Wagner submitted to King Ludwig, he dwells on the fact that every student of song, whatever his ultimate aims, should be instructed in Italian singing, in conjunction with the Italian language. Herr Hey, too, admits that there is no branch of the Italian method which the German teachers can afford to ignore. In the emission of amellow tone, the use of the portamento, in the treatment of scales, of trills, and of other ornaments, and in facile vocalization in general, all nations can learn from the Italians. But the Italian method does not go far enough. It does not meet the demands of the modern opera and the modern music-drama. It delights too much in comfortable solfeggios, in linked sweetness long drawn out, which soon palls on the senses. The modern romantic and dramatic spirit demands more characteristic, more vigorous, more varied accents than Italian song supplies. These dramatic accents are supplied by the German method, and in this chiefly lies its superiority over the Italian method.
Herr Hey uses a very happy comparison in trying to show the bad consequences of relying too much on the Italian principles of vocal instruction which have been current until lately in Germany as in all other countries. Students, he says, are taught to fence with a little walking-cane, and when it comes to the decisive battle they are expected to wield a heavy sword. A most happy illustration this, I repeat, for it indicates exactly what vocal teachers of the old school are doing. They choose the easiest of the vowels and the easiest melodic intervals, and make the pupils exercise on those constantly, ignoring the more difficult ones; and the consequence is, that when, subsequently, the pupils are confrontedwith difficult intervals in a dramatic rôle, they sing them badly and make the ludicrous protest that the composer "doesn't know how to write for the voice;" and when they come across difficult vowels they either change them into easier ones, and thus make the text unintelligible, or else they emit a crude tone because they have never learned to sing a sonorous U, I, or E (Latin).
The German principle, on the other hand, is that all vowels (and the German language has a greater number of them than the Italian) must be cultivated equally, the difficult ones all the more because they are difficult. Herr Hey has found in practice that not only can the vowels which at first sound dull and hollow, like U, be made as sonorous as A (Ah), but that, by practising on U, the A itself is rendered more sonorous than it can ever become by exclusive practice on it alone. Not only does the German method in this way secure a greater variety of sonorous vowel sounds, useful for the expression of different dramatic moods, but the registers are equalized, and there is a great gain in the power and endurance of the voice, which is of immense importance to-day in grand opera.
Prof. Stockhausen, the distinguished vocal teacher, recently remarked in theFrankfurter Zeitungthat "themezza voceis the natural song, the constant loud singing being only a struggle with unequalweapons against our modern orchestra." No doubt he is right. But the orchestra has become such an important factor in modern opera that musicians would be unwilling to have it reduced in size—the tendency being, in fact, the other way; and at the same time opera is such an expensive luxury that it can only be made to pay in a very large theatre, which obliges the singers to have stentorian voices. Consequently, the German method, which develops the power and the sonority of the voice oneveryvowel, is the method of the future, all the more because the English language, which is the world language of the future, is even more difficult for vocal purposes than the German, and calls for similar treatment.
In the treatment of consonants, the German method marks a still greater advance on the Italian method. Professor Ehrlich thinks that the reason why Italians care so much for melody and so little for harmony is because they are too indolent to make the mental effort which is required to follow a complicated harmonic score. They are, certainly, too lazy to pronounce any harsh or difficult consonants, and the Italian language therefore presents a picture of sad effeminate degeneracy compared with the more vigorous Latin and even Spanish. Now the English language and the English character have much more of German vigor and masculine strengththan of the Italiandolce far niente: hence, the English vocal style of the future will have to be modelled after the German style, which, instead of shirking difficult consonants boldly tackles and utilizes them. It will never be possible to sing so sweetly in the English and German languages as in Italian; but it is possible to sing with much more vigor, dramatic definiteness, and variety of emotional expression.
At the same time, the harshness of the consonants in German and English song must not be too much emphasized. Wagner has shown in his music-dramas, and Hey in his vocal method, that by means of a proper division of syllables and correct articulation, the harshness of consonants can be toned down as much as is desirable. On the desirability and effectiveness of strong consonants Liszt has some admirable remarks in speaking of the Polish language, which is noted for its melodious beauty, although it bristles with consonants: "The harshness of a language," he says, "is by no means always conditioned by the excessive number of consonants, but rather by the way in which they are united; one might almost say that the weak, cold color of some languages is due to the lack of characteristic and strongly accented sounds. It is only an unharmonious combination of dissimilar consonants that offends a refined ear. The frequent return ofcertain well-united consonants gives shading, rhythm, and vigor to language; whereas the predominance of vowels produces a certain pallor in the coloration, which needs the contrast of darker tints."
Those who are always ready to insist on the superiority of the Italian language for song, would do well to ponder these remarks of Liszt, who knew what he was talking about, as he spoke a number of modern languages fluently. And when they have done that, they should procure a few of Wagner's later vocal scores and note the extremely ingenious manner in which he has made the peculiarities of German consonants subservient to his dramatic purposes. I refer especially to his use of alliteration—the repetition of a consonant in the same or in consecutive lines. This not only insures a smooth, melodious flow, but enables the composer to heighten the effect of any situation by choosing consonants that harmonize with it. What, for instance, could be more delightfully descriptive than the words sung by the three Rhine daughters as they merrily swim and gambol under the water in "Rheingold:"