This type of art, the most delicate, the most personal, the most self-contained, is laid in bewildering abundance at our feet. And some fairly general acquaintance with modern song literature is a necessity for the singer or the concert-goer. A singer can no more understand the songs she sings without at the same time being familiar with others than a student can understand the history of his own country without knowing that of foreign lands. For such a singer to appear in public as an interpreter is simply an insolence. If he ‘specializes’ in modern French songs, the more necessity for him to know old German. You can never appreciate any quality without knowing something of its opposite. And the same rule applies to audiences. The first song one hears in life probably goes unnoticed. The second gives the attention something on which to base a comparison. And every new acquisition thereafter increases the opportunity for comparison—increases the hearer’s pleasure. How much more you have learned about Debussy when you have heard a cycle of Moussorgsky!
And if a comparison is necessary between art-songs of one and another lineage, how much more necessary it is of art-songs and folk-songs. It is important for singer and audience to know various types of art-songs. It is much more important to know art-songs and folk-songs. When he does, all that is peculiar to the art-song becomes set off in relief, and all that is common property becomes enhanced in value. A knowledge of folk-songs is a knowledge of humanity in its simplest terms. With it one can ‘walk with kings nor lose the common touch.’