[Illustration: REINALD WERRENRATH]
I plunged at once into the subject I had come for, telling him I wanted
to know how he had worked to bring about such results as were noted in
his recent recital in Carnegie Hall; in what way he had studied, and
what, in his opinion, were the most important factors, from an
educational point of view, for the young singer to consider.
"That is entirely too difficult a question to be answered briefly, even
in a half hour, or in an hour's talk. There are too many angles;" his
clear gray eyes looked at me frankly as he spoke. "Voice culture, voice
mastery, what is it? It is having control of your instrument to such an
extent that you put it out of your thought completely when you sing. The
voice is your servant and must do your bidding. This control is arrived
at through a variety of means, and can be considered from a thousand
angles, any one of which would be interesting to follow up. I have been
on the concert stage for nearly a score of years, and ought to know
whereof I speak; yet I can say I have not learned it all even now, not
by any means. Vocal technic is something on which you are always
working, something which is never completed, something which is
constantly improving with your mental growth and experience--if you are
working along the right lines. People talk of finishing their vocal
technic; how can that ever be done? You are always learning how to do
better. If you don't make the effect you expected to, in a certain
place, when singing in public, you take thought of it afterward,
consider what was the matter, _why_ you couldn't put it over--why it had
no effect on the audience. Then you work on it, learn how to correct and
improve it.