After all, singing is singing, and I am convinced that my master's idea
of just letting the voice grow with normal exercise and without excesses
in any direction was the best way for me. It was certainly better than
hours and hours of theory, interesting to the student of physiology, but
often bewildering to the young vocalist. Real singing with real music is
immeasurably better than ages of conjecture. It appears that some
students spend years in learning how they are going to sing at some
glorious day in the future, but it never seems to occur to them that in
order to sing they must really use their voices. Of course, I do not
mean to infer that the student must omit the necessary preparatory work.
Solfeggios, for instance, and scales are extremely useful. Concone,
tried and true, gives excellent material for all students. But why spend
years in dreaming of theories regarding singing when everyone knows that
the theory of singing has been the battleground for innumerable talented
writers for centuries? Even now it is apparently impossible to reconcile
all the vocal writers, except in so far as they all modestly admit that
they have rediscovered the real old Italian school. Perhaps they have.
But, admitting that an art teacher rediscovered the actual pigments
used by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt or Raphael, he would have no little
task in creating a student who could duplicate _Mona Lisa_, _The Night
Watch_ or the _Sistine Madonna_.
After leaving Rootham, I won the four hundred guinea scholarship at the
Royal College of Music and studied with Henry Blower. This I followed
with a course with Bouhy in Paris and Etelka Gerster in Berlin. Mr.
Rumford and I both concur in the opinion that it is necessary for the
student who would sing in any foreign language to study in the country
in which the language is spoken. In no other way can one get the real
atmosphere. The preparatory work may be done in the home country, but if
one fails to taste of the musical life of the country in which the songs
came into being, there seems to be an indefinable absence of the right
flavor. I believe in employing the native tongue for songs in recital
work. It seems narrow to me to do otherwise. At the same time, I have
always been a champion for songs written originally with English texts,
and have sung innumerable times with programs made from English lyrics.