The idea that concert and recital work is not as difficult as operatic
work has been pretty well exploded by this time. In fact, it is very
much more difficult to sing a simple song well in concert than it is to
sing some of the elaborate Wagnerian recitatives in which the very
complexities of the music make a convenient hiding place for the
artist's vocal shortcomings. In concert everything is concentrated upon
the singer. Convention has ever deprived him of the convenient gestures
that give ease to the opera singer.
The selection of useful material for concert purposes is immensely
difficult. It must have artistic merit, it must have human interest, it
must suit the singer, in most cases the piano must be used for
accompaniment and the song must not be dependent upon an orchestral
accompaniment for its value. It must not be too old, it must not be too
far in advance of popular tastes. It is a bad plan to wander
indiscriminately about among countless songs, never learning any really
well. The student should begin to select numbers with great care,
realizing that it is futile to try to do everything. Lord Bolingbroke,
in his essay on the shortness of human life, shows how impossible it is
for a man to read more than a mere fraction of a great library though he
read regularly every day of his life. It is very much the same with
music. The resources are so vast and time is so limited that there is no
opportunity to learn everything. Far better is it for the vocalist to do
a little well than to do much ineffectually.
Good music well executed meets with very much the same appreciation
everywhere. During our latest tour we gave almost the very same programs
in America as those we have been giving upon the European Continent. The
music-loving American public is likely to differ but slightly from that
of the great music centers of the old world. Music has truly become a
universal language.
In developing a repertoire the student might look upon the musical
public as though it were a huge circle filled with smaller circles, each
little circle being a center of interest. One circle might insist upon
old English songs, such as the delightful melodies of Arne, Carey,
Monroe. Another circle might expect the arias of the old Italian
masters, Carissimi, Jomelli, Sacchini or Scarlatti. Another circle would
want to hear the German Lieder of such composers as Schumann, Schubert,
Brahms, Franz and Wolf. Still another circle might go away disappointed
if they could not hear something of the ultra modern writers, such as
Strauss, Debussy or even that freak of musical cacophony, Schoenberg.
However diverse may be the individual likings of these smaller circles,
all of the members of your audience are united in liking music as a
whole.
The audience will demand variety in your repertoire but at the same time
it will demand certain musical essentials which appeal to all. There is
one circle in your audience that I have purposely reserved for separate
discussion. That is the great circle of concert goers who are not
skilled musicians, who are too frank, too candid, to adopt any of the
cant of those social frauds who revel in Reger and Schoenberg, and just
because it might stamp them as real connoisseurs, but who really can't
recognize much difference between the _Liebestod_ of _Tristan und
Isolde_ and _Rule Britannia_,--but the music lovers who are too honest
to fail to state that they like the _Lost Chord_ or the lovely folk
songs of your American composer, Stephen Foster. Mr. Plunkett Greene, in
his work upon song interpretation, makes no room for the existence of
songs of this kind. Indeed, he would cast them all into the discard.
This seems to me a huge mistake. Surely we can not say that music is a
monopoly of the few who have schooled their ears to enjoy outlandish
disonances with delight. Music is perhaps the most universal of all the
arts and with the gradual evolution of those who love it, a natural
audience is provided for music of the more complicated sort. We learn to
like our musical caviar with surprising rapidity. It was only yesterday
that we were objecting to the delightful piano pieces of Debussy, who
can generate an atmosphere with a single chord just as Murillo could
inspire an emotion with a stroke of the brush.
It is not safe to say that you do not like things in this way. I think
that even Schoenberg is trying to be true to his muse. We must remember
that Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms passed through the fire of
criticism in their day. The more breadth a singer puts into her work the
more likely is she to reap success. Time only can produce the
accomplished artist. The best is to find a joy in your work and think of
nothing but large success. If you have the gift, triumph will be
yours.
[Illustration: GIUSEPPE CAMPANARI.
(C) Dupont.]