WHY SINGERS ARE SCARCE
The career of a singer is one offering a certain number of prizes but
many, many blanks, and only those possessed of the most unmistakable
natural gifts and ready to work tremendously hard should ever be
encouraged to embark upon it. Hard work, beyond everything, is essential
if success is to be achieved, and it is here, I am afraid, that so many
of our modern students fail.
Imbued with the eager impatient spirit of these headlong days, they want
to do things too quickly, and are unwilling to submit to the toil and
drudgery which are none the less as necessary as ever if really solid
results are to be achieved. It has even been suggested that to this
circumstance may be traced that scarcity of great singers nowadays of
which we hear so often.
True, more vocalists than ever before, probably, are inviting attention
at the present time, but how few of them can be reckoned in the first
class? Doubtless it is easy to exaggerate in this matter. Seen through
the mists of time the figures of the past always tend to assume heroic
proportions.
Making due allowance, however, in this respect, are we really the
victims of hallucination in thinking that great singers are fewer
nowadays than formerly? It would be pleasant to think so, but I am
afraid that the facts point the other way.
What, then, is the explanation? Different authorities would doubtless
suggest different answers, but most, I fancy, would agree that lack of
adequate study has had not a little to do with the matter.
Porpora, we all know, kept Caffarelli for five years to one page of
exercises, and at the end of that time told him that he was the greatest
singer in Europe. It would be amusing to learn the experience of a
modern teacher who proposed to one of his pupils the adoption of the
same course. The great Patti, who told me I was her successor, also said
to me that we artists will still be learning when we are too old to
sing.
The average vocal student of to-day considers himself a finished artist
at a time when he would be reckoned just qualified to begin serious
study by the teachers of an earlier period.
While no amount of training will make fine voices out of poor material,
the history of singing furnishes numerous instances--that of Pasta is
one of the best known--in which limited natural powers have been
developed to an astonishing degree by study and training. Nowadays I am
afraid it is the converse of this which is more frequently illustrated,
and one hears only too often of fine natural voices which have been
steadily ruined by the manner in which they are used.
Modern music has also, no doubt, had its influence--not so much because
it is harmful to the voice in itself, but simply because it is possible
to sing it (after a fashion) without such prolonged study and exercise
as that of the older school absolutely necessitated.
Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, and the rest of the old masters have indeed
been avenged in a wholly unanticipated manner. Precisely as the music of
their school has fallen in favour has the power been lost of singing
that of the so-called higher kind which has taken its place.