SINGING AND SINGING-TEACHERS.
_(A Letter to a Young Lady Singer.)_
MY DEAR MISS ----,--You are endowed with an admirable gift for singing,
and your agreeable though not naturally powerful voice has vivacity and
youthful charm, as well as a fine tone: you also possess much talent in
execution; yet you nevertheless share the lot of almost all your sisters
in art, who, whether in Vienna, Paris, or Italy, find only teachers who
are rapidly helping to annihilate the opera throughout Europe, and are
ruling out of court the simple, noble, refined, and true art of singing.
This modern, unnatural style of art, which merely aspires to superficial
effects, and consists only in mannerisms, and which must ruin the voice
in a short time, before it reaches its highest perfection, has already
laid claim to you. It is scarcely possible to rescue your talent,
unless, convinced that you have been falsely guided, you stop entirely
for a time, and allow your voice to rest during several months, and
then, by correct artistic studies, and with a voice never forced or
strong, often indeed weak, you improve your method of attack by the use
of much less and never audible breathing, and acquire a correct, quiet
guidance of the tones. You must also make use of the voice in the middle
register, and strengthen the good head-tones by skilfully lowering them;
you must equalize the registers of the voice by a correct and varied use
of the head-tones, and by diligent practice of _solfeggio_. You must
restore the unnaturally extended registers to their proper limits; and
you have still other points to reform. Are you not aware that this
frequent tremulousness of the voice, this immoderate forcing of its
compass, by which the chest-register is made to interfere with the
head-tones, this coquetting with the deep chest-tones, this affected,
offensive, and almost inaudible nasal _pianissimo_, the aimless jerking
out of single tones, and, in general, this whole false mode of vocal
execution, must continually shock the natural sentiment of a cultivated,
unprejudiced hearer, as well as of the composer and singing-teacher?
What must be the effect on a voice in the middle register, when its
extreme limits are forced in such a reckless manner, and when you expend
as much breath for a few lines of a song as a correctly educated singer
would require for a whole aria? How long will it be before your voice,
already weakened, and almost always forced beyond the limits of beauty,
shall degenerate into a hollow, dull, guttural tone, and even into that
explosive or tremulous sound, which proclaims irremediable injury? Is
your beautiful voice and your talent to disappear like a meteor, as
others have done? or do you hope that the soft air of Italy will in time
restore a voice once ruined? I fall into a rage when I think of the many
beautiful voices which have been spoiled, and have dwindled away without
leaving a trace during the last forty years; and I vent my overflowing
heart in a brief notice of the many singing-teachers, whose rise and
influence I have watched for twenty years past.
The so-called singing-teachers whom we usually find, even in large
cities and in musical institutions, I exempt from any special criticism,
for they would not be able to understand my views. They permit soprano
voices to sing scales in all the five vowels at once; begin with _c_
instead of _f_; allow a long holding of the notes, "in order to bring
out the voice," until the poor victim rolls her eyes and grows dizzy.
They talk only of the fine chest-tones which must be elicited, will have
nothing to do with the head-tones, will not even listen to them,
recognize them, or learn to distinguish them. Their highest principle
is: "Fudge! we don't want any rubbish of Teschner, Miksch, and Wieck.
Sing in your own plain way: what is the use of this murmuring without
taking breath? For what do you have lungs if you are not to use them?
Come, try this aria: 'Grâce,' 'grâce!' Produce an effect! Down on your
knees!"
There are again others who allow screaming,--"the more the better,"--in
order to produce power and expression in the voice, and to make it
serviceable for public performances. They may, indeed, require the
singing of _solfeggio_, and prattle about the requisite equality of the
tones; and they consequently make the pupil practise diligently and
strongly on the two-lined _a_, _b_ flat, _b_, where kind Nature does not
at first place the voice, because she has reserved for herself the slow
and careful development of it. As for the unfortunate gasping medium
voices, which are still less docile, and which sigh in the throat, and
after all can only speak, such teachers postpone the cultivation of
these to the future, or else they exclaim in a satisfied way, "Now we
will sing at sight! Hit the notes! Let us have classical music!" Of
these, also, I forbear to speak.
And as for the singing-teachers, whose business it is to educate the
voice for "the opera of the future," I am really unable to write about
them. In the first place, I know nothing about "the future," the unborn;
and, in the second place, I have more than enough to do with the
present.
And now I come to those who honestly wish to teach better, and who in a
measure do so. But even they are too pedantic: with prejudiced views,
they pursue one-sided aims. Without looking around to the right or to
the left or forwards, and without daily learning, reflecting, and
striving, they run in a groove, always ride their particular hobby, cut
every thing after one pattern, and use up the time in secondary matters,
in incredible trifles. For the formation of a fine tone, not a minute
should be lost, particularly with lady singers, who are not strong, and
usually cannot or ought not to sing more than twenty days in a month,
and who surely ought to be allowed to use their time in a reasonable
manner. Moreover, these are the teachers whom it is most difficult to
comprehend. Though they use only seven tones, they are plunged in
impenetrable mysteries, in incomprehensible knowledge and a multitude of
so-called secrets, out of which, indeed, nothing can ever be brought to
light. For this, however, they do not consider themselves to blame, not
even their hobby-horses; but, as they say, "the higher powers." We will,
for once, suppose that three-fourths of the measures which they are
accustomed to employ in their treatment of the voice and of the
individual are good and correct (the same is true of many
piano-teachers); but the remaining fourth is sufficient to ruin the
voice, or to prevent its proper development, and therefore nothing
correct is to be gained. There are other teachers who never can get
beyond the formation of the tone, and are lost in the pursuit of
_perfection_,--that "terrestrial valley of tears." Truly a beautiful
country, but which is only to be found in Paradise!
Others, instead of thinking, "I will try for the present to do better
than others have done," so harass and torment the poor mortal voices
with their aim at perfect equality and perfect beauty of tone, the
result often is that every thing becomes unequal and far from beautiful.
Some teachers make their pupils so anxious and troubled that, owing to
their close attention to the tone, and the breath, and the
pronunciation, they sing their songs in an utterly wooden manner, and so
in fact they, too, are lost in optimism and in tears; whereas, for
singing, a happy confidence in the ability to succeed is essential.
Others pursue an opposite course, and are guilty of worse faults, as you
will see if you look around. Some of them have no standard of
perfection, but use up the time in an exchange of ideas with their
pupils, with mysterious and conceited "ifs" and "buts." They are very
positive, but only within the narrow circle of their own ideas. They
make no advance in a correct medium path. Some allow pupils to practise
only _staccato_, and others only _legato_, aiming thereby at nobody
knows what. Some allow them to sing too loud, others too feebly; some
philosophize earnestly about beauty in the voice, and others grumble
about unpleasantness in the same; some are enthusiastic about
extraordinary talents, others fret about the want of talent; some have a
passion for making all the sopranos sing alto, others do just the
reverse; some prefer a shadowy, others a clear voice. They all rest
their opinions upon the authority of some famous screaming-master who
has written a singing-system. Upon like authority, some cultivate
chiefly the deep tones, because it is very fine, and "creates an
effect," for soprano voices to be able suddenly to sing like men, or
rather to growl, and because it is the fashion in Paris. Others, on the
contrary, pride themselves upon the head-tones; but they are none of
them willing to pay much attention to the medium voices: that is too
critical and too delicate a matter, and requires too much trouble, for
the modern art of singing. As a last resort, they bethink themselves of
kind Nature, and lay the blame upon her.
Well, I will say no more upon this point, but will proceed. Have I not
already, in my piano instructions, insisted on the importance of a
gradual and careful use of every proper expedient to extend, strengthen,
beautify, and preserve the voice? I am thought, however, to infringe
upon the office of the singing-masters, who hold their position to be
much more exalted than that of the poor piano-teacher. Still, I must be
allowed to repeat that voices are much more easily injured than fingers;
and that broken, rigid voices are much worse than stiff, unmanageable
fingers, unless, after all, they amount to the same thing. I demand of
singing-teachers that they show themselves worthy of their position,
and allow no more voices to go to destruction, and that they give us
some satisfactory results. I believe in fact, in my homely simplicity,
that the whole thing may be accomplished without any mystery, without
trading in secrets or charlatanry; without the aid of modern anatomical
improvement, or rather destruction, of the worn-out throat, through
shortening or increasing the flexibility of the palate, through the
removal of the unnecessary glands or by attempts to lengthen the vocal
passage, or by remedying a great many other things in which Nature has
made a mistake, and on which special doctors for the voice, in Paris and
London, are now employed.
We supply the want of all these by the following little rule:--
Three trifles are essential for a good piano or singing-teacher,--
_The finest taste,
The deepest feeling,
The most delicate ear,_
and, in addition, the requisite knowledge, energy, and some practice.
_Voilà tout!_ I cannot devote myself to the treatment of the throat, for
which I have neither time not fitness; and my lady singers are so busy
with the formation of true tone, and in attention to the care and
preservation of their voices, that they only wish to open their mouths
for that object, and not for anatomical purposes. In piano-playing also,
I require no cutting of the interdigital fold, no mechanical
hand-support, no accelerator for the fingers or stretching machine; and
not even the "finger-rack" invented and used, without my knowledge, by a
famous pupil[A] of mine, for the proper raising of the third and fourth
fingers.
My dear young lady, if the Creator has made the throat badly for
singing, he alone is responsible. I cannot come to his assistance by
destroying the throat with lunar caustic, and then reconstructing it. If
the throat is really worn out, may it not perhaps be owing to the
teacher, and to his mistaken management?
Nature does many things well, and before the introduction of this modern
fashion of singing produced many beautiful voices: has she all at once
become incapable of doing any thing right?
We will, then, simply return to the _three trifles_ above-mentioned;
and in these we will live and work "with all our heart, with all our
soul, and with all our mind."
[A] Reference is here made to Robert Schumann, who, in order to
facilitate the use of the weaker fingers, employed a machine for raising
the fingers artificially, which resulted in loss of power over them, and
necessitated the abandonment of piano-playing.--_Tr._