No artist can be graceful, imaginative, or original, unless he
be truthful.
Ruskin. _Modern Painters_.
"Art is a transfer of feeling" said Tolstoy. While this applies to art
in general it has a particular application to the art of singing. The
material of the singer's art is feeling. By means of the imagination he
evokes within himself feelings he has experienced and through the medium
of his voice he transfers these feelings to others. By his ability to
reconstruct moods, feelings and emotions within himself and express them
through his voice, the singer sways multitudes, plays upon them, carries
them whithersoever he will from the depths of sorrow to the heights of
exaltation. His direct and constant aim is to make his hearers _feel_,
and feel deeply. As a medium for the transfer of feeling the human voice
far transcends all others. Since the beginning of the human race the
voice has been the means by which it has most completely revealed
itself, but the art is not in the voice, but in the feeling transferred.
It is the same whether the medium be the voice, painting, sculpture,
poetry or a musical instrument. We speak of a painting as being a great
work of art, but the art is not in the painting, the art is the feeling
of beauty which the painting awakes in the observer. When we listen to
an orchestra the music is what we feel. Said Walt Whitman: "Music is
what awakes within us when we are reminded by the instruments."
Nothing exists separate from cognition. Real art therefore consists of
pure feeling rather than of material objects. _If the singer succeeds in
transferring his feelings to others he is an artist_, this regardless of
whether his voice is great or small. Voice alone does not constitute an
artist. One must have something to give. Schumann said: "The reason the
nightingale sings love songs and the lap dog barks is because the soul
of the nightingale is filled with love and that of the lap dog with
bark." It will be apparent therefore, that the study of the art of
singing should devote itself to developing in the singer the best
elements of his nature--all that is good, pure and elevating. We have no
right to transfer to others any feeling that is impure or unwholesome.
The technic of an art is of small moment compared with its subject
matter. _An unworthy poem cannot be purified by setting it to music no
matter how beautiful the music may be._