THE SOUL OF SONG
"All the hearts of men were softened
By the pathos of his music:
For he sang of peace and freedom,
Sang of beauty, love, and longing:
Sang of death, and life undying
In the Islands of the Blessed,
In the Kingdom of Ponemah,
In the land of the Hereafter."
_Longfellow_
The power to sing is innate in practically everybody, and the number of
people who are actually incapable of any musical expression through the
voice is really very small. Suggestion plays an important part in this
matter, for there are few children having mothers or nurses who sing to
them who fail to pick up and imitate that singing. The reason is fairly
clear, because every idea in mind tends to pass into action unless
something intervenes to stop it: consequently the child having the idea
of singing in mind, simply from having heard others sing, has the
initial impulse to song. As he gradually acquires the control and
co-ordination of his faculties, song will follow as a matter of course.
On the other hand if the child never hears anyone sing, from where is
the motor impulse to come?
Those good people who boast that they cannot sing have very often, by
the simple denial of their ability, ensured a kind of mental atrophy in
the function. It is quite a usual thing for us to fasten unnecessary
limitations upon ourselves by refusing to believe in our own powers, and
most of us have a large stock of very real inhibitions, which prevent us
from doing things otherwise well within our capacity. If we do not
believe we can do a thing, as a rule we do not try: or if we try, it is
in a half-hearted, beaten-before-we-start kind of fashion. Thus we find
that as a matter of experience things generally do turn out for us
according to our belief. It is in this spirit that a man professes
himself unable to tell the difference between the National Anthem and
"Pop goes the Weasel." There are cases, of course, where the individual
may be able to distinguish the tunes mentally, and yet may be unable to
sing them correctly, or even to vary the tones of the voice according to
the desired pattern: in this case the fault probably lies in a lack of
the power of co-ordinating the various activities. The necessary
associations between the hearing centres and the motor centres for the
control of voice have not been built up. But they can be so built, and
then the inability to sing vanishes. A person who can speak has the
necessary machinery for song, and to say that one has "no voice" is
mostly nonsense.
Many people possess quite good voices until they learn singing. Their
natural aptitude, which so largely depends upon the models they may have
had for imitation in the earliest days, is possibly quite excellent.
Then comes the Voice Specialist on the scene with his pet theories for
improving upon Nature, and he gets busy. He may have his ideas upon
"breaks," registers, and a thousand other details. Perhaps he has
written a book on the way in which Nature has made a botch of the voice,
creating it in a number of sections like a fishing rod, specially to
provide an interesting and lucrative profession for the voice trainer.
On the other hand he may be wise enough to thank Heaven when he finds a
good natural voice, and leave it alone. Voices when naturally used have
beauty, ease, compass, and an even tone without break throughout: this,
we assert, in spite of the fact that many a famous contralto possesses
apparently two voices, so marked is the break. There is a technical
alteration of the working of the vocal chords at a certain pitch, but
with a rightly-used voice this is automatic and unfelt: the whole body
is full of such wonderful adjustments. To be called upon to deal
consciously with such details is generally proof that they have gone
wrong. Your attention to your digestion is enforced by dyspepsia: nobody
notices a perfectly acting digestion.
Some voices are expressive and carry emotion easily, while others are
hard and inelastic. Some correspondence in the temperament will nearly
always be found. Therefore the teacher who works at the voice (which is
a means of expression of the temperament) without touching the inner
characteristics, is like the man who tries to make an ill-regulated
clock keep time by altering the hands. Lack of tone colour is not to be
cured by cultivating a number of different sizes and shapes for the
mouth and a selection of assorted smiles for the features. If a person
feels sad, he will talk sadly. Carrying the same principle into song, we
find that a voice naturally shows the timbre appropriate to the mood.
Therefore in order to ensure proper tone colour the prime requisite is
imagination and the ability vividly to call up and experience the
various emotions. It will be evident that we are endeavouring to impart
into vocal work precisely those same principles which we assert to be
fundamental to the whole of music, namely--the importance of the idea as
behind, distinct from, and manifested through, the technical means. The
vocal machinery must necessarily be in first-class order, but the
influence of the mind upon the body is so intimate and so extraordinary
that even technical acquirement hangs to no small extent upon mental
working.
Seeing that song, then, is to be the vehicle for emotion, even though
that emotion be so tenuous as almost to defy verbal expression, for the
most part we ally words and music. The timbre of a voice, singing tones
without words, might carry a message to the sensitive, just as the
inflection of a voice may be exquisite joy or suffering to a lover: but
it would be insufficient to move the average hearer to any response. The
reason is that there is always a dual process at work in mind: there is
the sense-perception of the actual sound, and a brain-recognition of its
meaning. This latter must be supplied by the hearer himself from his own
imagination or experience. The non-musical multitude has neither, and is
therefore unable to complete this second process of recognition. Thus
the hearer hears, but does not understand. It is probably for some such
reason as this that we resort to words to make the message clear. Herein
lies the importance of the words themselves, and of the diction of the
singer.
Quite notoriously, many singers entirely fail to make their words
intelligible to the listener, and in the majority of cases this is due
to insufficient stressing of the consonants. Vowel tones carry, while
consonants do not. If we want to shout to anyone we call out "Hi" or
"Hey": never by any chance do we try to reach them with a "P-p-p-p-p" or
a "T-t-t-t-t," and for precisely this reason. If, therefore, a singer
wishes his words to carry to the end of the hall he must needs
exaggerate his consonants to allow for this loss in transit: the vowels
will look after themselves. Then, although the balance of the words as
they are uttered may be a trifle distorted, they will nevertheless reach
the hearers in due proportion. Comfort in listening is greatly increased
when this sense-perception is clear and unambiguous, and the
brain-recognition is easy by reason of a certain familiarity. When the
sense-perception is blurred, as in faulty diction, extra work is thrown
on to the brain: listening then becomes a strain, and the brain is
fatigued with supplying the details which it supposes the singer to
have intended. The listener has, as it were, to put in his consonants
for him, to dot his "i's" and cross his "t's."
Some singers distort their vowel sounds almost beyond recognition, and
many pupils seem to be definitely taught to adopt the habit. Then "and"
becomes "awnd," and the various words take on new disguises after the
reputed Oxford model of "He that hath yaws to yaw, let him yaw." Singing
is but glorified speech, it is not a thing apart, neither is there one
language of the speaker and another of the vocalist. This distortion may
be due to affectation or to ignorance, but in either case we could well
do without it. In cases where the actual production of the voice is
mechanically stiff, rigid, and therefore distorted, it is not likely
that we can secure a free and flexible musical elocution. We do
occasionally meet singers whose diction is delightful to hear because of
its absolute freedom and complete naturalness, but these only serve to
heighten by their excellence the shortcomings of the many.
Consideration of the manner in which the words are put forth leads us to
the matter of the words themselves. It is difficult to find even a
modicum of meaning, to say nothing of spirit, in much of the verse that
achieves musical setting to-day. A critic in a London Daily some time
back inquired if all our native poets were paralysed, the query being
suggested by an examination of a representative batch of songs. But the
poet is hardly to blame for the present state of affairs. In the wedding
of words and music, the usual routine is for the author of the lyric to
submit his effort to the composer for his consideration. The composer
will neither select nor waste his time in setting the better class of
verse because, as he says, the publishers will not look at it. The
publishers will not print and issue it because, so they say, the public
will not purchase it. The public might very well retort that they get
precious little chance to listen to it, since royalty ballads come
first: nor to come in contact with it, for the ordinary dealer does not
stock it. There, then, is the vicious circle quite complete. But the
poets are not paralysed, they are merely inarticulate by reason of this
commercialisation of Art. At the best of times the average lyric author
has a difficult and somewhat heart-breaking task to dispose of his
wares, and we need not further harrow his artistic soul by suggestions
of literary impotence.
It must, however, be admitted that on the whole there is an
extraordinary poverty and bareness of idea and inspiration in the
general run of songs: neither Nature nor Love are themes that can ever
be finally exhausted while human nature remains as it is, but the
treatment can be so stereotyped that it eventually wears threadbare. It
is possible to become thoroughly weary of roses and gardens, and gardens
of roses, gardens without roses, and gardens where we hope there will be
roses. It is such a pity, too, that there are so few rhymes to "love."
Yet even in dissatisfaction there exists the element of progress: if we
are bored with the present style we shall demand something better, and
the demand will create the supply. But to swing from bareness and
boredom to the other extreme of abstruseness and complexity is no
remedy: in these latter qualities there exists no special compensating
virtue. Listening to a song as it is sung is very different to reading
the verse at leisure. The sense of the song must be caught as it flies,
the verse can be read and re-read if necessary, until its meaning be
clear. It is no progress, therefore, to worship the turgid and obscure,
whether in words or music, or both. We may pretend that we appreciate
things because we cannot understand them, but that is only a concession
to convention and a convenient way of smothering artistic conscience.
Of late an outcry has arisen, on the part of wise men in exalted
station, about "beastly tunes," but surely if a tune can attain
sufficient popularity to earn the picturesque adjectives of the
academic, there must be some element in it which has escaped the
attention of its detractors. The Southern Syncopated Orchestra, which
played for some lengthy period in London a little while back, showed
that popular music might yet be extremely clever and artistic in scope
and performance. There were high-brow musicians who would not even go to
listen to such, but preferred to condemn it unheard: the loss was
emphatically that of the high-brows. Humour abounded in this little band
of performers on such a strange array of instruments, and it appeared as
if the players enjoyed their work no less, at any rate, than their
audience. Yet their programme was full of "tunes." Is any tune in itself
"beastly"? Or is it that the brain-recognition, to which we have
alluded, decks out the tune in sordid or sweet trappings according to
its own nature? We certainly know that in other directions we are apt to
see things according to the colour of our own mental vision.
These tunes, however, that have become so popular, have the three
essentials of music strongly marked: they have decided rhythm,
attractive melody, and harmony at times quite good. Are we to try and
attract the multitude to music by muddling up or emasculating rhythm, or
by eschewing melody and banishing anything that intrigues the ear, and
by supplying an harmonic scheme that awakens no brain-recognition and
cannot in consequence be understood? Well, the conventional suburbanite
may gush over such indeterminate and invertebrate music, saying, "Yes,
isn't it just too lovely," but the rough and tumble individuals who make
up most of the world will plump for the "tune" every time. Give him what
he wants, and then induce him to want something better, but avoid the
mistake of trying to turn him into a musical vegetarian while his
meat-eating appetite has no liking for the diet.
The incongruity of some of the songs we hear sung is truly appalling: we
find a charming maid, love for whom might honour any man yet born,
singing "Less than the dust,... even less am I," and so on. Lies, all
lies, even though she lie melodically with charm and with apparent
conviction. We have passionate love-songs sung by guileless individuals
who would be inexpressibly shocked if you explained to them the meaning
of the sentiment to which they had been giving utterance. There are
operatic scenas, dealing with abduction and all sorts of uncomfortable
situations, and again youngsters declaim of their somewhat indecorous
emotions with gusto and--let us hope--a sublime insensibility of all
that they imply. They are warbling words to music, but they are not
singing, for the meaning is not there. The fault, of course, lies in the
traditional idea that all aspiring vocalists must learn certain things,
just as that all pianists should go through a corresponding round of
instrumental compositions. Why should they? Many of these classical
examples that we accept as the right things to sing or play are
hopelessly antiquated and out of date: they would not stand a chance as
new compositions to-day. Antiquity itself is only a recommendation if we
are collectors of curios. The literature of Art is far too comprehensive
for anyone to study it all, we can but touch a fragment of the whole:
why, then, should that fragment be determined by tradition and custom
alone? Will anybody's clothes fit me: am I not likely to secure a better
fit by being measured for my own? And why should not the same
consideration apply to my mental outfit? It is the same desperate fear
of originality and initiative, coupled with a certain unwillingness to
take individual responsibility: it is the "ditto" idea again, and yet a
writer has said "imitation is suicide." Let music be studied
historically and in its development, by all means, this indeed is
necessary: but to spend hours and hours learning to play or sing
something just because "everybody does it" is the sheerest waste of
time, unless the music so played or sung still bears a living message
for the performer.
Protest might also be registered against the unadulterated rubbish that
is put forward as a translation when a song or operatic excerpt of
foreign origin is rendered in English. Of grand opera even the _Daily
Telegraph_ is moved to say that "the translations are in most cases
literary nightmares." Mere baldness might be excused, and even doggerel
overlooked, but one has only to turn to almost any of the current
standard translations of foreign songs to see that the matter is worse
than this. To expect a student to get up and participate in this verbal
foolishness and ineptitude, by endeavouring to express as genuine the
balderdash that poses as sentiment and sense, is an insult to his or her
intelligence.
Finally there remains the "graveyard" school of composition. Here we
have the author or composer, or both of them, seeing the world much
worse than it is, and think that they do Art a service by putting their
realistic conceptions on permanent record. We would join issue with all
the various methods--song, literature, drama, and painting--of giving
the unpleasant a wider and more effective publicity. The suggestive
nature of all of these negative things cannot be overlooked, and
should not be underestimated. The Biblical advice is to the point:
"Whatsoever things are true, lovely, and of good report: think on
these." The graveyard and realistic schools reverse this sage precept,
saying, in effect, "Whatsoever things are nasty, unwholesome, and
disagreeable--make the most of them: they will always appeal to a
certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer
the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever
pointing the vision upward to what we may become, instead of allowing it
to grovel around in the very unpleasant circumstances in which some
people are liable to find themselves. The outward vision is transient,
the inner vision can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe
and hang on the outer edge of life,--we who should walk grandly? Is it
for man to tremble and quake--man who in his spiritual capacity becomes
the interpreter of God's message,--the focus of Divine Light?"[19]
[Note 19: Kirkham Davis, "Where dwells the Soul Serene."]