To the girl who aspires to have an operatic career, who has the requisite vocal gifts, physical health, stage presence and—most important of all—a high degree of intelligence, the great essential is regular daily work. This implies regular lessons, regular practice, regular exercise, regular sleep, regular meals—in fact, a life of regularity. The daily lesson in most cases seems an imperative necessity. Lessons strung over a series of years merely because it seems more economical to take one lesson a week instead of seven rarely produce the expected results. Marchesi, with her famous wisdom on vocal matters, advised twenty minutes a day and then not more than ten minutes at a time.
For nine months I studied with the great Parisian maestra and in my tenth month I made my début. Of course, I had sung a great deal before that time and also could play both the piano and the violin. A thorough musical knowledge is always valuable. The early years of the girl who is destined for an operatic career may be much more safely spent with Czerny exercises for the piano or Kreutzer studies for the violin than with Concone Solfeggios for the voice. Most girls over-exercise their voices during the years when they are too delicate. It always pays to wait and spend the time in developing the purely musical side of study.
More voices collapse from over-practice and more careers collapse from under-work than from anything else. The girl who hopes to become a prima donna will dream of her work morning, noon and night. Nothing can take it out of her mind. She will seek to study every imaginable thing that could in any way contribute to her equipment. There is so much to learn that she must work hard to learn all. Even now I study pretty regularly two hours a day, but I rarely sing more than a few minutes. I hum over my new rôles with my accompanist, Frank La Forge, and study them in that way. It was to such methods as this that Marchesi attributed the wonderful longevity of the voices of her best-known pupils. When they followed the advice of the dear old maestra their voices lasted a long, long time. Her vocal exercises were little more than scales sung very slowly, single, sustained tones repeated time and again until her critical ear was entirely satisfied, and then arpeggios. After that came more complicated technical drills to prepare the pupil for the fioriture work demanded in the more florid operas. At the base of all, however, were the simplest kind of exercises. Through her discriminating sense of tone quality, her great persistence and her boundless enthusiasm, she used these simple vocal materials with a wizardry that produced great prime donne.
Marchesi laid great stress upon the use of the head voice. This she illustrated to all her pupils herself, at the same time not hesitating to insist that it was impossible for a male teacher to teach the head voice properly. (Marchesi herself carried out her theories by refusing to teach any male applicants.) She never let any pupil sing above F on the top line of the treble staff in anything but the head voice. They rarely ever touched their highest notes with full voice. The upper part of the voice was conserved with infinite care to avoid early breakdowns. Even when the pupils sang the top notes they did it with the feeling that there was still something in reserve. In my operatic work at present I feel this to be of greatest importance. The singer who exhausts herself upon the top notes is neither artistic nor effective.
The American girl who fancies that she has less chances in opera than her sisters of the European countries is silly. Look at the lists of artists at the Metropolitan, for instance. The list includes twice as many artists of American nationality as of any other nation. This is in no sense the result of pandering to the patriotism of the American public. It is simply a matter of supply and demand. New Yorkers demand the best opera in the world and expect the best voices in the world. The management would accept fine artists with fine voices from China or Africa or the North Pole if they were forthcoming. A diamond is a diamond no matter where it comes from. The management virtually ransacks the musical marts of Europe every year for fine voices. Inevitably the list of American artists remains higher. On the whole, the American girls have better natural voices, more ambition and are willing to study seriously, patiently and energetically. This is due in a measure to better physical conditions in America and in Australia, another free country that has produced unusual singers. What is the result? America is now producing the best and enjoying the best. There is more fine music of all kinds now in New York during one week than one can get in Paris in a month and more than one can get in Milan in six months. This has made New York a great operatic and musical center. It is a wonderful opportunity for Americans who desire to enter opera.
There was a time in the halcyon days of the old coloratura singers when the opera singer was not expected to have very much more intelligence than a parrot. Any singer who could warble away at runs and trills was a great artist. The situation has changed entirely to-day. The modern opera-goer demands great acting as well as great singing. The opera house calls for brains as well as voices. There should properly be great and sincere rivalry among fine singers. The singer must listen to other singers with minute care and patience, and then try to learn how to improve herself by self-study and intelligent comparison. Just as the great actor studies everything that pertains to his rôle, so the great singer knows the history of the epoch of the opera in which he is to appear, he knows the customs, he may know something of the literature of the time. In other words, he must live and think in another atmosphere before he can walk upon the stage and make the audience feel that he is really a part of the picture. Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree gave a presentation that was convincing and beautiful, while the mediocre actor, not willing to give as much brain work to his performance, falls far short of an artistic performance.
A modern performance of any of the great works as they are presented at the Metropolitan is rehearsed with great care and attention to historical detail. Instances of this are the performances of L'Amore di Tre Re, Carmen, Bohême, and Lohengrin, as well as such great works as Die Meistersinger, and Tristan und Isolde.
Few singers seem to realize that an operatic career will be determined in its success very largely through physical strength, all other factors being present in the desired degree. That is, the singer must be strong physically in order to succeed in opera. This applies to women as well as to men. No one knows what the physical strain is, how hard the work and study are. In front of you is a sea of highly intelligent, cultured people, who for years have been trained in the best traditions of the opera. They pay the highest prices paid anywhere for entertainment. They are entitled to the best. To face such an audience and maintain the high traditions of the house through three hours of a complicated modern score is a musical, dramatic and intellectual feat that demands, first of all, a superb physical condition. Every day of my life in New York I go for a walk, mostly around the reservoir in Central Park, because it is high and the air is pure and free. As a result I seldom have a cold, even in mid-winter. I have not missed a performance in eight years, and this, of course, is due to the fact that my health is my first daily consideration.
Pasquale Amato, for so many years the leading baritone at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, was born at Naples March 21st, 1878. He was intended for the career of an engineer and was educated at the Instituto Tecnico Domenico. He then studied at the Conservatory of Naples from 1896 to 1899. His teachers there were Cucialla and Carelli. He made his début as Germont in La Traviata in the Teatro Bellini at Naples in 1900. Thereafter his successes have been exceptionally great in the music centers of South America, Italy, Russia, England, Egypt, and Germany. He has created numerous rôles at the Metropolitan Opera House, among them Jack Rance in the Girl of the Golden West; Golaud in Pelleas and Melisande (Milan); L'Amore di Tre Re; Cyrano (Damrosch); Lodoletta (Mascagni); Madame Sans Gene. He has visited South America as an artist no less than ten times. His voice is susceptible of fine dramatic feeling.
When I was about sixteen years of age my voice was sufficiently settled to encourage my friends and family to believe that I might become a singer. This is a proud discovery for an Italian boy, as singing—especially operatic singing—is held in such high regard in Italy that one naturally looks forward with joy to a career in the great opera houses of one's native country and possibly to those over the sea. At eighteen I was accordingly entered in the conservatory, but not without many conditions, which should be of especial interest to young American vocal students. The teachers did not immediately accept me as good vocal material. I was recognized to have musical inclinations and musical gifts and I was placed under observation so that it might be determined whether the state-supported conservatory should direct my musical education along vocal lines or along other lines.
This is one of the cardinal differences between musical education in America and musical education in Italy. In America a pupil suddenly determines that he is destined to become a great opera singer and forthwith he hires a teacher to make him one. He might have been destined to become a plumber, or a lawyer, or a comedian, but that has little to do with the matter if he has money and can employ a teacher. In Italy such a direction of talents would be considered a waste to the individual and to the state. Of course the system has its very decided faults, for a corps of teachers with poor or biased judgment could do a great deal of damage by discouraging real talent, as was, indeed, the case with the great Verdi, who at the age of eighteen was refused admission to the Milan Conservatory by the director, Basili, on the score of lack of talent.
However, for the most part the judges are experienced and skilful men, and when a pupil has been under surveillance for some time the liability of an error in judgment is very slight. Accordingly, after I had spent some time in getting acquainted with music through the study of Notation, Sight-singing, Theory, Harmony, Piano, etc., I was informed at the end of two years that I had been selected for an operatic career. I can remember the time with great joy. It meant a new life to me, for I was certain that with the help of such conservative masters I should succeed.
On the whole, at this time, I consider the Italian system a very wise one for it does not fool away any time with incompetence. I have met so many young musicians who have shown indications of great study but who seem destitute of talent. It seems like coaxing insignificant shrubs to become great oak trees. No amount of coaxing or study will give them real talent if they do not have it, so why waste the money of the state and the money of the individual upon it. On the other hand, wherever in the world there is real talent, the state should provide money to develop it, just as it provides money to educate the young.
So much has been said about the Old Italian Vocal Method that the very name brings ridicule in some quarters. Nothing has been the subject for so much charlatanry. It is something that any teacher, good or bad, can claim in this country. Every Italian is of course very proud indeed of the wonderful vocal traditions of Italy, the centuries of idealism in search of better and better tone production. There are of course certain statements made by great voice teachers of other days that have been put down and may be read in almost any library in large American cities. But that these things make a vocal method that will suit all cases is too absurd to consider. The good sense of the old Italian master would hold such a plan up to ridicule. Singing is first of all an art, and an art can not be circumscribed by any set of rules or principles.
The artist must, first of all, know a very great deal about all possible phases of the technic of his art and must then adjust himself to the particular problem before him. Therefore we might say that the Italian method was a method and then again that it was no method. As a matter of fact it is thousands of methods—one for each case or vocal problem. For instance, if I were to sing by the same means that Mr. Caruso employs it would not at all be the best thing for my voice, yet for Mr. Caruso it is without question the very best method, or his vocal quality would not be in such superb condition after constant years of use. He is the proof of his own method.
I should say that the Italian vocal teacher teaches, first of all, with his ears. He listens with the greatest possible intensity to every shade of tone-color until his ideal tone reveals itself. This often requires months and months of patience. The teacher must recognize the vocal deficiencies and work to correct them. For instance, I never had to work with my high tones. They are to-day produced in the same way in which I produced them when I was a boy. Fortunately I had teachers who recognized this and let it go at that.
Possibly the worst kind of a vocal teacher is the one who has some set plan or device or theory which must be followed "willy-nilly" in order that the teacher's theories may be vindicated. With such a teacher no voice is safe. The very best natural voices have to follow some patent plan just because the teacher has been taught in one way, is inexperienced, and has not good sense enough to let nature's perfect work alone. Both of my teachers knew that my high tones were all right and the practice was directed toward the lower tones. They worked me for over ten months on scales and sustained tones until the break that came at E flat above the Bass Clef was welded from the lower tones to the upper tones so that I could sing up or down with no ugly break audible.
I was drilled at first upon the vowel "ah." I hear American vocal authorities refer to "ah" as in father. That seems to me too flat a sound, one lacking in real resonance. The vowel used in my case in Italy and in hundreds of other cases I have noted is a slightly broader vowel, such as may be found half-way between the vowel "ah" as in father, and the "aw" as in law. It is not a dull sound, yet it is not the sound of "ah" in father. Perhaps the word "doff" or the first syllable of Boston, when properly pronounced, gives the right impression.
I do not know enough of American vocal training to give an intelligent criticism, but I wonder if American vocal teachers give as much attention to special parts of the training as teachers in Italy do. I hope they do, as I consider it very necessary. Consider the matter of staccato. A good vocal staccato is really a very difficult thing—difficult when it is right; that is, when on the pitch—every time, clear, distinct, and at the same time not hard and stiff. It took me weeks to acquire the right way of singing such a passage as Un di, quando le veneri, from Traviata, but those were very profitable weeks—
Accurate attack in such a passage is by no means easy. Anyone can sing it—but how it is sung makes the real difference.
The public has very odd ideas about singing. For instance, it would be amazed to learn that Trovatore is a much more difficult rôle for me to sing and sing right than either Parsifal or Pelleas and Melisande. This largely because of the pure vocal demands and the flowing style. The Debussy opera, wonderful as it is, does not begin to make the vocal demands that such a work as Trovatore does.
When the singer once acquires proficiency, the acquisition of new rôles comes very easy indeed. The main difficulty is the daily need for drilling the voice until it has the same quality every day. It can be done only by incessant attention. Here are some of the exercises I do every day with my accompanist:
David Bispham, in many ways the most distinguished of all American singers, was born in Philadelphia January 5th, 1857. Educated at Haverford College, Pa. At first a highly successful amateur in Philadelphia choirs and theatricals, he went to Milan in 1886, studying with Vannuccini, Lamperti and later in London with Shakespeare and Randegger. His operatic début was made in Messager's Basoche at the Royal English Opera House, 1891. In 1892 he appeared as Kurvenal and met with great favor. His Wagnerian rôles have been especially distinctive since the start. From 1896 to 1909 he sang alternately at the Metropolitan in New York and at Covent Garden in London, and was admittedly one of the foremost attractions of those great companies in the golden era of our operatic past. He was also immensely in demand as a recital and as an oratorio singer and as a dramatic reader. Few singers have shown the versatility and mastery of David Bispham and few have been so justly entitled to the academic honors LL.D., B.A., and Mus. Doc., which he had earned. He was the author of numerous articles on singing—the very successful autobiography, "A Quaker Singer's Reminiscences," and the collections, "David Bispham's Recital Album," "The David Bispham Song Book" (for schools). He was also ever a strong champion of the use of the English language in singing. He died in New York City Oct. 2d, 1921.
So many things enter into the great problem of interpretation in singing that it is somewhat difficult to state definitely just what the young singer should consider the most important. Generally speaking, the following factors are of prime significance:
1. Natural Aptitude.—You will notice that foremost consideration is given to those broad general qualities without which all the technical and musical training of the world is practically worthless. The success of the art worker in all lines depends first upon the nature of the man or woman. Technical training of the highest and best kind is essential, but that which moves great audiences is not alone the mechanics of an art, but rather the broad education, experience, ideals, culture, the human sympathy and magnetism of the artist.
2. The Value of Education and Culture.—I cannot emphasize too strongly the value of a good general education and wide culture for the singer. The day has passed when a pretty face or a well-rounded ankle could be mistaken for art on the operatic stage. The public now demands something more than the heroic looking young fellow who comes down to the footlights with the assurance of youth and offers, for real vocal art, a voice fresh but crudely trained, and a bungling interpretation.
Good education has often been responsible for the phenomenal success of American singers in European opera houses. Before the last war, in nearly all of the great operatic centers of the Continent, one found Americans ranking with the greatest artists in Europe. This was a most propitious condition, for it meant that American audiences have been compelled to give the long-delayed recognition to our own singers, and methods of general and vocal education.
In most cases the young people of America who aspire to operatic triumphs come from a somewhat better class than singers do in Europe. They have had, in most cases, better educational, cultural and home advantages than the average European student. Their minds are trained to study intelligently; they are acquainted with the history of the great nations of the world; their tastes are cultivated, and they are filled with the American energy which is one of the marvels of the centuries. More than this, they have had a kind of moral uplift in their homes which is of immense value to them. They have higher ideals in life, they are more businesslike and they keep their purposes very clearly in view. This has created jealousy in some European centers; but it is simply a case of the survival of the fittest, and Europe was compelled to bow in recognition of this. Vocal art in our own land is no longer to be ignored, for our standards are as high as the highest in the world, and we are educating a race of singers of which any country might be proud.
3. Good Musical Training.—A thorough musical training—that is, a training upon some musical instrument such as the piano—is extremely desirable, but not absolutely essential; for the instrument called the Human Voice can be played on as effectively as a violin. The singer who is convinced of his ability, but who has not had such advantages in early youth, should not be discouraged. He can acquire a thorough knowledge of the essentials later on, but he will have to work very much harder to get his knowledge—as I was obliged to do. Artistic ability is by no means a certain quality. The famous art critic, Vassari, has called our attention to the fact that one painter who produced wonderful pictures had an exhaustive technical training, another arising at his side who also achieved wonderful results had to secure them by means of much bungling self-study. It is very hard to repress artistic ability. As the Bible says: "Many waters cannot quench love." So it is with music; if the ability is there, it will come to the front through fire and water.
4. Accurate and Rational Vocal Training.—I have added the word rational for it seems a necessary term at a time when so much vocal teaching is apparently in the hands of "faddists." There is only one way to sing, that is the right way, the way that is founded upon natural conditions. So much has been said in print about breathing, and placing the voice, and resonance, that anything new might seem redundant at this time. The whole thing in a nutshell is simply to make an effort to get the breath under such excellent control that it will obey the will so easily and fluently that the singer is almost unconscious of any means he may employ to this end. This can come only through long practice and careful observation. When the breath is once under proper control the supply must be so adjusted that neither too much nor too little will be applied to the larynx at one time. How to do this can be discovered only by much practice and self-criticism. When the tone has been created it must be reinforced and colored by passing through the mouth and nose, and the latter is a very present help in time of vocal trouble. This leads to a good tone on at least twenty-six steps and half-steps of the scale and with twenty or more vowel sounds—no easy task by any means. All this takes time, but there is no reason why it should take an interminable amount of time. If good results are not forthcoming in from nine months to a year, something is wrong with either the pupil or the teacher.
The matter of securing vocal flexibility should not be postponed too long, but may in many instances be taken up in conjunction with the studies in tone production, after the first principles have been learned. Thereafter one enters upon the endless and indescribably interesting field of securing a repertoire. Only a teacher with wide experience and intimacy with the best in the vocal literature of the world can correctly grade and select pieces suitable to the ever-changing needs of the pupil.
No matter how wonderful the flexibility of the voice, no matter how powerful the tones, no matter how extensive the repertoire, the singer will find all this worthless unless he possesses a voice that is susceptible to the expression of every shade of mental and emotional meaning which his intelligence, experience and general culture have revealed to him in the work he is interpreting. At all times his voice must be under control. Considered from the mechanical standpoint, the voice resembles the violin, the breath, as it passes over the vocal cords, corresponding to the bow and the resonance chambers corresponding to the resonance chambers in the violin.
5. Familiarity With Vocal Traditions.—We come to the matter of the study of the traditional methods of interpreting vocal masterpieces. We must, of course, study these traditions, but we must not be slaves to them. In other words, we must know the past in order to interpret masterpieces properly in the present. We must not, however, sacrifice that great quality—individuality—for slavery to convention. If the former Italian method of rendering certain arias was marred by the tremolo of some famous singers, there is no good artistic reason why any one should retain anything so hideous as a tremolo solely because it is traditional.
There is a capital story of a young American singer who went to a European opera house with all the characteristic individuality and inquisitiveness of his people. In one opera the stage director told him to go to the back of the stage before singing his principal number and then walk straight down to the footlights and deliver the aria. "Why must I go to the back first?" asked the young singer. The director was amazed and blustered: "Why? Why, because the great Rubini did it that way—he created the part; it is the tradition." But the young singer was not satisfied, and finally found an old chorus man who had sung with Rubini, and asked him whether the tradition was founded upon a custom of the celebrated singer. "Yes," replied the chorus man, "da gretta Rubini he granda man. He go waya back; then he comea front; then he sing. Ah, grandissimo!" "But," persisted the young American, "Why did he go to the back before he sang?" "Oh!" exclaimed the excited Italian; "Why he go back? He go to spit!"
Farcical as this incident may seem, many musical traditions are founded upon customs with quite as little musical or esthetic importance. Many traditions are to-day quite as useless as the buttons on the sleeves of our coats, although these very buttons were at one time employed by our forefathers to fasten back the long cuffs. There are, however, certain traditional methods of rendering great masterpieces, and particularly those marked by the florid ornamentation of the days of Handel, Bach and Haydn, which the singer must know. Unfortunately, many of these traditions have not been preserved in print in connection with the scores themselves, and the only way in which the young singer can acquire a knowledge of them is through hearing authoritative artists, or from teachers who have had wide and rich experience.
6. Freedom of Mind.—Under ideal conditions the mind should be free for music study and for public performance. This is not always possible; and some artists under great mental pressure have done their best work solely because they felt that the only way to bury sorrow and trouble was to thrust themselves into their artistic life and thus forget the pangs of misfortune. The student, however, should do everything possible to have his mind free so that he can give his best to his work. One who is wondering where the next penny is coming from is in a poor condition to impress an audience. Nevertheless, if the real ability is there it is bound to triumph over all obstacles.
7. Good Health.—Good health is one of the great factors of success in singing. Who needs a sounder mind than the artist? Good health comes from good, sensible living. The singer must never forget that the instrument he plays upon is a part of his body and that that instrument depends for its musical excellence and general condition upon good health. A $20,000 Stradivarius would be worthless if it were placed in a tub of water; and a larynx that earns for its owner from $500 to $1,500 a night is equally valueless when saturated with the poisons that come from intemperate or unwise living. Many of the singer's throat troubles arise from an unhealthy condition of the stomach caused by excesses of diet; but, aside from this, a disease localized in any other part of the body affects the throat sympathetically and makes it difficult for the singer to get good results. Recital work, with its long fatiguing journeys on railroads, together with the other inconveniences of travel and the responsibility and strain that come from knowing that one person alone is to hold from 1,000 to 5,000 people interested for nearly two hours, demands a very sound physical condition.
8. Life Experience.—Culture does not come from the schoolroom alone. The refining processes of life are long and varied. As the violin gains in richness of tone and intrinsic value with age, so the singer's life experience has an effect upon the character of his singing. He must have seen life in its broadest sense, to place himself in touch with human sympathy. To do this and still retain the freshness and sweetness of his voice should be his great aim. The singer who lives a narrow and bigoted existence rarely meets with wide popular approval. The public wants to hear in a voice that wonderful something that tells them that it has had opportunities to know and to understand the human side of song, not giving parrot-like versions of some teacher's way of singing, but that the understanding comes from the very center of the mind, heart and soul. This is particularly true in the field of the song recital. Most of the renowned recital singers of the last half century, including Schumann-Heink, Sembrich, Wüllner, the Henschels and others, were considerably past their youth when they made their greatest successes. A painting fresh from the artist's brush is raw, hard and uninteresting, till time, with its damp and dust, night and day, heat and cold, gives the enriching touch which adds so wonderfully to the softness and beauty of a picture. We singers are all living canvases. Time, and time only, can give us those shades and tints which reveal living experience. The young artist should hear many of the best singers, actors, and speakers, should read many of the best books, should see many beautiful pictures and wonderful buildings. But most of all, he should know and study many people and learn of their joys and their sorrows, their successes and their failures, their strength and their weaknesses, their loves and their hates. In all art human life is reflected, and this is particularly true in the case of vocal art. For years, in my youth, I never failed to attend all of the musical events of consequence in my native city. This was of immense value to me, since it gave me the means of cultivating my own judgment of what was good or bad in singing. Do not fear that you will become blasé. If you have the right spirit every musical event you attend will spur you on.
You may say that it is expensive to hear great singers, and that you can only attend recitals and the opera occasionally. If this is really the case you still have a means of hearing singers which you should not neglect. I refer to the reproducing machines which have grown to be of such importance in vocal education. Phonograph records are nothing short of marvelous, and my earnestness in this cause is shown by the fact that I have long advocated their employment in the public schools, and have placed the matter before the educational authorities of New York. I earnestly urge the music teachers of this country, who are working for the real musical development of our children, to take this matter up in all seriousness. I can assure them that their efforts will bring them rich dividends in increased interest in musical work of their pupils, and the forming of a musical public. But nothing but the classics of song must be used. The time for the scorning of "high-brow" songs is past, and music must help this country to rid itself of the vogue of the "low-brow" and the "tough." Let singers strive to become educated ornaments of their lofty profession.
9. Personal Magnetism.—One of the most essential. The subject of "personal magnetism" is ridiculed by some, of course, but rarely laughed at by the artist who has experienced the astonishing phenomena in the opera house or the concert room. Like electricity it is intangible, indefinable, indescribable, but makes its existence known by manifestations that are almost uncanny. If personal magnetism does not exist, how then can we account for the fact that one pianist can sit down to the instrument and play a certain piece, and that another pianist could play the same piece with the same technical effect but losing entirely the charm and attractiveness with which the first pianist imbued the composition? Personal magnetism does not depend upon personal beauty nor erudition nor even upon perfect health. Henry Irving and Sarah Bernhardt were certainly not beautiful, but they held the world of the theater in the palm of their hand. Some artists have really been in the last stages of severe illness but have, nevertheless, possessed the divine electric spark to inspire hundreds, as did the hectic Chopin when he made his last famous visit to England and Scotland.
Personal magnetism is not a kind of hypnotic influence to be found solely in the concert hall or the theater. Most artists possess it to a certain degree. Without this subtle and mysterious force, success with the public never comes.
10. Idealism.—Ideals are the flowers of youth. Only too often they are not tenderly cared for, and the result is that many who have been on the right track are turned in the direction of failure by materialism. It is absolutely essential for the young singer to have high ideals. Direct your efforts to the best in whatever branch of vocal art you determine to undertake. Do not for a moment let mediocrity or the substitution of artificial methods enter your vision. Holding to your ideal will mean costly sacrifices to you; but all sacrifices are worth while if one can realize one's ideal. The ideal is only another term for Heaven to me. If we could all attain to the ideal, we would all be in a kind of earthly Paradise. It has always seemed to me that when our Lord said "The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand," he meant that it is at hand for us to possess now; that is the ideal in life.
Dame Butt was born at Southwick, Sussex, February 1, 1873. Her first lessons were with D. W. Rootham in Bristol.
In 1889 she won a scholarship at the Royal College of music where the teacher was J. H. Blower. Later she studied for short periods with Bouhy in Paris and Etelka Gerster in Berlin. Her début was made as Ursula in Sullivan's setting of the Longfellow poem, Golden Legend. Her success was immediate and very great. She became in demand at all of the great English musical festivals and also sang before enormous audiences for years in the great English cities. In 1900 she married the noted English baritone R. Kennerly Rumford and together they have made many tours, including a tour of the world, appearing everywhere with continued success. Her voice is one of rich, full contralto quality with such individual characteristics that great English composers have written special works to reveal these great natural gifts. Dame Butt received her distinction of "Dame" from King George in 1920. Her happy family life with her children has won her endless admirers among musical people everywhere.
It must be obvious to all aspiring vocal students that splendid good health is well nigh indispensable to the singer. There have been singers, of course, who have had physical afflictions that have made their public appearances extremely painful, but they have succeeded in spite of these unfortunate drawbacks. In fact, if the young singer is ambitious and has that wonderful gift of directing her efforts in the way most likely to bring fortunate results, even physical weakness may be overcome. By this I mean that the singer will work out some plan for bringing her physical condition to the standard that fine singing demands. I believe most emphatically that the right spirit will conquer obstacles that often seem impassable. One might safely say that nine-tenths of the successes in all branches of artistic work are due to the inextinguishable fire that burns in the heart and mind of the art worker and incites him to pass through any ordeal in order to deliver his message to the world.
The cruel part of it all is that many aspire to become great singers who can never possibly have their hopes realized. Natural selection rather than destiny seems to govern this matter. The ugly caterpillar seems like an unpromising candidate for the brilliant career of the butterfly, and it oftentimes happens that students who seem unpromising to some have just the qualities which, with the right time, instruction and experience, will entitle them to great success. It is the little ant who hopes to grow iridescent wings, and who travels through conservatory after conservatory, hoping to find the magic chrysalis that will do this, who is to be pitied. Great success must depend upon special gifts, intellectual as well as vocal. Oh, if we only had some instinct, like that possessed by animals, that would enable us to determine accurately in advance the safest road for us to take, the road that will lead us to the best development of our real talents—not those we imagine we may have or those which the flattery of friends have grafted upon us! Mr. Rumford and I have witnessed so much very hard and very earnest work carried on by students who have no rational basis to hope for success as singers, that we have been placed in the uncomfortable position of advising young singers to seek some other life work.
The eternal question, "At what age shall I commence to study singing?" is always more or less amusing to the experienced singer. If the singer's spirit is in the child, nothing will stop his singing. He will sing from morning until night, and seems to be guided in most cases by an all-providing Nature that makes its untutored efforts the very best kind of practice. Unless the child is brought into contact with very bad music he is not likely to be injured. Children seem to be trying their best to prove the Darwinian theory by showing us that they can mimic quite as well as monkeys. The average child comes into the better part of his little store of wisdom through mimicry. Naturally if the little vocal student is taken to the vaudeville theatre, where every imaginable vocal law is smashed during a three-hour performance, and if the child observes that the smashing process is followed by the enthusiastic applause of the unthinking audience, it is only reasonable to suppose that the child will discover in this what he believes to be the most approved art of singing.
It is evident then that the first thing which the parent of the musical child should consider is that of teaching him to appreciate what is looked upon as good and what is looked upon as bad. Although many singers with fine voices have appeared in vaudeville, the others must be regarded as "horrible" examples, and the child should know that they are such. On the other hand, it is quite evident that the more good singing that the child hears in the impressionable years of its youth the greater will be the effect upon the mind which is to direct the child's musical future. This is a branch of the vocalist's education which may begin long before the actual lessons. If it is carefully conducted the teacher should have far less difficulty in starting the child with the actual work. The only possible danger might be that the child's imitative faculty could lead it to extremes of pitch in imitating some singer. Even this is hardly more likely to injure it than the shouting and screaming which often accompanies the play of children.
The actual time of starting must depend upon the individual. It is never too early for him to start in acquiring his musical knowledge. Everything he might learn of music itself, through the study of the piano or any other instrument would all become a part of his capital when he became a singer. Those singers are fortunate whose musical knowledge commenced with the cradle and whose first master was that greatest of all teachers, the mother. Speaking generally, it seems to be the impression of singing teachers that voice students should not commence the vocal side of their studies until they are from sixteen to seventeen years of age. In this connection, consider my own case. My first public appearance with orchestra was when I was fourteen. It was in Bristol, England, and among other things I sang Ora Pro Nobis from Gounod's Workers.
I was fortunate in having in my first teacher, D. W. Rootham, a man too thoroughly blessed with good British common sense to have any "tricks." He had no fantastic way of doing things, no proprietary methods, that none else in the world was supposed to possess. He listened for the beautiful in my voice and, as his sense of musical appreciation was highly cultivated, he could detect faults, explain them to me and show me how to overcome them by purely natural methods. The principal part of the process was to make me realize mentally just what was wrong and then what was the more artistic way of doing it.
After all, singing is singing, and I am convinced that my master's idea of just letting the voice grow with normal exercise and without excesses in any direction was the best way for me. It was certainly better than hours and hours of theory, interesting to the student of physiology, but often bewildering to the young vocalist. Real singing with real music is immeasurably better than ages of conjecture. It appears that some students spend years in learning how they are going to sing at some glorious day in the future, but it never seems to occur to them that in order to sing they must really use their voices. Of course, I do not mean to infer that the student must omit the necessary preparatory work. Solfeggios, for instance, and scales are extremely useful. Concone, tried and true, gives excellent material for all students. But why spend years in dreaming of theories regarding singing when everyone knows that the theory of singing has been the battleground for innumerable talented writers for centuries? Even now it is apparently impossible to reconcile all the vocal writers, except in so far as they all modestly admit that they have rediscovered the real old Italian school. Perhaps they have. But, admitting that an art teacher rediscovered the actual pigments used by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt or Raphael, he would have no little task in creating a student who could duplicate Mona Lisa, The Night Watch or the Sistine Madonna.
After leaving Rootham, I won the four hundred guinea scholarship at the Royal College of Music and studied with Henry Blower. This I followed with a course with Bouhy in Paris and Etelka Gerster in Berlin. Mr. Rumford and I both concur in the opinion that it is necessary for the student who would sing in any foreign language to study in the country in which the language is spoken. In no other way can one get the real atmosphere. The preparatory work may be done in the home country, but if one fails to taste of the musical life of the country in which the songs came into being, there seems to be an indefinable absence of the right flavor. I believe in employing the native tongue for songs in recital work. It seems narrow to me to do otherwise. At the same time, I have always been a champion for songs written originally with English texts, and have sung innumerable times with programs made from English lyrics.
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.