Scan 11
Musical Courier 1892-08-03: Vol 25 Iss 649, 1892
70 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 12. See the scan on archive.org.
1inside it, a boy in his shirt sleeves with a palm leaf fan. The wall is the east one of the Judson Memorial Church on Washington square, the boy is the blower of the fine organ, a gift of the Havemeyers, put in last May, built under the special direction of Mr. Le Roy A. Wood, the musical director of the place.
3Everything is square here, the square itself, the building, the church room a well of white pillars growing out of cool green carpet, the organ loft extending across the entire width of the church, and the organ whose keyboard faces the pulpit, the case running back the width of the loft. Everything, too, is memorial; the church itself, the organ, the exquisite head of "Adoration," by La Vache, on the memorial window, the gift of the choir to the church—it is like sailing down memory's river to visit the place.
5Here is a loft that is a loft! It is really an upper gallery and seats 150 persons. The organ is pure white, with gilt pipes. Mr. L. A. Wood, a faithful and conscientious teacher, has gained a metropolitan reputation by his work in this church for the past three years. Miss Pool is his organist, and the choir numbers some eighty persons.
7This choir is, in fact, a nursery or training school in sacred singing, graduating many fine singers to other churches. Mr. Wood's rare educational faculty, the fact that the singers are not paid or held for their services and the great popularity of the Judson memorial music are causes for this.
9Eight instruments with piano are frequent accompaniments. Although there is a quartet, the intention of the music is to lead the congregation. Mrs. Wood is leading soprano. She and her husband sing charming duos. Dr. Judson, who is son of the famous Baptist missionary of that name, was a professor of languages before studying for the ministry. Essentially an intellectual man, he is deeply interested in the music of his church—indeed in all music—and contemplates taking vocal lessons this coming season.
11Mendelssohn's Forty-third Psalm, Schubert's "The Lord Is My Shepherd," the Gounod "Ave Maria" and Tourge's "Lead, Kindly Light" have been sung here during the past month. Mr. Wood is the sort of man who feels responsible for the musical education of his choir and depends upon musical literature for it. The selection of music he feels more taxing than its teaching, so many good compositions being not at all suitable and many popular ones being unvaluable. In this loft I heard the first whisper ever uttered against Dudley Buck's music; not against the music, but the price; 75 cents for pamphlets usually purchased for 10 and 15 cents is felt in a choir of eighty voices.
13Mr. Wood accomplishes an enormous amount of work musically in connection with his choir. Glee and part songs are practiced at rehearsal for the limbering up of the voices and exercise in sight reading, "the greatest lack in the modern musical material," he says. He conducts, besides, a regular class in sight reading; also a class of sixteen young people, whom he is drilling as soloists—a special department in choir singing, he avers, and that there is altogether too much of it. The atmosphere of worship is being constantly broken in upon by a spirit of "Now, my turn!" "Now hear me!" from individuals and of music having no connection with the surrounding text.
15He has also a class of children whom he is training in sacred work. They have one corner of the organ loft, repeat responses independently, and sing one hymn themselves. As Dr. Judson remarks: "The young birds learning from the old ones how to sing." He makes a feature out of chanting—something unusual out of a Ritualistic church. He aims at unmechanical and intelligent reading of the usually "mumbled" words. As to expression, he teaches that the signs are used, not for arbitrary command, but as an indication to the waking up to the sentiment of the composition (a first-class idea). This fall the choir takes up oratorio work. "He watching over Israel" and selections from the "Redemption" are to be the first attempts. Mrs. Raymond is much interested in the choir of the Judson Memorial. "Mr. Wood attempts nothing but what he can do well," she said of him a few days since.
17Such a musician is indeed rare in an organ loft. It would seem as if a congregation, recognizing the immense educational benefit of such a man upon a community, would give him carte blanche to do whatever he might desire. The church is liberal and willing, but the average people have no idea whatever of the enormous benefit a man like this can be in his day. There is no realizing sense of the tremendous amount of difficulty that underlies a small piece of musical perfection. People imagine "Well, that is as it should be; anybody could do that." Would that the nation were more musical technically.
19FANNIE EDGAR THOMAS.
21NEW YORK COLLEGE OF MUSIC,
22128 and 130 EAST 58th STREET.
23ALEXANDER LAMBERT, Director.
24Mme. FURSCH-MADI, Principal of Vocal Department.
25ALL BRANCHES OF MUSIC TAUGHT
26Faculty comprises the most eminent instructors.
27NOTICE.—The New York College of Music will remain open during the entire summer.
29The Old Italian School.
30Mancini and Tosi.
31BY JOHN HOWARD.
33TOSI and Mancini stand loftily pre-eminent among the old Italian writers on voice. Indeed every other writer of any note has disappeared. Anyone who can quote from any contemporary of theirs has succeeded better than the present writer, who has made exhaustive search. Vallera Bertoletti and a few others did say a few marginal words about the mode of singing the long winded notes of the ancients, but the only bit of really practical advice I have been able to discover is the rule of Vallera to "breathe at the bars."
35Tosi and Mancini are often referred to, but rarely quoted from. "This is a belief of the old Italian maestri," writes the modern author, "such as Tosi and Mancini, who flourished in the heyday of song before the light of ample knowledge had been dimmed to misty tradition."
37But why should there be this mist and obscurity if Tosi and Mancini wrote upon the spot and at the time, apparently endeavoring to display all their vocal lore with no intentional reserve? At any rate let their printed words be closely scanned to discover, if not the secrets, at least their intention of secrecy.
39By the sale of Teschner's remarkable collection of vocal matter in Dresden I became the ecstatic possessor of a great amount of rare material, principally notes. I was indeed overwhelmed with joy on receiving both Tosi and Mancini in the original, as well as an English translation of the former and a French one of the latter. Still I thought it my duty to translate them both, as I had somewhere read the accusation of an enthusiast that the English translation gave the wrong impression. This I can reliably deny. Galliard has faithfully anglicized the Italian's redundancy.
41It was a thankless task. Fully one-half of both works consists of glowing eulogies on certain singers. For instance, "Ferri, born in Perugia, sang in the most wonderful manner; was a pupil of the famous school of—, &c." So far as I could see they all sang equally well, that is, like angels or demigods. Now the insinuating question is, did they sing in such superhuman fashion? Even these panegyrics were outdone by that wonderful Frenchman, Merseame, who visited Italy four times during the eighteenth century. He declared that the Italian singers could not be compared with the French, whose song he likened to the purling of the brooks and the sighing of the winds. He does not content himself with general praise, but sets up an exact criterion, the nightingale, which he declares was distinctly inferior to the Gallic warblers. By the way, Tosi seriously declares that this same bird, the nightingale, is the one we have learned the trill from, and he adds, with very modern wit, that the ancients (who flourished about fifty or 100 years before his writing) patterned after the feathered songsters of the barnyard. He complains just as loudly against "the moderns," just exactly as Plato did 3,000 years before him.
43Did they sing so magically well after all? Dr. Burney says that the feats of Faranelli would be but child's play to the singers of his own day. At any rate let Faranelli have the credit of acknowledging that Hogarth sang much better than he did himself. But was there in those days a more perfect voice than that of Patti, or Pescka-Leutner or Lehmann? Who, except the Athenian Davenport, would think of criticising Patti except in gentle reference to her signs of decadence. Fournié in 1866 writes of Miss Patti's wonderful evenness of registers, and who could complain of her tone? Yet nearly all the historic names were severely criticised. Catalini stands supreme. Still, I think it was Scudo who said that she had no middle notes, only low and high ones, and could never correct an ungraceful movement of the lower jaw in bravura passages. She certainly was tough, for when she was six years old she scandalized the nuns by the crowds she drew at mass; and she sang for the last time in Dublin at the age of seventy-three!
45Pasta (Judith Negri, an Israelite) never fully conquered her voice, which at first was dull and unequal, but her noble gestures excited the admiration of Talma. The critics are proud of suspecting that Patti has lost a note or two above. Pisaroni, a celebrity, was an acute soprano till twenty years of age, then lost several high notes after a serious illness, while the "chordes basses" acquired an unexpected sonority. Alboni's voice "undoubtedly had its imperfections. The sol, la, si, do were decidedly inferior," so writes a contemporary critic.
47The point is that, despite the much vaunted Italian method, these famous voices were acknowledged to be imperfect.
49From the start we see that execution bore a prominent part in the old Italian school; trills and roulades, arpeggiate diatonic and chromatic runs were essential ingredients in the vocal mixture. How sudden and complete has been the revolution in the public taste!
51What reader can recall a successful trill issuing from the hero's throat or the villain's fauces?
53But in those days all singers flourished in frequent grace and cadenza. Now unmeaning velocity offends; a trill from a male throat sounds almost absurd to the unsophisticated listener. I recall a private singing of a promising young tenor before an audience of country girls, new to the tricks of the lyric trade. The lack of triple rhythm puzzled them at first, but light came when the tenor started his highly prized trill, and a burst of unconstrained laughter showed how readily they had discovered that it was a comic song after all!
55If any peruser of these lines has thrown a stone at a crowing rooster just as he begins his salute to the rising sun he can imagine how that unfortunate trill gurgled and died in the throat of the triller! But all this is far beneath the dignity of the subject.
57Both Tosi and Mancini lay strong stress upon the portamento. Tosi calls it the greatest grace of song, and so it is. We read of Pisaroni that the loss of a few highest notes was atoned for by a grand style and a portamento which recalled the large manner of Pacchioretti and Guardagni. In such descriptions of the style of singers these writers certainly excelled; but I can find nothing that could be traditionally sent down even regarding the portamento. We are not told what constitutes a fine one or where it should be employed, but only that certain singers used it well. How can that assist us?
59The most rigid scrutiny has failed to detect any valuable rules or even hints as to the great first object of all voice culture—the formation of tone. It is true that the whole setting of the throat is spoken of by Mancini, and it may be inferred that it is something peculiar, some especial mode of combining the vocal organs; but there is not the slightest hint to guess from. Mancini does advise opening the mouth more widely during the crescendo and closing it during the diminuendo of a swelled note, and that is certainly a bad rule. Here is a description of his mode of giving a lesson: "I tell my pupil to open the mouth. If he does not do it I place him before me and tell him to open the mouth (aprire la bocca)." Now, if there is another practical word regarding the posing of the voice—always excepting the misunderstood advice to allow the teeth to be perpendicular to each other as in smiling (this does not refer to the lips)—then would the writer be truly thankful to learn that his very still hunt after an Italian tradition could be somewhat enlivened by an active fact of appreciable importance.
61My impression is that the Italians of Tosi's or Mancini's day—and nothing later than Mancini is old Italian, for it could have no need of being traditional—did sing with a general taste and virtuosity which has not been equaled as far as tone quality and flexibility are involved. That they had the broad, elevated style of our later and still extant singers is impossible, for their music could not have inspired it. What I do complain of is that at this present time a certain large and sincerely honest class is being sacrificed to this too utterly foolish notion that there is or can be at this present time any practical representation of an old Italian method, supposing (which I doubt) there ever was a distinctive school at any time.
63The time, I think, has come when I should speak positively. How many young people brought up in the luxury of release from wearing hours of actual toil have still at command the somewhat superior, though lazily acquired, education and taste (for any art) which their long leisure has engrafted? Industry, that main ingredient of genius, according to a few towering names, is now, by some regular accident, forced upon them. The young man, more often woman, has a thin smearing of piano playing and an instinctive recognition of musical forms. The youthful growth and youthful years required to enter with any hope into the contest for really exceptional piano playing have already passed. It is much in their favor that the majority of teachers believe that vocal training should not be commenced before sixteen or seventeen, though the writer, with Morell Mackenzie and many others, thinks differently. I have in mind several who have spent ten years and exhausted not only their own patrimony, but every dollar that their generous relatives could furnish, and yet have failed utterly.
65And why have they failed so completely? Because, for one thing, there is generally supposed to be a wonder working old Italian method, with its traditional secrets handed down to the present generation. The high prices demanded would surely imply most valuable and exclusive knowledge; nothing less would excuse the terms demanded.
67What are the refractory facts? As there are no morsels of advice in these authors, the only ones who can be called "old," there can be no old Italian school. Pisaroni recalled the grand style of Pacchioretti, the last of the castri. Had there been any secret principles would not Bennati, his pupil, have at least hinted at them in his writings? Men are living to-day who might have known Bennati.
69No, the present diverse modes of teaching are strictly modern. In no Italian work is there the faintest suggestion of the modern devices now employed, of the "pure" practice of nasal tones, of staccato high notes, of "forward" tones, of tones made to resound at the bridge of the nose. It is all comparatively recent. Neither in Tosi nor in Man-
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.