Scan 6
Musical Courier 1895-04-17: Vol 30 Iss 789, 1895
61 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 7. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1MUSICAL PROGRESS
3PARIS.
4CHATS WITH MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS ON MUSICAL STUDY IN PARIS.
5(Continued from last week.)
7"You say that much time and money might have been saved by preparation at home. What, for instance?"
8"Solfège, instrumentation, technic, gymnastics, musical literature, at least two languages, and the exercise of the memory.
9"Voice placing and répertoire are all that professors engage to do for pupils generally here. But in order to have voice placing and répertoire taught her, a girl should be able to sing French or Italian, to read at sight, to understand the technics of music—time, phrasing, &c. She must be limber and facile and strong in body, in order to represent parts; and in order to be able to think the parts she must have a knowledge of all the operas, the characters in them, the composer and his intention.
10"All this could be done at home. And in addition there are some teachers in America who can place voice as well as some teachers in Paris, and many in Paris who do it quite as badly as anyone in America could."
11Solfège! Solfège!! Solfège!!!
12"I wish I could make myself heard across the ocean!" cried a well-known Boston lady. "I wish I could tell them what I think about the value of solfège and what I would give had my daughter had a thorough training in it before coming here!
13"Why don't they teach solfège in America? Why don't they teach it in the States? America began right in the old singing schools. My aunt and mother could read everything right off, and corrected my first piano faults by singing correctly for me the do-re-me truth.
14"'You will drive me crazy if you don't sharp those f's,' cried my poor uncle from his corner when I practised. He was not supposed to be a musician, but he was more a musician than I was with my expensive musical education. As for my daughter, who has done nothing but study music, she would flat a whole series of f's in the key of G with the most unruffled conscience, if the printer had but so indicated. It was not by gift but practice that our old folks could pick up anything and sing it. We found this out here when we found children of twelve and fourteen reading Scarlatti, Bach and Wagner like sewing machines, transposing the classic masters into major and minor keys, and writing songs from dictation.
15"Solfège is purely mechanical, as simple and easy as it is important. It is the spelling and grammar of both singing and playing, and it is artistically criminal that American music schools neglect it as they do. New York, at least, should set the example and make solfège obligatory upon all musicians.
16"Oh, yes, some of them have sight reading on their circulars, but here are our girls who have all studied under those circulars and who cannot sight read."
18CHORUS OF MOTHERS.
19There is no sense in girls coming to study in Paris, displaying the total ignorance of musical technic that they do. A singer cannot be an instrumental artist, but every singer should be able at least to learn the mechanism of her pieces correctly alone and to play correctly her own accompaniments.
20Oh, yes, a woman with an abnormal Jenny Lind voice and an abnormal Blind Tom lack of intelligence may be excused her incapacity; but this whole bundle of mediocre singers, who must be useful if they would be of any value whatever, would be wise not to pose as gifted nonentities. They have not voices beautiful enough to do so successfully. The excuse that it weakens the chest to study piano is not true in relation to great artists who make the study special, let alone those who make the instrument a medium of intelligence only.
21Girls who are preparing for operatic work cannot have their bodies too supple. A stiff mind in a supple, flexible body can often do more than a flexible mind in a stiff body. Suppleness means directed strength, training—physical training, which is gymnastics. An expression teacher in Paris can coach a girl on which side to lean, on which knee to fall, provided she can lean and bend. Go into any of our coaching rooms here in Paris and see what it means to try to teach both together.
23There are a few—very few—girls here who attend gymnasium for a few weeks in the endeavor to become limber for the gesture classes. But, dear me, limbering is not like breaking kindling wood—every blow a something done. It is more like the growth of the harvest, the long silent darkness, the sprout, the shoot, the blade, the stalk, &c. The planting and growing shou'd and could be done in our native towns. They only twine the flowers here.
24How many girls study the operas at home? How many know the nationalities of Norma, Elsa, Carmen, and the characteristics and habits of the countries to which they belong? How many are able to penetrate the source and sentiment of their words? Without this how can they impersonate? One must be a Paris professor to realize how awfully ignorant American girls are of the literature of music, and what a drawback it is to them in their study here.
25This literary knowledge comes i: books. The books are in every library and book store in the States. What is there to prevent Mary from, not reading but studying these books in her own home, at no expense or with expenses all paid, instead of incurring an outlay of some $100 a month for the sake of doing the same thing under a foreign sky? What is there to prevent a circle of girls there at home from getting together and studying the operas—thinking, questioning, reading, memorizing? It is just what they will have to pay dearly for trying to do here under circumstances which wholly defeat accomplishment.
26As to the languages, so much has been already said in these columns. The practical thoughts of these mothers, and of all other wise people, may be found summed up in February 27th issue of THE MUSICAL COURIER and in succeeding letters.
27You girls who are studying French with the intention of coming to Paris to study music, go to your teachers and beg them to stop first of all the French novel translation business, the most shiftless, desultory, good for nothing excuse for laziness in the guise of study that was ever invented; to stop the stiff, impractical grammar, which they do not take the pains to make practical by sentence-illustration; to stop the terrible pronunciation which they do not insist upon changing.
28Tell them to collect some ten or a dozen of the most important and unfamiliar French sounds, not words or sentences, but sounds, to put them upon a blackboard and keep them there. Tell them to ding and ding and ding them into your ears without impatience, mockery or let-up, till you have them, and to make you give them back, straight and pure and true—correct in other words. We have no such sounds in our language. It is like a baby learning to speak. There is no way under heaven to escape the incessant reiteration. Then tell them to apply these sounds to the syllables, in any paragraph—song, if you will.
29Make them keep you at that till you leave home. If you have no other French you are better prepared for the Paris music-room than with the library of faults that the average American brings over as a French language.
30If you have time left on your hands, tell them to bend your mental backs to the real study of:
31Irregular verbs.
32The genders of the nouns.
33The value of accent marks.
34The memorizing of French idioms.
35These are the four most indispensable and neglected features of our imported French study.
36What could the French professors do to advance their foreign pupils more?
37First of all, to insist upon the above requirements before admitting them as pupils. That would be the means of weeding out lots of worthless material, that would be the sieve through which much light chaff would blow; for girls as a general thing do not like hard work, that is, just plain hard work. Only the strong would dare begin, not speaking of voice.
38It is too much to ask of human nature to demand the real right of the matter, which would be that teachers should refuse girls who have no voices. Saloon keepers say, "If we don't give John whiskey someone else will!" Why should not the singing teachers? Where money making is the basis of education, conscience must sleep.
39Then the professors here should hold themselves prepared to counsel and advise the young strangers as to how to live, where to stay, what not to do, how and where to acquire all the host of supplemental educations that they are forced to have.
40No, it would not require so much time and need not involve any trouble. Some of our girls roaming here literally roam among the educational and home factors during the four and five years of their stay. They are left too much to themselves as to what to do and of whom and how to take extras. There is nothing whatever to guide them. They are in complete obscurity. They are all the time hunting for something with no certainty anywhere except in the money that changes hands in experiments. Teachers who have spent their lives in Paris and in this special work and have (as many of them have) a large majority of foreigners in their schoolrooms, surely might arrange some organized, systemized plan of supplementing, in the speediest and soundest way possible, national neglects.
41It would be a great blessing if teachers of the different extras could be attached to the voice rooms, so that the girl would not have to go to the north to her diction, south to her geste, east to her French, west to solfège, northeast to an accompanist, southwest to a coach, &c. In the semi-barbarous stupidity of travel arrangements in Paris, one has no idea of the time and money it costs and the wearing fatigue to the students.
42One would think that teachers would attend to this for their own protection. They would gain in the tranquilizing of nerve, the settled steadiness, the concentration of force and a consequent strength in their respective citadels.
43Teachers think they do this, perhaps. They do not hear as many sets of pupils in a week as we mothers do, who are constantly meeting friends of our daughters and hearing all sides. I would not wonder if they had periodical talks arranged, say, once or twice during the term, when counsel and direction should be given to the assembled classes on all matters pertaining to their musical good—health and living included. In a selfish sense it would pay. Voice placing and répertoire amount to but little when weakly surrounded.
44We are satisfied that half the money and twice the time might be saved by well organized plans to meet the peculiar conditions of study.
45Then there should be some wise planning as to pupils' performance—some course that steadily and regularly would use the ordinary schoolroom work, in a sort of rehearsal or representation before a company of people—a résumé of perfected work, with a view to creating courage, grace and self possession in executing before strangers, without yielding anything from the honesty and seriousness of classroom work.
46Some teachers here have no performance whatever, others have thrilling affairs that tear steady work up by the roots and plunge the young people into nervousness, excitement, fatigue, and create a false note of unfinished show off in the student character.
47The best way for our girls to live here?
48(To be continued next week.)
50PARIS.
51Another beautiful letter to M. Gallet from his friend Saint-Saëns, still in the tropics. Passing between Sumatra and Malacca, "a sea running so high that land cannot be seen on either side," he saw several serpents, "with their exquisite colors and graceful lines, writhing through the waves." "The sea serpent then is no myth," he adds. "I have seen him with my own eyes. I can no longer doubt!" In order to save his health in the abnormal heat he eats fruits, vegetables, rice, fish and eggs, and leaves the "detestable meat" for those who wish it. Thanks to his régime, he not only does not suffer from the heat, but enjoys it, and is perfectly well.
52Saïgon he describes as an earthly paradise for those who have not seen Ceylon. He describes the trees and the flowers with the detail and tenderness of a skilled botanist, adding the "alas" of the poet in speaking of an orchid which lives only in summer. He met but one living soul in the place. At another point he comes across the Attaque du Moulin in full rehearsal, and has to travel incognito, as he is heralded in several papers. He expects to pass a week at Cape Martin to "take sea baths and see tigers," thence to Singapore, to Egypt, where he orchestrates the fourth tableau of Brunhilda, and to Paris, where the final touches of score are to be made.
53And so this strange man, with all his wealth of mind and heart, searches among the beauties, the mysteries and the surprises of that best of friends—Nature.
54M. Widor on his return from Monte Carlo left Paris the same day for Frankfort, where his new quintet is to be given under his direction.
55The Seven Words of Christ, the celebrated oratorio of M. Th. Dubois, was given this week with immense success at Rouen, where it was heard for the first time before a perfect mass of people. The oratorio was directed by the composer. Baron F. de la Tombelle was organist; the choirs were composed of the best artists of the Opéra and Société des Concerts. The soloists were of first rank.
56M. Pugno has been called from the midst of his artistic season to serve on the jury of the assizes.
57M. Ambroise Thomas and Mme. Thomas were present at the soirée musicale given last evening in honor of the forty-first anniversary of the Marchesi school. Sweet and gentle as ever, the well-beloved director of the Conservatoire was one of the most distinguished features of this very brilliant gathering.
58Massenet accompanied on the piano the Portrait of Manon, which was on the program.
59Of other prominent guests were Princesse Jeanne Bonaparte et marquis de Villeneuve, le comte Tornielli, ambassadeur d'Italie; comtesse d'Argy, comte et comtesse de Briche, Mme. Beulé, M. Mme. et Mlle. Carraby, baron et baronne Digeon, comte et comtesse Galli, vicomtesse de Grandval, comte Arthur de Gabriac, baron et baronne Koenneritz, Mme. J. Massenet, M. et Mme. de Munkacsy, baronne Piérard, comte, comtesse et Mlle. de Riancye, baronne de Saint-Didier, comtesse Soltyk, comtesse de Meffray, prince Ghika, comtesse Ducos, M. et Mme. Joncieres, Mme. et Mlle. Conneau, Mme. Krauss, &c.
60Mme. Marchesi in private life is the Marquise de Cas-
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