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Musical Courier 1895-06-26: Vol 30 Iss 799, 1895
101 lines. Read by computer on 26 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.
5Are the Singing Teachers of Paris Behind the Times in Progress?
7With all that is done for facts by travel and by books, it is inconceivable how much in the dark countries are as to the spirit of each other.
9The charge has been made that the Paris professors of voice are "behind the times," have fallen into a rut of old-fashioned music, in which they keep their pupils during the two or three years of the study life, and that they are thus responsible for much of the backwardness—by some called "stupidity"—of many singers after they have assumed the duties of professional life.
11It was said that pupils here are cooped up with Marguerite, Juliette and Lucia, Lucia, Juliette and Marguerite, to such an extent that on merging into the outer world these three unfortunate damsels are all that exist for them in music thought. Meantime the best outer world has surged and seethed and leaped forward, and fallen in love with other damsels with bigger throats and stomachs, but equally weak and unfortunate souls. New musical forms, new composers, new opinions have arisen, in fact new worlds been created, in which when they enter from the Paris cloister they find themselves very weak and very old-fashioned, unimportant as singers, and wholly without authority as teachers.
13The response to this charge is an exceedingly difficult matter.
15To make a sweeping general assertion that they are all asleep here would be easy enough, but it would not be true. To prove that Paris vocal teachers are in the vanguard of progress, to which their position entitles them, would be equally difficult and no less unjust. The thought condition of Paris professors is largely subject, naturally, to Paris thought habit. The thought habit of Paris is to consider itself the centre of the earth, and why go outside of it for anything?
17This position may be taken by a bird in a cage, by a woman in her household, by a man on his farm or by a citizen in his town. But where does it lead to? To a Chinese wall and a comparative standstill.
19Let Massachusetts sit down to-morrow, lock her doors on herself and study the laws of perfection to the exclusion of the other States, and before she is aware of it Montana is ahead of her.
21The earth was not created in spots, but as a universe. The outside of everywhere is as important as the inside, and vice versa. New influence, like new foliage, springs up in the night at the call of destiny. As a matter of selfish policy, not to speak of divine privilege, it behooves all leaders to look after the new growths and find their bearing. Facts are but tokens of conditions, and conditions of still greater conditions. With the most intense concentration must be united an outlook; that is the law of Progress.
23Well, taking the standard that everything worth while on the earth is within the city walls, Paris rejects the two great levers that under God have been the making of our nation—newspapers and magazines (that is, comparatively). The people here read, but they don't read Progress. They bathe in the light of the past and draw their inspiration from ancient glory. The present is to them a surprise, the future a sealed book.
25When I think of the way the press of our country draws and gathers the vapor of the earth's intelligence and flings it down in great rains upon our growing thought, I see the source and first cause of our tropical intellectual foliage.
27France lives from inside out; we from outside in, which is a larger development. She creates, we gather. Ideals and executions are therefore essentially different. The comparative value of each system is not to be discussed. Both are Fate's doing. He knows what he is about. It is for us to consider things as they are.
29Vocal teachers are nowhere a progressive lot. They study throats and predominance. That done the day is done, and Fatigue shuts the windows. Singers study Fame, and both doors and windows are shut.
31With us, however, the press rain beats incessantly against the roof. Some moisture must penetrate. They are goaded to effort by the Progress pressure and must move.
33In Paris, however, they are not disturbed by any such influence. Their work here is heavier than ours. They have to guard their thrones of Tradition, while the young republics of Progress are growling around. The field of work is larger and higher—more in public view. Throats are more numerous, theories more robust, requirements more complex.
35They are absolutely absorbed and engrossed in their professional life. All credit to them. "We have no time to read" is regarded as a pride, not as a humiliating statement. When they read they take in a classic of the color of the Ark and the flavor of ancient days as applied to Paris. It is immaterial what is being done in London, Berlin, New York. It is equal what composers are coming and going, what music being written, what discussions are taking place.
37This is general, however. There is no bounden condition on earth that has not its free spirits, and all rules have their exceptions.
39Besides, there is no corner so remote now as to have escaped the influence of the new music. The French teachers know about it, and however opposed to the music as such, or as material for vocal training, they have added as much of it as possible to their répertoire budget.
41There is scarcely a program of a pupils' concert that does not bear the name of Wagner. He is handled gingerly, of course, for to begin with the spirit of Wagnerian drama is too large and too intense for class-room comprehension, and again the intervals on which Wagner has chosen to string his vocal utterances are wholly unfit for unsettled vocal organs, and the young voice is wholly inadequate to express the violence of the emotions represented.
43It must be remembered, too, that the forte of Paris vocal education—its theory, at least, and much of its practice—is voice production. Répertoire is useless till the means of interpreting it are prepared. In this preparation Italian and French works and language, especially Italian, must always be the basis.
45Carlyle and Shakespeare were great writers, but we don't make school readers of them.
47Reason sufficient why all French and Italian writing has not been swept clean out of the Paris studios, simply because Wagner was born.
49In what way Paris teachers unite the conditions above outlined, I leave them to speak for themselves.
51Madame Marchesi, who is perhaps the most widely known of the professors here, does not wish her opinions printed with the other teachers', preferring that she should be regarded as the one teacher. As this is not a "the one" department, but a Franco-American one, and as The Musical Courier is not a personal partisan, but a great motor in the musical movement of the entire universe, this position cannot be taken, and the discussion, which is but the commencement of many, must march on without those who do not march with it.
53I happen to know her feelings personally, however, and know that her theories in regard to these subjects are of the highest and most intelligent order. While admiring Wagner as a musician and as a great genius, that she considers him an assassin of melody in song is not her fault, but the misfortune of music, for it is, alas, too true.
55Notwithstanding this she has the great good sense to unite as much of his writing with her work as is safe or suitable for the voices of her pupils. And she can not only teach him in French, but in German, being of German parentage and mistress of all the other languages.
57Mme. Viardot unites with her in thought as to the application of Wagner to vocal methods. Aside from the homely unrhythmic lines in which many of his vocal strains are drawn, the somersaults of interval and the abnormal sustaining of difficult tones are destructive to all young muscle formation. A singer must be well matured to do justice to either herself or the work.
59One who is well grounded in the Italian method of singing and can apply that method to German thought is the best prepared to interpret Wagner. Frau Brandt, who is a pupil of Mme. Viardot, is an example of this. To make a consummate artist Mme. Viardot would commence with Italian opera as a matter of voice placing and training. There is no language that has in it so much that can be applied to vocal development, and all vocal work demands it. Wagner is full of little graceful groupetti which no German can sing. They simply wag their jaws to make the necessary turns.
61She hates Wagner for song, but loves him as a great genius who has made marvelous beauties and stirred music to new life. We do not yet know what is to come as the result of him.
63Besides being a singer, an artist, and a person of physique, a singer of the new music must have a certain dominating power and authority in order to compel the orchestra unconsciously to assume the rôle of accompaniment. She has been much interested in watching the way Van Dyck accomplishes this, as he is one of the few who do so.
65Mme Viardot suggests, very wisely, that much of the so-called French backwardness is due to the senseless haste in the minds of Americans who come to Paris to study.
67They come here in May to be made "perfect artists" and return in October. What is a teacher to do? With voice posing and répertoire to accomplish in half the time necessary, what can be done in the way of education, or of musically development, of progress as to the outer world? She finds the common history of music so neglected at home that girls know nothing and care less except for their own two vocal cords. They do not know the names of the writers of songs, nor the keys in which they are written. What can a teacher do under such abnormal conditions?
69It is the opinion of the writer that the teacher should "dominate the orchestra"—compel pupils to respect the laws of Art by refusing to accept those who came to study under false conditions; compel them to expect to stay a certain time, and to have a certain preparatory education before beginning to be artists. See The Musical Courier May 17 for program of this preparatory study.
71Mme. Viardot never had but two pupils who stayed with her until she told them they were ready to go. One was a Russian and one Mlle. Humpstengel, well known in Germany. In her vocal course are complete répertoire in Italian, French and German and the oratorios. She regrets that the latter noble school is not sung in Paris. Pupils have no opportunity of hearing it here.
73Delle Sedie also teaches or has taught all the languages, but asserts equally that Wagner is the last thing to do in singing, although the music is well worth knowing. He should not be sung until the emission of voice is as natural and the mechanics of interpretation are effortless as the essence of voice itself.
75In his analytical way he goes on to say that there is but one voice on the earth, and that the correct application of vocal knowledge makes all language possible—and all production one.
77Bad habits of speaking and breathing (idioms of singing) and the false arrangement or bad condition of vocal chambers hinder this. But when these things have been corrected and the emission is open and spontaneous, and the muscles are trained to resistance, no harm can come from any particular style of singing.
79If, however, a light soprano undertakes dramatic effects she is obliged to substitute or replace lack of voice by false accents, exaggeration, enlarging of articulation and physical gymnastics, all of which militate against the timbre of the voice, and noise—not music—is the result. How true all that is!
81For a singer it is better worth while to preserve the quality and respect the timbre than to be led away by fashion or the false éclat of a few exceptional tones, and teachers should keep in mind the making of "artists," not of "artisans and modistes" of certain fashions or forms of music.
83In order to carry sufficient instrumental intensity into Wagnerian strains the voice, the young voice particularly, is not only liable, but certain of damage.
85Mme. de la Grange has had a large education in progressiveness, besides having it in her soul. She was chosen personally by Meyerbeer to create at Vienna in German the rôle of Fidel in the Prophète, the composer directing the opera. She spent five years in Germany, where she sang all the rôles, ancient and modern, and the oratorios. Born in France the French répertoire is an easy matter. She was taught by Lamperti, Rossini, Mercadante, Rubini, Donizetti and Pasta, and she has sung all the operas in all countries.
87She admires immensely the genius of Wagner, but thinks he should not be sung till even after several years of professional career. She teaches Wagnerian selections, but counsels the singing of the dramas after mature experience and when the singer is in full force of her or his talent.
89Sbriglia, who has the honor of having converted De Reszké from a mediocre baritone to the first tenor in the world, has the advantage of having a wife whose parents were both English and German and who is master of both. So that although thoroughly French himself he can have all the operas taught in his school. He, too, teaches oratorio if desired, and Wagner also.
91"Wagner is à la mode," he says, and "must be studied," but the regulation operas, French and Italian, must remain the basis of class-room work. As Sbriglia's forte is breathing and position, and as all his singers, both men and women, develop large chests and necks, they ought to be good material for Wagnerian declamation.
93Besides the two De Reszkés, he has had as pupils Plançon, Edwin Isham, Demio, Nordica, Brazzi, Adini, Mme. Pratt and Villefroy of the Opéra Comique. Sibyl Sanderson, too, was his pupil, but I do not know for how long.
95These opinions will be continued next week, also programs of several pupils' concerts showing better than anything the drift of class-room work here.
97An interesting and recherché pupils' musical this week was the class of M. Léon Jancey, of the Odéon, whose province is not to teach singing, but to put dramatic life and French pronunciation into song.
99His class consists of pupils of many of the principal teachers in the city, so that, a bird's-eye view of the different brands of voice culture was possible, and was extremely interesting. The program consisted of:
100Repente, Gounod; Romance Africaine, Meyerbeer; Boléro, Thomé; Chemin du Ciel, Holmés; La Vivandière, Godard; A Vous,
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