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Musical Courier 1895-06-26: Vol 30 Iss 799, 1895
72 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 10. See the scan on archive.org.
1Berlin Notes.
2BERLIN, June 11, 1895.
4PROF. JULIUS HEY'S vocal class gave a concert before an invited audience last evening in Bechstein Hall. The program was as follows:
6Fragmente aus der Zauberflöte, Mozart—(a) Arie des Tamino: Dies Bildniss ist bezaubernd schön, Herr Oska Hochstetter; (b) Rec. und Arie der Königin der Nacht: O zitte nicht mein lieber Sohn, Fräulein Anny Hindermann, Concertsängerin; (c) Arie der Pamina: Ach, ich fühle's, Miss Amy Krieger; (d) Arie des Sarastro: O Isis und Osiris, Herr Nikolaus Lützhöft. Arie aus Euranthe: Glücklein im Thale, Weber, Miss Eda Metzler. Fragmente aus Tannhäuser, Wagner—(a) Auftritt Elisabeths: Dich theure Halle grüss' ich wieder, Frau Maikki von Jarnfelt; (b) Elisabeths Gebet: Allmächt'ge Jungfrau, Fräulein Otti Hey. Fragmente aus Figaros Hochzeit, Mozart—(a) Rec. und Arie der Gräfin: Und Susanne kommt nicht, Fräulein Lilli Schuchardt, Opernsängerin; (b) Romanze des Pagen: Ihr die ihr Triebe, Fräulein Gertrud Weber; (c) Rec. und Arie der Susanne: Endlich naht sich die Stunde, Fräulein Otti Hey. Rec. und Arie aus Freischütz: Nein, länger trag' ich nicht die Qualen, Weber, Herr Oskar Hochstetter; Gruss des Pagen aus Hugenotten, Meyerbeer, Miss Amy Krieger; Arie der Konstanze aus Entführung, Mozart, Fräulein Anny Hindermann; Rec. und Arie aus Fidelio: Abscheulicher, wo eilst du hin? Beethoven. Frau Maikki von Jarnfelt; Rec. und Arie aus Oberon: Ocean, du Jüngheur! Weber, Fräulein Lilli Schuchardt.
8Professor Hey's method of teaching is unique, and it was interesting to observe the results. He does not believe that the Italian language and method are necessary to a high degree of development in singing. He holds that equally good results may be obtained by studying in German. He was a personal friend of Richard Wagner, and is, of course, an outspoken Wagnerian, though the above program does not indicate it. No doubt it was his intention in having his pupils sing so much Mozart to demonstrate his theory that the highest form of lyric art can be attained by his method.
10Professor Hey's views on the Italian school are probably not shared by vocal teachers in general, but certain it is that he has accomplished good results. The work of the pupils as a whole was very commendable. One in particular, Fräulein Anny Hindermann, sang admirably. She is well developed in every respect. She has a beautiful voice, perfect technic, true intonation, taste, temperament—in short, about all of the qualities that go to make up a true artist. She sang the difficult coloratura passages superbly. She outshone all of the others and may well be styled the star of the class.
12Fräulein Otti Hey has a sympathetic and well trained though not strong voice. Her conception is excellent.
14Frau Jarnfelt possesses a fine dramatic voice, which she uses with good effect, excepting a few rather weak upper tones.
16Fräulein Schuchardt's voice, too, has a genuine stage ring. The young lady also has a fine stage presence, but should develop a little more fire.
18The young ladies all have high soprano voices. Herr Lützhöft has a good, deep but not strong bass voice. Herr Hochstetter was disappointing in the Mozart aria, but in the Weber number he sang much better. His voice is an agreeable medium range tenor.
20Professor Hey evidently lays stress on a distinct pronunciation of the text. He accompanied throughout the evening himself and displayed superior musicianship and rare taste.
22* * *
24SELMA NICKLASS-KEMPNER.
26In point of vocal instruction Berlin has advanced many degrees since Frau Professor Nicklass Kempner has made it her home. This artist is one of the few really great vocalists before the public who know how to impart their knowledge to others. She is equally great as a public singer and as a teacher.
28Instrumentalists in general are not over-enthusiastic about singing. I am no exception to the rule. But for vocal art such as a Selma Nicklass-Kempner or a Lilli Lehmann possess I have the greatest respect and admiration.
30Accounts of Frau Nicklass-Kempner's public appearances here during the past winter have been written both by Mr. Floersheim and myself, but little has been said about her past career. Perhaps a few words on this subject will be of interest to the readers of THE MUSICAL COURIER.
32She was born in Breslau, and began to study at the age of fourteen under Fräulein Jenny Meyer at the Stern Conservatory, where she is now the leading vocal teacher. Fräulein Meyer was a superior teacher, but she was soon outdistanced by her gifted pupil. Frau Nicklass-Kempner fitted for the operatic stage, and after four years of study accepted a position at Augsburg. After one year she gave up this position for a better one at Leipsic. Here she remained three years. Thence she went to Rotterdam, where she was a shining light of the opera for ten years. She then quit the operatic stage after fourteen years of success, and devoted herself to concert singing and teaching. She married about this time.
34Her next position was that of first vocal instructress at the Vienna Conservatory, which important post she held for eight years. As a private teacher she was also in great demand. Her private pupils were many of them from high aristocratic circles, for she was on intimate terms with the Vienna aristocracy. The Crown Princess Stephanie of Austria studied with her for three years. The Archduke Eugen, who is very musical, was one of her staunchest admirers. The Countesses Kielmansegg and Hojos-Princessstein and many other important personages were among her pupils, showing her position in Vienna high life.
36During these years she was repeatedly heard in public in all important German and Austrian cities. Three years ago she gave a concert in Berlin, and her success was so great that Manager Hermann Wolff immediately arranged for four more concerts. These were all immense successes. She gave still another by invitation of the Berlin press; this was a matinée given at the Royal Opera House. Her assistants were Sarasate and Bertha Marx.
38As a result of her great success in the German capital she received a call from the Stern Conservatory, which she accepted, entering upon her new duties January last. Frau Nicklass-Kempner's method is her own. Her pupils learn the true meaning of the word "thoroughness." She teaches above all how to sing piano; how to produce the "golden piano" is one of her strongest points. But she is not devoted to any one hobby; she is far too great an artist for that. Her technic is superb, her style versatile and her conception—especially in singing Lieder—wonderful. At the conservatory she has a large class, but she also gives many private lessons at her home, Von der Heydtstrasse, 4.
40With such resident teachers as Selma Nicklass-Kempner, Lilli Lehmann and Professor Hey, Berlin takes a high rank as a vocal centre. Americans coming to Europe to study singing do not need to go to Paris, where life is far more expensive, and where the advantages in the way of hearing good music, though great, are by no means equal to those Berlin offers.
42ARTHUR M. ABELL.
44Carl Wittig's Advice to Voice Hunters.
45Editors The Musical Courier:
47SINCE the subject of voice culture is under discussion in the columns of your valuable paper, I once more avail myself of the opportunity, to give some disinterested advice on this point to students and amateurs in general; advice that is honest and well meant, and in these times of greed for gain is often worth its weight in gold to those who really stand in need of it.
49My object is to help clear the vocal atmosphere of that dense fog which so long has enshrouded it, and I do not care whom it may please or displease, or whose purse may be affected thereby; my object is to work in the interest of true art and promote its cause.
51I will proceed at once to the subject. In my last article I declared that in order to become a great singer, more is necessary than simply to possess a good natural voice. I repeat this declaration to-day, and will add that the voice is not even the most important thing in the matter, since the possession of genius is a gift a thousand times more rare than the possession of simply a good voice, and no singer can become great without possessing both attributes.
53Now this would seem discouraging to the aspirants of vocal fame, but it need not be so. We cannot all become great and many of us must be satisfied to fill minor rôles in this life; and so it is with the vocal student, no matter how towering his or her ambition may be. If he is not gifted with genius he must be satisfied to cultivate whatever talents nature may have bestowed upon him, and this at once brings us to a new phase of our subject, viz., the chances which a vocal student has to ultimate success.
55Singers may be classified into three divisions, to wit, singers who are gifted with genius, singers who possess talent up to a certain degree and singers who possess no talent at all. Of the first class I spoke in my last article, so I will confine my remarks to the other two divisions, and I will commence with the last-mentioned class, namely, the singer with the phenomenal voice who, however, possesses no talent whatever.
57Alas! what shall we say of him? There is little hope for this class of singers, and to the initiated their struggles for artistic success are indeed pitiful to behold, for, while nature has been lavish to them in one direction, it has been parsimonious in another, and no teacher, however much he may profess it, is able to make up the deficiencies of nature. Yes, their spirits are utterly incapable of soaring to the sublime heights of an artistic climax, and, like an eagle whose wings have been clipped, they flutter forever helplessly upon the ground. Nor are they able to descend to any depth of sentiment, for the gamut of human emotion, from inspired passion, which sweeps everything before it like a whirlwind, down to the greatest depth of sentiment, which in its intense grief transfixes the eye to an imploring and tearless gaze, remains forever a sealed book to them. These form by far the largest class, and, alas! how sad that we are compelled to leave them to their fate. We will not do so, however, without offering up a prayer that they may be spared the doom of falling into the hands of the oily charlatan who measures out genius by the yardstick and sells it at so much per yard. They are sure of being bled to death.
59The other class consists of those singers who, while not gifted with absolute genius (that is, dramatic fire, and depth of sentiment to an eminent degree), still possess a musical organization, and are more or less endowed with talent. Among these there are some who possess depth of sentiment without possessing dramatic fire, while others again are gifted with dramatic fire without possessing depth of sentiment. Among the less gifted of the Italians there is generally a preponderance of dramatic fire over depth of sentiment, while among the less gifted of other nations there is oftener the reverse. Where the former quality exists we hear it often called, in the popular phalanx, an energetic voice, and where the latter quality exists, we hear it generally alluded to as a sympathetic voice. Then again there are those who are gifted with both dramatic fire as well as sentiment, but only in a more or less shallow degree. All of these can achieve only a partial success, for, however much cultivation in art can do, no one can rise above himself, and nature fixes a limit, beyond which we are unable to pass. No! it is only those who possess all of these qualifications to a most eminent degree who soar heavenward, leaving all the others below.
61How many deluded mortals there are who waste their whole precious lives, and squander their often hard earned money, in hunting for "methods" by which they may become great singers! In their disappointed search they arrive at some of the most wonderful conclusions and make some of the most astounding discoveries. Nor are they slow to disseminate them, and indeed they are very opinionated about them. They declare that the Italian method is a delusion and a snare, that the French method is bad, and that the German method absolutely ruins the voice. They would fain learn of some method by which they can learn to produce "great tones," as they call them. They are entirely oblivious to the fact that "great tones" are the direct expression of genius. Leave genius out of the question and what have we? Shouts and yells, and nothing more.
63It is these people who leave the way open for the charlatan to get in his fine work, and thus we are confronted with any number of vocal methods, each quack having a patent method of his own, which he advertises in loud-mouthed fashion. And I must say, right here, that even some teachers who really possess artistic merit of a high order stoop to this ignoble device in order to draw trade, as it is termed. Many of these trade under that bugaboo of all bugaboos, called the old Italian method. Now, that the old Italian masters were men of genius, and that under the magnetic influence of their genius the latent talent of the pupil was developed, is beyond doubt. But that they left an oral method, which since has become, from generation to generation, the exclusive property of certain individuals, is, to say the least, a species of refined charlatanism which needs to be exposed. Is it any wonder then that musicians have often publicly asserted that there is more humbug to the square inch in the vocal profession than there is in all the other professions combined?
65The voice, independent of genius, is a mere mechanical instrument, and where it exists at all (for it cannot be made to order), nature gives it generally perfect, as far as its muscle action is concerned, just as it gives the perfect muscle action to the hand of the pianist or violinist, subject, of course, to development by judicious training and practice, and those who have cracked voices with disagreeable breaks and nasal twangs in them need not flatter themselves that by resorting to anatomical science of the throat their voices can be made.
67The instrument maker may indeed tear out his instrument, rebuild it, and reconstruct it on a different plan, so as to change its action and its acoustic properties, but we cannot tear out the human body (chest, throat, bones of skull, and all) and rebuild it and reconstruct it on a different plan, for on all of these parts the general characteristics, the acoustic properties and the action of the voice depend. And all of this is said in spite of the well-known fact that that man of genius, the celebrated Garcia, resorted to anatomical experiments with the laryngoscope, in order to get at the nature of the change in the registers of the voice. Yet however interesting his discoveries have been from a theoretical standpoint, it is no less a well-known fact that he brought nothing to light that has been of any great value so far as the practical art of singing is concerned.
69Adelina Patti was a marvelous singer when in her teens and probably before she had ever seen a book on the physiology of the voice, and this has been the case with most other great singers; and though such celebrities as these may furnish no criterion for those of lesser talent it is yet an undeniable fact that the study of the anatomy of the throat is generally taken up by those possessing little or no talent for singing. It is these who, after repeated efforts and years of hard struggles and finding that they can make no progress in the ordinary way, resort to it as a last means, and grasp at it like a drowning man would at a straw. Quite often these are also too vain and self-conceited to acknowledge defeat, and it sometimes happens that they even hate the man who is candid and honest enough to tell them right to their faces the plain truth in the matter.
71And thus they become the prey of the proverbial fox in the fable, which I will repeat here for their especial benefit: A fox seeing a crow sitting in a tree with a delicious
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