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Musical Courier 1902-03-26: Vol 44 Iss 1148, 1902
38 lines. Read by computer on 26 September 2026. Printed page 9. See the scan on archive.org.
1THE LOST ART OF SINGING
2AND HOW BEST TO RESTORE IT.
3Address Given by Haslam, Paris.
5If ever there was an "Age of Song" it is the present! More than at any previous time is the fortress of vocal art besieged by aspirants for lyric fame.
7You cannot number the works—anatomical, physiological, philosophical—on the voice. You could easily furnish a library with "methods of vocal instruction." The classes of the conservatories everywhere resound with the voices of embryo Pattis, Faurés and Marios, and there is hardly a composer who does not add to the literature of song.
9And—it is a paradox, but it is incontrovertible—with all this activity the lack of really great singers is remarkable. Singers who are actors, singers who are authorities on costume, singers who are learned in the psychology of their roles, oh! of these there is any number. But it is easy to count those artists whose training and education as singers has been so thorough that they give the same aesthetic pleasure when on the concert platform as when the influence they exert over the senses of their auditors is enhanced by the addition of romantic costume, scenic action, and the glitter and pageantry of the modern operatic stage.
11One need not look far for the reasons.
13Among other causes is the fact that the pupil is no longer content to work steadily through a serious and logical course of study. It is wonderful what an impatient people we have become. We live in an age of electricity. We can communicate with the antipodes in a few minutes. Why, then, should not physical or artistic development be carried out on the same speedy methods! And the student chafes at the prospect of following a system of education that may be tedious, perhaps; but what glorious results has it not achieved!
15To the neglect of this principle the decline of the standard once held so high in vocal art is undoubtedly due. That the decadence exists is certain. One has only to look at the principal operatic stages of the world to be convinced of the absolute penury of singers of the first rank. I do not mean extraordinary exceptions or vocal phenomena. But whatever the great and varied accomplishments possessed by many of the principal lyric artists of to-day, it will hardly be claimed that their purely vocal excellences are their strongest points.
17Why should we not realize that in the art of singing—as in other things—the age of miracles is past? Patience and perseverance directed into right channels triumph here as in every other affair of life.
19Let us consider the question for a moment. Is art absolved from subjection to the natural laws that govern the acquirement of all real knowledge? No! Is the musician, as artist, exempt from obedience to the rules that must be observed by aspirants for success in any other profession? No! Can you make a painter or sculptor without first giving him a complete training of eye and hand, a thorough mastery over brush and chisel? No! Can you educate a singer without first obtaining a complete control over his instrument—the voice? Obviously, no. Would an aspirant for vocal honors, even if possessed of the requisite vocal and physical gifts, who desired to become a great singer, have any chance of success by opening a score—say of "Tristan"—and beginning to study one of the roles? And yet this is precisely what is being done by many at the present time. Would it not be necessary in his case also to develop and perfect the vocal organs, to render them pliant and to bring them under the control of his volition? No one is born singing. Art is the one thing that man has created. There is no such thing as "natural art"; and it must not be supposed for an instant that Wagner, the master who is so often misquoted as being opposed to a past school of vocal art, held that school in contempt, save when it was used as the end and not as the means.
21Why should a singer suppose he can begin at the end of his art any more than a painter? What artist can afford to ignore works done by Botticelli, Hals or Rubens? What poet can be ignorant of the creations of Shakespeare or Goethe? I am aware that in literature there exists a curious tendency to confuse poetic sentiment and poetry. Many people of culture and refinement have the first naturally. Persons of great imagination have it in a high degree, but the second is an acquired skill; it is the technic of the subject. Similarly an artist may have a voice of quality, power and compass; he may have musical sentiment and passion; he may have all the sincerity, all the earnestness that one could wish, but if he has not acquired the mechanism of his art he is not really a singer, no matter if he knows every Wagnerian opera from "Die Feen" to "Parsifal."
23Mario, on his earlier appearances in Paris, had the mortification of hearing an exacting public cry, "Pas d'amateurs, Rubini, Rubini, pas d'amateurs!" because, depending upon his great personal gifts and the exceptional beauty of his voice, he had not then made the necessary studies required to form the singer he eventually became. In those days singers had to be models of purity in intonation, faultless execution and imperceptible breathing. Audiences then were far more exacting and intolerant on these points than they are at present. Years after, in 1869, during a concert tour in England with Sainton, Mario was noticed listening attentively and unobserved while the violinist "sang" in his exquisite manner the tenor Cavatina "Salut! demeure, chaste et pure" in a "Faust" Fantaisie. "Qu'est-ce que vous faites ici?" asked Sainton when he came off the platform. "Je prends une leçon," was the modest reply of the singer. He still studied, though half the world was at his feet. It is interesting to notice that Mario's pronunciation of French was objected to by the abonnés of the Paris Opéra on his début there in the secondary role of Raimbaud in "Robert le Diable." How greatly the virtue of charity in this respect has increased in the Parisian public since then!
25The first requisite certainly for a student of singing is an instrument to commence with. That is, a voice of musical quality, certain volume and sufficient compass. All of these factors can be greatly developed by proper study if the pupil is young. It is very true that great singers formerly were not satisfied with their exceptional organs, but studied as no one does now. Still the fact remains that to students without voices success is impossible. Berlioz once said there were three types of singers: Those who have voices, but cannot sing; those who can sing, but who no longer have any voices, and those who cannot sing and have no voices, but insist on singing just the same.
27Now what is the necessary vocal education of a singer, and how can it best be acquired? To this I reply that the training of a singer is divisible into four great branches, viz., tone production, technic, style, repertory. These constitute the essentials of a complete vocal training. Diction I include under the head of technic. Let us consider these four great divisions separately.
29Tone Production—On this point alone what gallons of ink, what reams of paper, have been expended! What angry discussions and bitter animosities have been evoked by the term, among rival teachers, each claiming to be the sole possessor of a secret method known only to himself! Unfortunately for these claims, the pupils of such teachers invariably demonstrate the complete inability of the professor to transmit the knowledge of this precious secret. A justly famous singing master, and excellent musician, once said apropos of "methods": "There are only two—good and bad. I teach the former." Nearly every season brings out a fresh crop of charlatans, who profess some new "method" of teaching voice production, and who disappear into the obscurity from which they have temporarily emerged, having achieved nothing but the depletion of their pupils' pockets and the filling of their own. Frequently without education of any kind—general or technical—the favorite bait of these people is a profuse employment of pseudo-scientific terms, of the meaning of which they are often profoundly ignorant. Thus a pupil is led into a belief in the knowledge and erudition of these charlatan professors, who, being unable to achieve the most ordinary results, invariably promise miracles. Lablache once said there would be better singers if there were fewer singing teachers. Certainly one of the many causes that have led to the present low tide in the art of singing is the prevalence of crude and unscientific theories on the subject of voice production, the worthlessness of which often receives its best demonstration in the person of the propounder. The earliest writings extant on the subject of the singing voice are those of Tosi and Mancini, in whose book we find this excellent proposition: "That (or the tone) which is aesthetically beautiful, and physically easy, must be right." The laryngoscope has not, in my experience, advanced our knowledge of voice production to the extent that has been claimed for it. Its evidence, so far as the singing voice is concerned, is not always reliable, owing to the fact that the functioning of the vocal organs, when the laryngoscope is in position, is carried on under abnormal conditions. Without entering more fully at present into this abstruse and much disputed point, may I say that the laws of acoustics have given very precious aid to the scientific study of voice production.
31Experience has proved to me that most authorities either ignore, or are ignorant of, a vitally important law which regulates the voice, so far as its production is concerned. Research and experiment have taught me this natural law, to which I will call your attention, a law that is alike infallible and capable of demonstration, and the neglect of which, in training the voice, is attended with such baneful results that I am impelled to allude to the fact, hoping that, as I shall indicate the remedy, I may be of use in mitigating those injurious effects. I repeat, there is a beautiful natural law governing the singing voice. That law I will explain to you, as it forms the basis of a system of instruction whose principle is the unity of force. Trained in accordance with this law, the component parts of the instrument become simply like the arbitrary divisions of the earth's daily journey, which are useful in practice, to fix the duration of time, yet melt so imperceptibly one into the other that they have no individual existence, save in the complete phenomenon.
33The vocal column of sound, on its exit from the larynx, should strike immediately its own particular point of impact in the buccal cavity, from which it is reflected at an angle, and spreads outward, under the influence of the reflex action, of which the motive power is the will. This is the principle of adherence by the reflex action, and I would like here to point out that this sonorous column can only effect its passage by reflection, for the geometrical reason that it is impossible to draw a straight line from the glottis to the lips.
35Without entering at present into the oft-discussed question as to the number of registers in the singing voice—some writers claiming there are three, others asserting the existence of five—and passing over the great discrepancy of opinion which obtains as to the places where these divisions are said to begin, it has been part of my object to prove, by the illustrations to be given, that this cutting of the voice into minute and fanciful fragments (discovered by laryngoscopic professors under utterly abnormal conditions) is entirely unnecessary, unscientific and unphysiological, and a voice so trained can never reach its highest development or become what it was ordained to be, an admirable phenomenon of unity.
37Of course we must concede that there are places in the
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