Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/526

514 musical art could be indulged in with benefit as well as pleasure, and the choral bodies would be in fitter condition to observe the nuances required by a critical conductor.

The style of operatic writing immediately before us at this moment cannot continue, with any hope of the advancement of singing, but the influence of the great living master's mind will not be the less felt for good, when tempered with the calmer judgment of less fiery and less defiant, though not less zealous and conscientious geniuses, who will no doubt succeed him and modify his theories.

It must be repeated that the features of different schools of singing are greatly traceable to the influence of language. How is a school to be defined? Is it not the spirit of a code of art-canons which has grown up, or, so to say, compiled itself from the salient characteristics of the most prominent votaries of an art? In proportion as these characteristics are unsullied by peculiarities or tricks the school will be pure. The influence of a talent will unfortunately impose its defects and abberations by the very force of its higher qualities, and the defects are more easily imitated than the higher qualities. Hence the necessity, on the part of each individual votary of an art, for the most rigorous self-discipline. A great difficulty in the way of study is to hear oneself as one really is, and not as one intends to be. We are so much under the dominion of our minds that it is often very hard to avoid accepting our intentions for performance. Those who are blest with voice and talent must realise the fact that they are high priests and priestesses of their art; that to them is assigned the mission of helping to form a school, and that their example, for good or ill, does more than a hundred books. And it is precisely to those who have exercised this earnest self-discipline that we owe the preservation of the valuable traditions of a good school. Even in language—which has just been said to influence a school of singing—it is the province of the singer to purify its sounds to the utmost. We cannot help tracing, for example, the chief defect of French singing, the so-called gorge deployé style, to the normal flat French a, which led to exaggeration, more apparent perhaps than real. The tremolo (observable even in that great artist Mons. Faure), which had its development in France, has of course no origin in language, but is possibly due to the vibrato of Rubini. It is one of the tricks glanced at above which has been allowed to creep in, and has proved itself a truly noxious vocal weed. How much these defects have been tempered of late amongst French artists is felt in the fine singing of Mons. Lasalle. The Germans do not pay sufficient attention to special characters of voice, and are given to forcing them beyond their natural limits. There is also a great waste of power, a great wear and tear of the general physical strength, consequent upon their singing being too convulsive, resulting often in a laboured suppression of voice. They have a mode of producing the vowel e, and their double sound ei, which greatly damages the quality of the voice on those sounds, so that a German frequently seems to possess a voice that is at once good and bad. But these are not really characteristics of the language, and should be abandoned by singers. Vilda, the German soprano, who appeared some years ago at Covent Garden, had a perfect production and style, and Stockhausen, who was here about ten years ago, a singer of great talent, had none of the defects above mentioned, and was a master of declamation. So is Zur Mühlen, a young Esthonian singer, who deserves to be better known. It is remarkable that, with their power as composers and musicians, and their general high intelligence, the Germans are not better singers. They make a grievous mistake if they think the vocal art beneath their notice. The two singers lately heard in 'Der Ring des Niebelungen,' Herr and Madame Vogel, with their magnificent voices, their earnestness, and their power as actors, could not help every now and then marring their otherwise admirable performance by the defects belonging to their school. Herr Gura, in 'Die Meistersinger,' showed powers of purer vocalisation.

The English characteristic has been till lately rather a lack of any characteristic whatever, except defective pronunciation; and a general apathy and want of interest which has caused many good voices to be wasted. We are fast waking up from this state of things. The defects above enumerated have been those mostly observable amongst the general amateur class and artists of a mediocre stamp—peculiarities of the respective countries in fact. And in proportion as individuals have steered clear of these defects and have carried self-discipline rigidly into effect, so far have they taken an artistic position. In this country (as in others) there are some first-rate amateurs, many of whom are doing excellent service in endeavouring to foster a love of music in all classes, by founding societies for giving concerts, either free or at nominal prices of admission. Some of our amateurs would do credit to the profession of music anywhere in Europe. We owe to them some of our best English songs. True, some of these are over-elaborate, but this is a welcome counterpoise to the too great simplicity and uniformity of many of our native songs. Not that simplicity, per se, is a fault. On the contrary, if we look amongst the immense numbers of songs by the greatest song-writers of the age, the Germans, and especially amongst the greatest of these, Franz Schubert, we frequently find a marvellous amount of music, or, at least, significance, with but little material. The great quality in the best German songs is their independence and unconventionality. Each song is a poem—some, long poems—in which the composer seems not to have cared whether others existed or not, but to have drawn his inspiration immediately from what was before his mind. Thus there is scarcely a single stereotyped form amongst them. Schubert, Mendelssohn,