Friday, May 31, 2013
Thursday, May 30, 2013
The Singer's Art
It
seems that the greatest difficulty confronting the young singer of today is
arriving at a clear perception of what the art of singing really means. For centuries a great deal of wrong thinking
and misplaced energy have been devoted to this matter of singing. Some celebrated musician once uttered an
axiom which sums up the altogether mistaken viewpoint under which we are still
laboring. The witticism is usually
credited to Rossini; although, in view of the intelligence of his other
statements, this does not seem entirely probable. At any rate he is supposed to have said,
“There are three fundamental requisites which the singer needs: First, voice; second, voice; and third, VOICE.”
Now in this is the source of many of
our troubles! A statement like that
caught the popular imagination, as “clever” remarks have a habit of doing, and
had the unfortunate result of confusing singers, critics, and public
alike. It caused them to overemphasize
the physical aspects of the voice alone and to shove into second place all
those other vital considerations without which singing becomes merely a
colorless, meaningless vocal accident.
Enjoy
a recording (date unknown) of Feodor Chaliapin performing “Le veau d’or”
from Charles Gounod’s Faust:
The Full
Equipment
Forget, for a moment, that you are a
student with something to learn, and imagine yourself a passive auditor at some
musical performance. You have come to be
stimulated, to be lifted to a higher plane of living than the one on which you
entered the hall. What are the elements
of the artist’s performance which will give you this spiritual lift? Voice alone?
Never! Certainly, a fine voice
will stir you. You will be enthralled by
its sheer physical beauty—for a while.
But after that, if the evening offers you nothing more than the
outpourings of a well built throat; if it offers you no imagination, no human
sympathy, no answer to some need of your own, you are unsatisfied. Your mind wanders to other things, and you
become bored. Now, boredom in a listener
means lack of art in a performer. And
thus, from your own experience, you will agree that voice alone is not enough!
Voice is an accident, a gift from God.
It is not art. To sing well, to
hold listeners spellbound, requires a great deal more than mere voice.
This has been learned through hard
experience, but experience which, for all its buffetings and difficulties, I
would not exchange for the softer, easier method of learning out of a
textbook. I have been on the stage for
forty-five years. My “professional” life
began as an apprentice to a cobbler, in my native Kazan, Russia. When I began to sing, I, too, had the
mistaken idea that voice is everything.
No one corrected me, and so I had to learn better by the hard knocks of
experience. I got my training by doing
pretty much everything there is to be done on the stage. I have acted without music; I have declaimed
recitations; I have sung in choruses, in operetta; and so my promotion into
concert and opera was earned. Whatever
position I found myself in, though, I tried to observe, to learn from both good
and bad examples in the work of others, and, most of all, to relate my work in
some way to life itself. Such are the means
by which I learned that voice alone is not enough to make a singer. An unusual voice may, perhaps, make a
“star”—never an artist.
On the other hand, I do not wish to
give the impression that a singer’s voice is an incidental element. Far from it! It is the very foundation of his future work,
and must be carefully trained. This
training, however, is too individual a matter for me to venture any general or
categoric advice. Every throat is built
differently, and every singer must find his own best means of development. In my own beginner’s days, I studied with a
teacher who was considered excellent and who did much for me in cultivating my
taste and perceptions. But his vocal
methods were conceived according to his own “system” and not very well adapted
to my throat! After a while, I found I could not sing
comfortably at all! So I went back to m
own natural methods, which I had used almost unconsciously when my voice first
asserted itself; and thus I regained my ease.
I do not think that that teacher’s methods were bad; they were simply bad for
me. Since then, I have been very careful
to watch for my own vocal needs, and equally careful about prescribing for the
needs of others!
The Safe Method
I can
safely say, however, that the best singing method is the one that feels easiest
and most natural. The moment that
continued singing feels fatiguing to the throat, wrong methods have been
used. One singer may make greater use of
masked resonance; another may counsel “relaxation”; and that is what I mean by
treating every voice individually. But,
regardless of method, the throat should always feel open, free and
comfortable. The result is always the
same, and the only test is the individual feeling of the thing. Never force the voice. Never sing so loudly that you feel a drawing
upon your last resources. Always keep a
fund of reserve power.
Another point in voice care, which
should receive great emphasis, is the entire manner in which the singer
lives. The voice, after all, is part of
the physical organism and, as such, reflects all the ups and downs of bodily
well-being. The singer who wishes to
conserve his best vocal form, should live a very simple, moderate life in all
respects. He must avoid excesses, of
food, drink, tobacco, or pleasure. He
must learn to say “No.” He must let
nothing interfere with his regular hours of rest; and, at some time during the
years, he should take a period of complete relaxation, so that the body, on
which the voice depends, may become strengthened, or reborn. He should lie on his back in the sunshine,
listen to the hum of the insects, and watch the shadow play of the clouds
above. Thus he will grow strong, calm,
and toned up. I feel myself physically
and vocally vigorous, after forty-five years on the stage; and I believe that a
simple and regular life has helped to keep me so.
But One of Many
Still,
the voice is only one of a number of important elements in a singer’s
career. Indeed, it is only after the
voice is so well trained, so pliable, so easy that tone production has become
second nature that one is ready to begin artistic work! When Tsar Boris is seen moving majestically across the stage, the young artist is not
conscious that he had to spend months—possibly years—in learning to walk that
way; that at one time, he even had to learn the very beginnings of
walking! Neither is he conscious of all
that. It should be exactly the same with
the voice. While the singer is still
feeling for his tones, while he still has to indulge in conscious concentration
on producing a good B or B-flat, he is not ready for full stage work. The actor who walks with clumsy
self-consciousness, or the singer who sings self-consciously, gives but poor
effects.
It is possible for a young man to be a
great artist, but it is extremely difficult!
One’s younger years are taken up in learning the mechanical technic upon
which art must be built. There must be
the learning to use the voice, to gesture, to walk; there must be the learning
of the values of different historical epochs—how the people of various lands
and ages looked, how they dressed, how they thought and felt. One must learn what to do with his arms and
legs, how to handle a sword, a goblet or a rose. Each thing must be learned separately, and
none of them has the least meaning until they are all fused together with such
complete technical mastery that one is conscious, not at all of his actions,
but only of the human, emotional effect he wishes to project through those actions. Precisely there is where art begins!
The young singer should cultivate the
habit of acute observation. That is his
greatest means of learning. What his
teacher tells him is good. What he finds
out for himself, through personal experience and application, is better. Suppose he wishes to portray a king on the
stage—Philip II of Spain, let us say.
How will he go about it? In his
mind there is great ardor and a vague idea; somewhere in the world, there is a
definite conception of what Philip II should be like. How will the young artist connect the
two? Of course, he will read and consult
with his teacher or coach. But that is
simply passive work! It means that
intellectual ideas are merely reaching him from the outside. Next—he will try to get into some theater
where his king is being performed on the stage.
At once the active element enters into his preparations. He sees a flesh-and-blood personage before
him. It is no longer intellectualism, it
is life! Then he begins work. He observes every least action his king
makes. He studies how he dresses, how he
conducts himself. He leaves the theater
with a vague idea supplanted by a living picture. Then he begins all over again, by himself, to
re-construct what he saw. He tries to
remember all the things that were so clearly before him. And finally, out of the effort of his own
mental reconstruction, he begins to build up a Philip II of his own! He imitates, he discards, he adds, he
recreates the personage; and that character becomes a part of him—or, is it the
other way round? Only by such means does
he really learn.
A Study of Life
I
believe firmly in teaching (and learning) by example. Maxims and methods are only half
effective. One learns algebra out of a
textbook, but not an art which means the reconstruction of life. Only by living can one learn to live. Only by doing can one learn to do. A good teacher should be able to offer his
pupils not merely advice but also striking examples of what must be
avoided. The pupil, for his part, should
learn to watch for models—on the stage, in life, everywhere—for that he can
copy and that he must shun. He can learn
a great deal from a thoroughly bad performance.
It shows him with faithful exactness all that he must never, never do!
And,
along with his power to observe, the student should cultivate a wholesome
respect for his art. Let nothing that
touches his work be casual or haphazard.
Let nothing be “good enough.”
Only perfection is good enough—and no one has achieved that as yet! The modern mind seems inclined to be a bit
self-centered; to take itself and its “personality” a trifle too
seriously. I remember working in various
theaters, when I was a youngster. Many
of the coaches were great artists themselves; and, when they saw some
inexperienced novice doing terrible things, they spoke to him roughly, scolded
him publicly and in no uncertain terms.
I got plenty of such training myself!
Of course it was painful. Of
course it made one feel like creeping under the floor. But it was good for us. Once we had felt the sting of such public
censure, we redoubled our efforts to avoid a second dose. We were humble, alert, disciplined. And thus, we were able to grow.
Today such training is out of fashion. Young people’s feelings are easily hurt. They prefer being handled with kid
gloves. They think of themselves quite
as much as of the work they are doing.
And, while they sincerely wish to do good work, they are equally anxious
to be spared pain. That makes them
softer, I am afraid, than we used to be.
If a youngster cannot stand up under a thorough scolding, how will he
fare when he begins to feel the harsher blows of life? He must not be afraid that his “personality”
will become repressed by discipline. It
will not. Because mature personality (as
distinguished from mere spectacularism) is nothing more than the human distillation
of all one’s experiences. The person who
lives much and ardently, through all sorts of experiences, good and bad alike,
emerges as a personality. The person who
shields himself and spares himself, remains a figurehead.
Telling the Song’s
Story
I like
to think of a singer as a teller of stories.
He uses his voice to spread convincing tales of human love and hate and
revenge and compassion, quite as artists of a different sort tell their tales
on canvas or in a book. And to tell
these stories well, one must know life, must observe people, must keep a warm
compassion alive in the heart for other human beings. Things are going on about us at every moment,
which may one day make one better able to tell the story of a young man in
love, of an old man who has found his peace, of a restless spirit who has not
yet come to port. The singing artist
must observe these things and then retell them through his own voice and
acting. I learn something new every day—something
that will make my next performance I have never noticed before, something
better than any of the others.
To tell stories, the voice must be
completely flexible and full of color.
When saying, “I love you,” there must be an entirely different color of
voice from the one required to say, “I detest the sight of you!” For the one, the voice is warm and mellow;
for the other, it is dark and menacing.
If the singer does not have these different voices—and countless others—at
command, he cannot tell his story movingly.
When it is told movingly, then the singer is approaching art.
Complete Singing
To
sing with a singing voice alone, means nothing.
It never will enhance the singer’s progress in art; and it never will
reach his hearers’ hearts. But to tell
the different stories of human life and emotion through the voice; ah, that is
another matter! And that is why the
theory of “voice, voice, and again
VOICE,” is not sufficient. If one is
born with a voice in his throat, he has
simply an added blessing for which to be grateful. What he does with it, depends on himself; on
his ardor, his powers to observe and to reconstruct. Anyone can sing notes and syllables, as they
appear on the printed page. Some can
even penetrate into the music enough to sing melody and words. But only the very few learn to sing the song
itself, with all its human emotion, all its joy and suffering. Those who do, are artists. They devote themselves to portraying the
truth of life, through music.
I am often asked about American
singers. Well, I see no reason why
America should not produce singers as great as those of any other land. I have heard many voices in my career, but
there is one that still rings in my ears.
It is the voice of Miss Marie van Zandt, an American girl. I had the honor of singing with her, in “Lakmé,”
long ago. Delibes wrote the part of Lakmé with her in mind; and, if
you go to Paris and look up the Delibes monument there, you will find upon it
the likeness of that young American girl.
She had a great voice and she was a great artist; and, if America
produced her, why should it not produce other great artists? Perhaps they are in the process of
development today. There are thousands
of eager young people in America’s vocal studios, learning, and working, and
burning to develop into something. What
will that “something” be? It is for them
to say. I hope, sincerely, that they
will elect to become artists.
Enjoy Dame Joan Sutherland and Marilyn Horne perform the “Flower Duet” from Léo Delibes’ Lakme:
SELF-TEST QUESTIONS ON MR.
CHALIAPIN’S ARTICLE
1. Quote a fallacious adage on singing.
2. Why is more than “voice” needed?
3. What is the safest method of voice production?
4. How is the voice to be preserved?
5. What will the singer learn by the observation of life about
him?
Thursday, May 23, 2013
The Musical Scrap Book
A delightful glimpse of the home into
which Chopin was born is given in “Chopin, the Child and the Lad,” by Uminska
and Kennedy.
The “flat” in a small town on the
Mazovian plains, say these authors, was “a little suite of rooms in the long,
low annex of Countess Skarba’s manor-house, and was separated by a hall from
the manor bakery and kitchen . . . . The
Chopins’ three rooms had, as was then the habit, beamed ceilings and
whitewashed walls. They were furnished
with solid old-fashioned mahogany furniture.
In the one-windowed front room in which Nicholas Chopin, the new-born baby’s
father, was wont to sit and study, there were also bookshelves, containing his collection
of books, from which he was never willingly separated. The next room, which had two windows, was the
largest of all and served as a drawing room.
In one corner of it stood a high-backed clavichord.
“The third room, which was at the back
of the house, had a window looking out on a flower bed, and further, across the
River Utrata (Utrata means “loss”), which flowed almost under the windows of
the house.
“In the corner of each of these rooms
stood a tall, white-washed brick stove, heated with pinewood logs, which,
burning, gave forth a smell of resin, that mingled with the scent of rosemary
and lavender and dried rose leaves with which, according to prevailing fashion,
the sofa cushions were stuffed. White
muslin curtains covered the windows and on the broad sills stood Fushia,
Pelargonium and Geranium plants.”
“It is well to remember that to
be successful one must play, direct, or compose up to the public. It is the greatest nonsense to imagine that
success depends on playing down to the public.”—John Philip Sousa
“HIS OWN BOSS”
James Jupp has written a book. It is called “The Gaiety Stage Door,” and
James Jupp kept the door of this famous London playhouse for thirty years. He has many strange stories to tell including
one about a street-singer who attracted the mighty George Edwardes, then at his
prime as a producer of musical comedies.
Edwardes sent for the man who had a fine but untrained baritone voice.
“He (Edwardes) put several questions
to him in a delicate manner, as to why he was singing in the street, if he had
any parents, and so forth. Then he made
an offer for which any right-minded young man would have been everlastingly
grateful. It was that he should be put
under a master and be thoroughly trained for opera, comic opera, or musical
comedy or whichever his voice proved to be most suitable for. he would be clothed and have board and
lodging found for him, and during the time he was studying (perhaps two or
three years) he would be paid five pounds ($25) a week. At the end of his studies he was to enter
into a contract with Mr. Edwardes, who would put him on the stage in London,
and if he (Mr. Edwardes) had any judgment, he would be assured of a very
successful career.”
To this generous offer, says Jupp, the
man made the following reply:
“’Do you know that I rake in as much
as $100 a week at this game? Sometimes
more? And I am my own boss. I sing when and where I like, and not at all
if I don’t feel in the mood. Study! Me
study? No thanks!’”
THE HARSHNESS OF MODERN MUSIC
If modern music is ugly, at times, and
bitter with acid discord, this is because it interprets the spirit of our
times, says H. E. Wortham, an English critic who writes quite cheerfully on the
theme in his “Musical Odyssey.”
“The harshness of the greatest modern
music is not to be denied,” he declares, “and, in so far as it springs from new
uses of the scale and unfamiliar harmonic idioms, will wear off with time. But we cannot thus account for it all. There is assuredly a deeper reason. Though music stands apart from the sphere of
daily life, the musician is always subject to the spiritual stresses and struggles
of the society in which he lives, and reflects them the more clearly in that
his will be a nature more sensitive than that of the ordinary man Thus when we find composers of genius giving
utterance to strains that are positively painful in their harsh intensity, it
is the wiser course not to condemn such as the eccentricity of talent striving
after originality, but to accept them as the truest echo we can offer today of
the music of the spheres.
“That echo sounds differently in every
age. We do not hear it as did the
Victorians. Parry, who was doing good
work only a decade ago, is already the voice of a past time. Sir Edward Elgar, still happily in the full
tide of life and strength, is beginning to appear remote. In them there is not that undercurrent of
mental restlessness of excitement and disillusion which is characteristic of
today. It can be seen in a hundred ways,
but it can be seen most powerfully perhaps in the ‘Planets,’ a work at once huge,
as the modern world is huge, but also mystical as the modern world is not. When the future historian of our defunct
civilization wishes to gain an insight into the way European peoples of today
reacted to the imponderable things of the spirit, he will not be able to do
better than to turn to Holst’s masterpiece.”
Enjoy “Jupiter”
from Gustav Holst’s Planets, performed by the Osaka PhilharmonicOrchestra, Eiji Oue, conducting:
CHILDHOOD OF GOTTSCHALK
Gottschalk, first of American piano
virtuosi, learned to play the piano as early as in his fourth year, according
to Marguerite F. Aylmer, quoted by Octavia Hensel in the latter’s “Life andLetters of Louis Moreau Gottschalk.”
“His early childhood was passed in a
poetic and wild retirement, far from the noise of cities, or the realities of
the world of men. On the romantic shores
of Lake Pontchartrain he drew his first inspirations from the wisest and most
beneficial of all teachers—Nature.
“At the age of four, he sought an
outlet for his wonderful inspiration, for by no other name can it be called, on
the piano; and not infrequently at that tender age, his mother would be
awakened in the long still nights by faint sweet melodies from below, and
descend to find the child fingering the ‘beautiful cold keys,’ with a
marvelous, rapt look on his little face.
“The first opera he ever heard, was ‘Robertle Diable’ and upon his return from the theater he sat down and played the
principal airs with a miraculous exactitude.
Long years after, when the child had grown to a world-famous man, he
says, speaking of the death of Meyerbeer, “I will not attempt to tell you of my
grief; to understand it, you must have been habituated, like myself, from
infancy, to something little short of worship for this great genius, whose chef-d’oeuvre, “Robert le Diable,’
filled my early years with ineffable joy.’”
Gottschalk (1829-69) was of
Anglo-French descent, and was musically educated in Paris. He is best known by his compositions “TheLast Hope” and “Dying Poet,” but deserves to be known also by his
transcriptions of Creole music and typical Creole compositions.
WHEN CALVE WAS LATE
Emma Calvé’s book, “My Life,” contains many revealing incidents culled
from her varied career, including one that shows how even a great singer can
learn a lesson in promptitude.
“At the last general rehearsal before
the first night of ‘Sappho’ (an opera specially written for Calvé by Massenet), I had the
misfortune of arriving at the theater ten minutes late. The company was waiting, and Massenet,
excited and nervous as usual, was decidedly out of patience. He greeted me abruptly, disregarding the presence
of my comrades and the members of the chorus and orchestra.
“’Mademoiselle Calvé,’ he said, ‘an artist worthy of the name would never keep
her fellow workers waiting!’
“It was extremely angry. Turning away, I walked off the stage and
started to leave the building. On my way
out, I had a change of heart. It took
all my courage, but I decided to go back!
“’My friends,’ I said, ‘the master is
right. I am at fault. Forgive me!
I am ready to rehearse my part, if I am permitted to do so.’
“The chorus and the orchestra
applauded. Massenet embraced me. I was forgiven, but it had been a painful
lesson. Since then, I have never been a
minute late for even the most unimportant engagement.”
Being late at rehearsals is a serious
business, and orchestra conductors are usually very strict on this matter with
their personnel. Musicians are
sensitive, and playing at a high pitch, so that any slight interruption or
mishap may throw them off their balance and spoil the music.
Enjoy this recording of Emma
Calvé performing "Plaisir d'Amour" from 1908:
“A
SMALL ORCHESTRA OF SOLOISTS”
We have seen symphony orchestras in
the course of a century or so swell up from the twenty or thirty players of
Haydn’s time to the immensity of the modern symphony orchestra. George Dyson in his book “The New Music”
suggests the return to smaller orchestras in a novel way:
“It is just possible that we are
feeling our way towards that ideal combination, a small orchestra of soloists,
in which every performer will be an aristocrat, to his own and music’s great
advantage,” says Dyson.
“Nobody knows yet what to do, still less
what may eventually be done, with such a medium. There are few composers who can handle as
many as a dozen instruments with sustained yet orderly independence. But no one ever did know what to do with new
possibilities.
“Slowly, clumsily, and with but a
partial dawning of comprehension, music has gradually embraced its
resources. In the end one can imagine
the new Bach, as it were, consummately applying the interpretative gifts of a
selected few to the evolution of new forms of beauty. There was never a time when players of such
perfection awaited the composer of genius.
The old Bach was sometimes constrained to enroll an instrumental chorus
to support his scanty soloists. We have
seen where that may lead, the new Bach will, it is hoped, be spared such
temptations
“This music will in many respects be
eclectic. It will not lend itself to
arrangements for the piano, or submit to the devastating effect of unsuitable instruments
in undiscriminating hands. But the vast
concourse of music-lovers wants to listen, not to play. And now that difficulties of reproduction and
circulation are for the most part solved, it is theoretically possible for new
works to reach, in substantial purity, the ear of the true amateur, whoever and
wherever he may be.”
“Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory.”
—Shelley.
AUER'S 40-YEAR-OLD PUPIL
The difficulties of Jewish music
students in Russia under the old order are told by Leopold Auer in “My Long
Life in Music.” When he was teaching at
the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, young Jascha Heifetz was admitted without
question, but his parents and little sisters were barred from the city on
racial grounds.
Finally, however, “Someone hit upon
the happy idea,” says Auer, “of suggesting that I admit Jascha’s father, a
violinist of forty, into my own class, and thus solve the problem. This I did, and as a result the law was
obeyed while at the same time the Heifetz family was not separated, for it was
not legally permissible for the wife and children of a Conservatoire pupil to
be separated from the husband and father.
“However, since the students were
without exception expected to attend the obligatory classes in solfeggio, piano
and harmony, and since Papa Heifetz most certainly did not attend any of them,
and did not play at the examination, I had to battle continually with the
management on his account.
“It was not until the advent of
Glazounoff, my last director, who knew the true inwardness of the situation,
that I had no further trouble in seeing that the boy remained in his parents’
care until the summer of 1917, when the family was able to go to America.
Enjoy Jascha Heifetz’
performance of Bach’s Chaconne from
Partitia No. 2 in D minor:
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)