Great Singers on the Art of Singing Part 4

DAME CLARA b.u.t.t

BIOGRAPHICAL

Dame b.u.t.t was born at Southwick, Suss.e.x, February 1, 1873. Her first lessons were with D. W. Rootham in Bristol.

In 1889 she won a scholars.h.i.+p at the Royal College of music where the teacher was J. H. Blower. Later she studied for short periods with Bouhy in Paris and Etelka Gerster in Berlin. Her debut was made as Ursula in Sullivan's setting of the Longfellow poem, _Golden Legend_. Her success was immediate and very great. She became in demand at all of the great English musical festivals and also sang before enormous audiences for years in the great English cities. In 1900 she married the noted English baritone R. Kennerly Rumford and together they have made many tours, including a tour of the world, appearing everywhere with continued success. Her voice is one of rich, full contralto quality with such individual characteristics that great English composers have written special works to reveal these great natural gifts. Dame b.u.t.t received her distinction of "Dame" from King George in 1920. Her happy family life with her children has won her endless admirers among musical people everywhere.

SUCCESS IN CONCERT SINGING

DAME CLARA b.u.t.t

HEALTH AND SINGING

It must be obvious to all aspiring vocal students that splendid good health is well nigh indispensable to the singer. There have been singers, of course, who have had physical afflictions that have made their public appearances extremely painful, but they have succeeded in spite of these unfortunate drawbacks. In fact, if the young singer is ambitious and has that wonderful gift of directing her efforts in the way most likely to bring fortunate results, even physical weakness may be overcome. By this I mean that the singer will work out some plan for bringing her physical condition to the standard that fine singing demands. I believe most emphatically that the right spirit will conquer obstacles that often seem impa.s.sable. One might safely say that nine-tenths of the successes in all branches of artistic work are due to the inextinguishable fire that burns in the heart and mind of the art worker and incites him to pa.s.s through any ordeal in order to deliver his message to the world.

MISDIRECTED EFFORT

The cruel part of it all is that many aspire to become great singers who can never possibly have their hopes realized. Natural selection rather than destiny seems to govern this matter. The ugly caterpillar seems like an unpromising candidate for the brilliant career of the b.u.t.terfly, and it oftentimes happens that students who seem unpromising to some have just the qualities which, with the right time, instruction and experience, will ent.i.tle them to great success. It is the little ant who hopes to grow iridescent wings, and who travels through conservatory after conservatory, hoping to find the magic chrysalis that will do this, who is to be pitied. Great success must depend upon special gifts, intellectual as well as vocal. Oh, if we only had some instinct, like that possessed by animals, that would enable us to determine accurately in advance the safest road for us to take, the road that will lead us to the best development of our real talents--not those we imagine we may have or those which the flattery of friends have grafted upon us! Mr.

Rumford and I have witnessed so much very hard and very earnest work carried on by students who have no rational basis to hope for success as singers, that we have been placed in the uncomfortable position of advising young singers to seek some other life work.

WHEN TO BEGIN

The eternal question, "At what age shall I commence to study singing?"

is always more or less amusing to the experienced singer. If the singer's spirit is in the child, nothing will stop his singing. He will sing from morning until night, and seems to be guided in most cases by an all-providing Nature that makes its untutored efforts the very best kind of practice. Unless the child is brought into contact with very bad music he is not likely to be injured. Children seem to be trying their best to prove the Darwinian theory by showing us that they can mimic quite as well as monkeys. The average child comes into the better part of his little store of wisdom through mimicry. Naturally if the little vocal student is taken to the vaudeville theatre, where every imaginable vocal law is smashed during a three-hour performance, and if the child observes that the smas.h.i.+ng process is followed by the enthusiastic applause of the unthinking audience, it is only reasonable to suppose that the child will discover in this what he believes to be the most approved art of singing.

It is evident then that the first thing which the parent of the musical child should consider is that of teaching him to appreciate what is looked upon as good and what is looked upon as bad. Although many singers with fine voices have appeared in vaudeville, the others must be regarded as "horrible" examples, and the child should know that they are such. On the other hand, it is quite evident that the more good singing that the child hears in the impressionable years of its youth the greater will be the effect upon the mind which is to direct the child's musical future. This is a branch of the vocalist's education which may begin long before the actual lessons. If it is carefully conducted the teacher should have far less difficulty in starting the child with the actual work. The only possible danger might be that the child's imitative faculty could lead it to extremes of pitch in imitating some singer. Even this is hardly more likely to injure it than the shouting and screaming which often accompanies the play of children.

The actual time of starting must depend upon the individual. It is never too early for him to start in acquiring his musical knowledge.

Everything he might learn of music itself, through the study of the piano or any other instrument would all become a part of his capital when he became a singer. Those singers are fortunate whose musical knowledge commenced with the cradle and whose first master was that greatest of all teachers, the mother. Speaking generally, it seems to be the impression of singing teachers that voice students should not commence the vocal side of their studies until they are from sixteen to seventeen years of age. In this connection, consider my own case. My first public appearance with orchestra was when I was fourteen. It was in Bristol, England, and among other things I sang _Ora Pro n.o.bis_ from Gounod's _Workers_.

I was fortunate in having in my first teacher, D. W. Rootham, a man too thoroughly blessed with good British common sense to have any "tricks."

He had no fantastic way of doing things, no proprietary methods, that none else in the world was supposed to possess. He listened for the beautiful in my voice and, as his sense of musical appreciation was highly cultivated, he could detect faults, explain them to me and show me how to overcome them by purely natural methods. The princ.i.p.al part of the process was to make me realize mentally just what was wrong and then what was the more artistic way of doing it.

LETTING THE VOICE GROW

After all, singing is singing, and I am convinced that my master's idea of just letting the voice grow with normal exercise and without excesses in any direction was the best way for me. It was certainly better than hours and hours of theory, interesting to the student of physiology, but often bewildering to the young vocalist. Real singing with real music is immeasurably better than ages of conjecture. It appears that some students spend years in learning how they are going to sing at some glorious day in the future, but it never seems to occur to them that in order to sing they must really use their voices. Of course, I do not mean to infer that the student must omit the necessary preparatory work.

Solfeggios, for instance, and scales are extremely useful. Concone, tried and true, gives excellent material for all students. But why spend years in dreaming of theories regarding singing when everyone knows that the theory of singing has been the battleground for innumerable talented writers for centuries? Even now it is apparently impossible to reconcile all the vocal writers, except in so far as they all modestly admit that they have rediscovered the real old Italian school. Perhaps they have.

But, admitting that an art teacher rediscovered the actual pigments used by Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt or Raphael, he would have no little task in creating a student who could duplicate _Mona Lisa_, _The Night Watch_ or the _Sistine Madonna_.

After leaving Rootham, I won the four hundred guinea scholars.h.i.+p at the Royal College of Music and studied with Henry Blower. This I followed with a course with Bouhy in Paris and Etelka Gerster in Berlin. Mr.

Rumford and I both concur in the opinion that it is necessary for the student who would sing in any foreign language to study in the country in which the language is spoken. In no other way can one get the real atmosphere. The preparatory work may be done in the home country, but if one fails to taste of the musical life of the country in which the songs came into being, there seems to be an indefinable absence of the right flavor. I believe in employing the native tongue for songs in recital work. It seems narrow to me to do otherwise. At the same time, I have always been a champion for songs written originally with English texts, and have sung innumerable times with programs made from English lyrics.

PREPARING A REPERTOIRE

The idea that concert and recital work is not as difficult as operatic work has been pretty well exploded by this time. In fact, it is very much more difficult to sing a simple song well in concert than it is to sing some of the elaborate Wagnerian recitatives in which the very complexities of the music make a convenient hiding place for the artist's vocal shortcomings. In concert everything is concentrated upon the singer. Convention has ever deprived him of the convenient gestures that give ease to the opera singer.

The selection of useful material for concert purposes is immensely difficult. It must have artistic merit, it must have human interest, it must suit the singer, in most cases the piano must be used for accompaniment and the song must not be dependent upon an orchestral accompaniment for its value. It must not be too old, it must not be too far in advance of popular tastes. It is a bad plan to wander indiscriminately about among countless songs, never learning any really well. The student should begin to select numbers with great care, realizing that it is futile to try to do everything. Lord Bolingbroke, in his essay on the shortness of human life, shows how impossible it is for a man to read more than a mere fraction of a great library though he read regularly every day of his life. It is very much the same with music. The resources are so vast and time is so limited that there is no opportunity to learn everything. Far better is it for the vocalist to do a little well than to do much ineffectually.

Good music well executed meets with very much the same appreciation everywhere. During our latest tour we gave almost the very same programs in America as those we have been giving upon the European Continent. The music-loving American public is likely to differ but slightly from that of the great music centers of the old world. Music has truly become a universal language.

In developing a repertoire the student might look upon the musical public as though it were a huge circle filled with smaller circles, each little circle being a center of interest. One circle might insist upon old English songs, such as the delightful melodies of Arne, Carey, Monroe. Another circle might expect the arias of the old Italian masters, Carissimi, Jomelli, Sacchini or Scarlatti. Another circle would want to hear the German Lieder of such composers as Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Franz and Wolf. Still another circle might go away disappointed if they could not hear something of the ultra modern writers, such as Strauss, Debussy or even that freak of musical cacophony, Schoenberg.

However diverse may be the individual likings of these smaller circles, all of the members of your audience are united in liking music as a whole.

The audience will demand variety in your repertoire but at the same time it will demand certain musical essentials which appeal to all. There is one circle in your audience that I have purposely reserved for separate discussion. That is the great circle of concert goers who are not skilled musicians, who are too frank, too candid, to adopt any of the cant of those social frauds who revel in Reger and Schoenberg, and just because it might stamp them as real connoisseurs, but who really can't recognize much difference between the _Liebestod_ of _Tristan und Isolde_ and _Rule Britannia_,--but the music lovers who are too honest to fail to state that they like the _Lost Chord_ or the lovely folk songs of your American composer, Stephen Foster. Mr. Plunkett Greene, in his work upon song interpretation, makes no room for the existence of songs of this kind. Indeed, he would cast them all into the discard.

This seems to me a huge mistake. Surely we can not say that music is a monopoly of the few who have schooled their ears to enjoy outlandish disonances with delight. Music is perhaps the most universal of all the arts and with the gradual evolution of those who love it, a natural audience is provided for music of the more complicated sort. We learn to like our musical caviar with surprising rapidity. It was only yesterday that we were objecting to the delightful piano pieces of Debussy, who can generate an atmosphere with a single chord just as Murillo could inspire an emotion with a stroke of the brush.

It is not safe to say that you do not like things in this way. I think that even Schoenberg is trying to be true to his muse. We must remember that Haydn, Beethoven, Wagner and Brahms pa.s.sed through the fire of criticism in their day. The more breadth a singer puts into her work the more likely is she to reap success. Time only can produce the accomplished artist. The best is to find a joy in your work and think of nothing but large success. If you have the gift, triumph will be yours.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GIUSEPPE CAMPANARI.

Dupont.]

GIUSEPPE CAMPANARI

BIOGRAPHICAL

Giuseppe Campanari was born at Venice, Italy, Nov. 17th, 1858. His parents were not particularly musical but were very anxious for the boy to become a musician. At the age of nine he commenced to study the piano and later he entered the Conservatory of Milan, making his princ.i.p.al instrument the violoncello. Upon his graduation he secured a position in the 'cello section of the orchestra at "La Scala." Here for years he heard the greatest singers and the greatest operas, gaining a musical insight into the works through an understanding of the scores which has seldom if ever been possessed by a great opera singer. His first appearance as singer was at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan. Owing to voice strain he was obliged to give up singing and in the interim he took a position as a 'cellist in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, remaining with that organization some years. He then made appearances with the Emma Juch Opera Company, the Heinrichs Opera Company, and eventually at the Metropolitan Opera Company in New York, where he achieved his greatest triumphs as leading baritone. Mr. Campanari long since became an American citizen and has devoted his attention to teaching for years.

His conference which follows is particularly interesting, as from the vocal standpoint he is almost entirely self taught.

THE VALUE OF SELF-STUDY IN VOICE TRAINING

GIUSEPPE CAMPANARI

So much has been written upon the futility of applying one method to all cases in vocal instruction that it seems useless for me to say anything that would add to the volume of testimony against the custom of trying to teach all pupils in the same manner. No one man ever has had, has, or ever will have, a "method" superior to all others, for the very simple reason that the means one vocalist might employ to reach artistic success would be quite different from that which another singer, with an entirely different voice, different throat and different intellect, would be obliged to employ. One of the great laws of Nature is the law of variation; that is, no two children of any parents are ever exactly alike. Even in the case of twins there is often a great variation. The great English philosopher, Darwin, made much of this principle. It is one which all voice students and teachers should consider, for although there are, from the nature of things, many foundation principles which must remain the same in all cases, the differences in individual cases are sufficient to demand the greatest keenness of observation, the widest experience and an inexhaustible supply of patience upon the part of the teacher.

Please understand, I am not decrying the use of books of exercises such as those of Concone, Marchesi, Regine, Panofka and others. Such books are necessary. I have used these and others in teaching, suiting the book to the individual case. The pupil needs material of this kind, and it should be chosen with the greatest care and consideration not only of the pupil's voice, but of his intellectual capacity and musical experience. These books should not be considered "methods." They are the common property of all teachers, and most teachers make use of them. My understanding of a "method" is a set of hard and fast rules, usually emanating from the mind of some one person who has the effrontery to pa.s.s them off upon an all too gullible public as the one road to a vocal Parna.s.sus. Only the singer with years of experience can realize how ridiculous this course is and how large is the percentage of failure of the pupils of teachers whose sole claim to fame is that they teach the---- method. Proud as I am of the glorious past of vocal art in the country of my birth, I cannot help being amused and at the same time somewhat irritated when I think of the many palpable frauds that are cla.s.sed under the head of the "Real Old Italian Method" by inexperienced teachers. We cannot depend upon the past in all cases to meet present conditions. The singers of the olden day in Italy were doubtless great, because they possessed naturally fine voices and used them in an unaffected, natural manner. In addition to this they were born speaking a tongue favorable to beautiful singing, led simple lives and had opportunities for hearing the great operas and the great singers unexcelled by those of any other European country. That they became great through the practice of any set of rules or methods is inconceivable. There were great teachers in olden Italy, very great teachers, and some of them made notes upon the means they employed, but I cannot believe that if these teachers were living to-day they would insist upon their ideas being applied to each and every individual case in the same identical manner.

THE VALUE OF OPERA

This leads us to the subject at hand. The students in Italy in the past have had advantages for self-study that were of greatest importance. On all sides good singing and great singing might be heard conveniently and economically. Opera was and is one of the great national amus.e.m.e.nts of Italy. Opera houses may be found in all of the larger cities and in most of the smaller ones. The prices of admission are, as a rule, very low.