EMMA THURSBY

Although conditions have changed very greatly since I was last regularly engaged in making concert tours, the change has been rather one of advantage to young singers than one to their disadvantage. The enormous advance in musical taste can only be expressed by the word “startling.” For while we have apparently a vast amount of worthless music being continually inoculated into our unsuspecting public, we have, nevertheless, a corresponding cultivation of the love for good music which contributes much to the support of the concert singer of the present day.

The old time lyceum has almost disappeared, but the high-class song recital has taken its place and recitals that would have been barely possible years ago are now frequently given with greatest financial and artistic success. Schumann, Franz, Strauss, Grieg and MacDowell have conquered the field formerly held by the vapid and meaningless compositions of brainless composers who wrote solely to amuse or to appeal to morbid sentimentality.

The conditions of travel, also, have been greatly improved. It is now possible to go about in railroad cars and stop at hotels, and at the same time experience very little inconvenience and discomfort. This makes the career of the concert artist a far more desirable one than in former years. Uninviting hotels, frigid cars, poorly prepared meals and the lack of privacy were scarcely the best things to stimulate a high degree of musical inspiration.

HEALTH

Nevertheless, the girl who would be successful in concert must either possess or acquire good health as her first and all-essential asset. Notwithstanding the marvelous improvement in traveling facilities and accommodations, the nervous strain of public performance is not lessened, and it not infrequently happens that these very facilities enable the avaricious manager to crowd in more concerts and recitals than in former years, with the consequent strain upon the vitality of the singer.

Of course, the singer must also possess the foundation for a good natural voice, a sense of hearing capable of being trained to the keenest perception of pitch, quality, rhythm and metre, an attractive personality, a bright mind, a good general education and an artistic temperament a very extraordinary list, I grant you, but we must remember that the public pays out its money to hear extraordinary people and the would-be singer who does not possess qualifications of this description had better sincerely solicit the advice of some experienced, unbiased teacher or singer before putting forth upon the musical seas in a bark which must meet with certain destruction in weathering the first storm. The teacher who consciously advises a singer to undertake a public career and at the same time knows that such a career would very likely be a failure is beneath the recognition of any honest man or woman.

THE SINGER’S EARLY TRAINING

The education of the singer should not commence too early, if we mean by education the training of the voice. If you discover that a child has a very remarkable voice, “ear” and musical intelligence you had better let the voice alone and give your attention to the general musical education of the child along the lines of that received by Madame Sembrich, who is a fine violinist and pianist. So few are the teachers who know anything whatever about the child-voice, or who can treat it with any degree of safety, that it is far better to leave it alone than to tamper with it. Encourage the child to sing softly, sweetly and naturally, much as in free fluent conversation, telling him to form the habit of speaking his tones forward “on the lips” rather than in the throat. If you have among your acquaintances some musician or singer of indisputable ability and impeccable honor who can give you disinterested advice have the child go to this friend now and then to ascertain whether any bad and unnatural habits are being formed. Of course we have the famous cases of Patti and others, who seem to have sung from infancy. I have no recollection of the time when I first commenced to sing. I have always sung and gloried in my singing.

See to it that your musical child has a good general education. This does not necessarily mean a college or university training. In fact, the amount of music study a singer has to accomplish in these days makes the higher academic training apparently impossible. However, with the great musical advance there has come a demand for higher and better ordered intellectual work among singers. This condition is becoming more and more imperative every day. At the same time you must remember also that nothing should be undertaken that might in any way be liable to undermine or impair the child’s health.

WHEN TO BEGIN TRAINING

The time to begin training depends upon the maturity of the voice and the individual, considered together with the physical condition of the pupil. Some girls are ready to start voice work at sixteen, while others are not really in condition until a somewhat older age. Here again comes the necessity for the teacher of judgment and experience. A teacher who might in any way be influenced by the necessity for securing a pupil or a fee should be avoided as one avoids the shyster lawyer. Starting vocal instruction too early has been the precipice over which many a promising career has been dashed to early oblivion.

In choosing a teacher I hardly know what to say, in these days of myriad methods and endless claims. The greatest teachers I have known have been men and women of great simplicity and directness. The perpetrator of the complicated system is normally the creator of vocal failures. The secret of singing is at once a marvelous mystery and again an open secret to those who have realized its simplicity. It cannot be altogether written, nor can it be imparted by words alone. Imitation undoubtedly plays an important part, but it is not everything. The teacher must be one who has actually realized the great truths which underlie the best, simplest and most natural methods of securing results and who must possess the wonderful power of exactly communicating these principles to the pupil. A good teacher is far rarer than a good singer. Singers are often poor teachers, as they destroy the individuality of the pupil by demanding arbitrary imitation. A teacher can only be judged by results, and the pupil should never permit herself to be deluded by advertisements and claims a teacher is unable to substantiate with successful pupils.

HABITS OF SPEECH, POISE AND THINKING

One of the deep foundation piers of all educational effort is the inculcation of habits. The most successful voice teacher is the one who is most happy in developing habits of correct singing. These habits must be watched with the persistence, perseverance and affectionate care of the scientist. The teacher must realize that the single lapse or violation of a habit may mean the ruin of weeks or months of hard work.

One of the most necessary habits a teacher should form is that of speaking with ease, naturalness and vocal charm. Many of our American girls speak with indescribable harshness, slovenliness and shrillness. This is a severe tax upon the sensibilities of a musical person and I know of countless people who suffer acute annoyance from this source. Vowels are emitted with a nasal twang or a throaty growl that seem at times most unpardonable noises when coming from a pretty face. Consonants are juggled and mangled until the words are very difficult to comprehend. Our girls are improving in this respect, but there is still cause for grievous complaint among voice teachers, who find in this one of their most formidable obstacles.

Another common natural fault, which is particularly offensive to me, is that of an objectionable bodily poise. I have found throughout my entire career that bodily poise in concert work is of paramount importance, but I seem to have great difficulty in sufficiently impressing this great truth upon young ladies who would be singers. The noted Parisian teacher, Sbriglia, is said to require one entire year to build up and fortify the chest. I have always felt that the best poise is that in which the shoulders are held well back, although not in a stiff or strained position, the upper part of the body leaning forward gently and naturally and the whole frame balanced by a sense of relaxation and ease. In this position the natural equilibrium is not taxed, and a peculiar sensation of non-constraint seems to be noticeable, particularly over the entire area of the front of the torso. This position suggests ease and an absence of that military rigidity which is so fatal to all good vocal effort. It also permits of a freer movement of the abdominal walls, as well as the intercostal muscles, and is thus conducive to the most natural breathing. Too much anatomical explanation is liable to confuse the young singer, and if the matter of breathing can be assisted by poise, just so much is gained.

Another important habit that the teacher should see to at the start is that of correct thinking. Most vocal beginners are poor thinkers and fail to realize the vast importance of the mind in all voice work. Unless the teacher has the power of inspiring the pupil to a realization of the great fact that nothing is accomplished in the throat that has not been previously performed in the mind, the path will be a difficult one. During the process of singing the throat and the auxiliary vocal process of breathing are really a part of the brain, or, more specifically, the mind or soul. The body is never more than an instrument. Without the performer it is as voiceless as the piano of Richard Wagner standing in all its solitary silence at Wahnfried a mute monument of the marvelous thoughts which once rang from its vibrating wires to all parts of the civilized world. We really sing with that which leaves the body after death. It is in the cultivation of this mystery of mysteries, the soul, that most singers fail. The mental ideal is, after all, that which makes the singer. Patti possessed this ideal as a child, and with it the wonderful bodily qualifications which made her immortal. But it requires work to overcome vocal deficiencies, and Patti as a child was known to have been a ceaseless worker and thinker, always trying to bring her little body up to the high aesthetic appreciation of the best artistic interpretation of a given passage.

MAURICE STRAKOSCH’S TEN VOCAL COMMANDMENTS

It was from Maurice Strakosch that I learned of the methods pursued by Patti in her daily work, and although Strakosch was not a teacher in the commercial sense of the word, as he had comparatively few pupils, he was nevertheless a very fine musician, and there is no doubt that Patti owed a great deal to his careful and insistent regime and instruction. Although our relation was that of impresario and artist, I cannot be grateful enough to him for the advice and instruction I received from him. The technical exercises he employed were exceedingly simple and he gave more attention to how they were sung than to the exercises themselves. I know of no more effective set of exercises than Strakosch’s ten daily exercises. They were sung to the different vowels, principally to the vowel “ah,” as in “father.” Notwithstanding their great simplicity Strakosch gave the greatest possible attention and time to them. Patti used these exercises, which he called his “Ten Commandments for the Singer,” daily, and there can be little doubt that the extraordinary preservation of her voice is the result of these simple means. I have used them for years with exceptional results in all cases. However, if the singer has any idea that the mere practice of these exercises to the different vowel sounds will inevitably bring success she is greatly mistaken. These exercises are only valuable when used with vowels correctly and naturally “placed,” and that means, in some cases, years of the most careful and painstaking work.

The concert singer of the present day must have linguistic attainments far greater than those in demand some years ago. She is required to sing in English, French, German, Italian and some singers are now attempting the interpretation of songs in Slavic and other tongues. Not only do we have to consider arias and passages from the great oratorios and operas as a part of the present-day repertoire, but the song of the “Lied” type has come to have a valuable significance in all concert work. Many songs intended for the chamber and the salon are now included in programs of concerts and recitals given in our largest auditoriums. Only a very few numbers are in themselves songs written for the concert hall. Most of the numbers now sung at song concerts are really transplanted from either the stage or the chamber. This makes the position of the concert singer an extremely difficult one. Without the dramatic accessories of the opera house or the intimacy of the home circle, she is expected to achieve results varying from the cry of the Valkyries, in Die Walkuere, to the frail fragrance of Franz’ Es hat die Rose sich beklagt. I do not wonder that Mme. Schumann-Heink and others have declared that there is nothing more difficult or exhausting than concert singing. The enormous fees paid to great concert singers are not surprising when we consider how very few must be the people who can ever hope to attain great heights in this work.