VII
A good Lieder singer is like some weaver of a delicate design in silk. Every crossing is planned and the worker must not let a single thread slip through his fingers. Every detail of a song must be understood before it can be interpreted. This does not mean that the singer must have a ‘reason’—a logical argument in words—for everything done. Usually words and arguments about a song only befuddle the artistic sense. The song must be understood in musical terms—by comparing each phrase with similar phrases in the song, by trying different tempos, different phrasings, different qualities of voice. To understand a song in the musical sense is to know when you sing it that you could have sung it in ten or in fifty other specific ways, but that you chose to sing it exactly in this way. It requires a great deal of attention to fix in your ear accurately all the little beauties and peculiarities of the melody, the distinctions contained in tiny variations of tempo, and so on. The facts are all obvious in the song, but they demand attention. So the process is exactly that of the primitive folk-singer who noticed, to his delight, that bluebells were blue and that the deer had four legs. And, like the folk-singer, when you have consciously noted a multitude of these obvious facts you feel more at home in the world—you have completed a step in your education.
If the singer is obliged carefully to select and reject, he is only doing what the composer did before him. For the song writer’s task is one that will test the soundness of his musicianship and his art. The song is short. It will probably be sung among a number of other short songs. It has every chance of being forgotten. The composer can waste no time. With little or no preluding he must strike a melodic phrase that in smallest compass is worth hearing and worth remembering. He has none of the opportunities of the symphonist or the opera writer. He cannot lead up to his chief theme with a long expressive orchestral crescendo. He cannot introduce it at the moment when his audience is keyed up and receptive over a tense emotional story. If the melody of the song is not worth the trouble, no amount of decoration can make it so. If one phrase out of four in the song is good and the rest mediocre, the song is as much a failure as though it had no single bar of beauty. When the composer has written his song, he has committed himself. He stands exposed to the universe without protection, without excuse. He has chosen the test with which genius is tested—to be great within narrow limits. If his music speaks to the heart it speaks in words of one syllable.
If the basic materials of a song are so simple, it is evident that the misplacing of a single note is a very serious error. The expressive phrase might have stood in a dozen slightly different forms. It was a delicate judgment and selection that chose exactly this one. The phrase, if it is to express something of importance, must suggest a great deal more than it can say. This is the problem of the lyric—the personal song of the emotions—whether in words or music. If a poet is to express the whole tenderness and fury of love in eight, twelve, or sixteen lines he must select just the right details that will suggest the whole epic of love that he did not write. The structure and the language may be simple in the extreme. ‘My luv’ is like a red, red rose,’ sings Burns in one of the most beautiful love lyrics ever written. The poem is only a succession of the simplest poetic figures, similes; impressive effects of rhyme and metre are not to be found. But every one of the similes is a masterpiece, suggesting in striking manner the variety and extravagance of the lover’s feelings. ‘My luv’ is like a melody that’s sweetly play’d in tune,’ continues the poet. ‘As fair art thou, my bonnie lass, so deep in luv’ am I’—and from this point the imagery sweeps up and up with increasing majesty and frenzy—‘And I will luv’ thee still, my dear, till a’ the seas gang dry. Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear, and the rocks melt wi’ the sun; Oh! I will luv’ thee still, my dear, while the sands o’ life shall run.’ We can imagine Milton building up a long and magnificent description, in a whole blank verse canto, of the rocks melting in the heat of the sun. But Burns dazzles our imagination by just mentioning the gorgeous picture and then pressing on to another.
The themes of a good song are like this. They picture the heart of an emotion that might be made the subject of an opera; they establish instantly a mood that might dominate a movement of a symphony. They picture one detail of the building and let it imply the whole vast edifice.
Schumann, in the middle section of his song, Widmung, has such a melody, one which leads us straight to the centre of a mood as profound as one can find in many symphonies:
Du bust die Ruh’, du bist der Frieden etc.
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One can imagine Beethoven building a long, superb movement out of this theme; the ’cellos would take it over rich bass harmony, the counterpoint would grow deeper and more complex, a grand crescendo of many measures would lead to a climax with the brass; the whole body of violins would take up the theme in unison; it would be exchanged between the wood-winds and strings; and the movement would fade away on some magical effect with the theme in the high registers of the violins. The theme is abundantly worth such extended and serious treatment. Schumann uses it for two lines and then returns to his original motive. If his purpose had been to get the greatest possible effect out of given materials, such a procedure would have been criminal wastefulness. But his purpose was to express the spirit of the words. So he used the theme as the expression demanded, not begrudging a motive which would have served him for a whole symphony movement. And, thanks to this restraint, he made a perfect song.
And the restraint which the composer showed in using themes in naked simplicity must be reflected in the delivery of the song by the singer. Conscious restraint is foreign to the spirit of the folk-song, excepting for the universal rule that every work of art must show some reserve power. But in the art-song, artificed as it is with conscious pains, reserve in the singer is a virtue in itself. Unless one feels that every detail of the delivery is firmly under control one has an uneasy sense that the singer may fly off the handle at any moment. And this feeling robs us of any sense we might have that the singer has a message to give.
Most concert-goers know only too well how little this principle is regarded among Lieder singers. Is there one singer out of ten who does not try to transcend his or her song? Is there one singer out of ten who would not rather have his or her hearers at the end of a piece exclaim: ‘A great singer!’ rather than ‘A great song!’ And to force their personalities to the foreground singers will abuse their songs from beginning to end. Often they do it intentionally, sincerely believing that this is the only kind of singing that is effective. But in a great number of cases, without doubt, it is done unconsciously, as the natural and only way of singing. A special coloring on one of the singer’s pet tones, a long pause on a high note, an exaggerated retard in a sentimental passage—these sins against taste are being constantly committed by singers whose only interest in songs is to advance their personal reputations. In a way they are not to be blamed, for competition is keen; a hundred fail where one succeeds, and that one succeeds usually only by forcing his personality on the public; and the public is inclined to be blasé, to demand picturesque personalities, and to grumble if a singer is ‘ordinary.’ Singers need intelligent audiences as much as audiences need intelligent singers.
But, whatever may be the lamentable state of actual conditions, a song, if well sung, is sung with intelligent restraint. The ideal singer will give a song as he believes it should be given, without concession to the prejudices of the audiences, content to let the work of art speak for itself and to allow people to forget the workman in their joy at the work.
And as soon as the demand for restraint is met, the singer discovers a new and kindred demand in the song, one which is quite as inherent in the art-type. This is the demand for style. Style, as an artist uses it, is a ticklish thing, one which cannot quite be put into words. But every working artist feels it as a value. For, if the singer is to pick and choose (as the composer picked and chose previously) in the singing of a song, he must do so according to some principle. This principle, if it be genuine and not arbitrary, will be the style of the song. It will make the hearer feel that the interpretative details were not only chosen carefully, but were chosen well. It is that subtle thing that seems to make the song ‘hang together.’
Style, in short, is one more of the typical characteristics of the good art-song. The style of a song is unique. No two songs, thoroughly well sung, have exactly the same style. The style is developed out of the music itself; it is implied in the notes as they rest on the printed page; it has awaited the discerning eye of the interpretive artist. And so when a song has been thoroughly understood and ‘lived in’ by the singer, it will always have a personality or style of its own which will hover above the song and embrace every note. An art-song which on hearing does not reveal a unique style is either a bad song or a good song badly sung.
Great Singers of the Past.
Top: Luigi Lablache and Giovanni Battista Rubini
Bottom: Maria Malibran and Angelica Catelani
This type of art, the most delicate, the most personal, the most self-contained, is laid in bewildering abundance at our feet. And some fairly general acquaintance with modern song literature is a necessity for the singer or the concert-goer. A singer can no more understand the songs she sings without at the same time being familiar with others than a student can understand the history of his own country without knowing that of foreign lands. For such a singer to appear in public as an interpreter is simply an insolence. If he ‘specializes’ in modern French songs, the more necessity for him to know old German. You can never appreciate any quality without knowing something of its opposite. And the same rule applies to audiences. The first song one hears in life probably goes unnoticed. The second gives the attention something on which to base a comparison. And every new acquisition thereafter increases the opportunity for comparison—increases the hearer’s pleasure. How much more you have learned about Debussy when you have heard a cycle of Moussorgsky!
And if a comparison is necessary between art-songs of one and another lineage, how much more necessary it is of art-songs and folk-songs. It is important for singer and audience to know various types of art-songs. It is much more important to know art-songs and folk-songs. When he does, all that is peculiar to the art-song becomes set off in relief, and all that is common property becomes enhanced in value. A knowledge of folk-songs is a knowledge of humanity in its simplest terms. With it one can ‘walk with kings nor lose the common touch.’
CHAPTER V
FOLK-SONGS
The nature and value of folk-songs—Folk-songs of the British Isles—Folk-song in the Latin lands—German and Scandinavian folk-song—Hungarian folk-song—Folk-songs of the Slavic countries; folk-song in America.