How to Become a Successful Singer

by Dame Clara Butt; Enrico Caruso; Ben Davies; Dame Nellie Melba

Exhale completely, and leave the chest empty as long as physical powers will conveniently allow.

In a short article it is obviously impossible for me to go as deeply into the art of voice production as I should like, though there is one "aspect" of singing on which I would lay great stress—and that is the value of colour in singing.

In a study of all the great composers and their works, to the true student of music, it must be patent at once that their methods of colouring vary as greatly as do the chefs-d'oeuvre of masters of the brush.

And yet, somehow or other, I do not think that I am wandering away from the straight road of Truth when I say that, as a general rule, the mediocre singer but seldom realises that there is such a thing as colour in singing. What is the result? It is the natural result of cause and effect. The interpretation of the ordinary singer resembles to no small extent the work of an artist who sketches out an outline drawing which, in detail, no doubt is accurate and thoroughly praiseworthy in every way; but when compared to a painting with its appealing richness of tone and colour it seems a puny thing indeed.

Yes, it is colour that the average singer utterly lacks. But let me hasten to say at once that for this sin of omission he or she, as the case may be, merits no real discredit, for the simple reason that those who have only limited time to devote to the study of singing naturally find that their training does not, as a rule, reach the point when they are sufficiently able exponents to be able to paint pictures with their voices, much in the same way as does the artist paint his pictures on canvas. And in no small measure this sin of omission is as much due to the methods of instruction of the teacher as it is to the pupil's lack of advancement.

Yes, there can be no doubt that it is through lack of study of these "finer" details in the art of singing which causes many vocalists never to rise above the mediocre. Technically, they may be thoroughly capable exponents, but unless they realise the incalculable value of tone and colour in music, they fail to extract from it its real poetical worth. Thus, when listening to Schumann—to revert to pianoforte playing for a moment—"they fail to wander hand in hand with the composer into some glorious garden full of gaily-coloured flowers, through trim paths lined by tall, stately trees. They fail to see in Schumann's music gaily-plumaged birds flitting here and there beneath a blue sky with the warm rays of the sun toning everything into summer as if by fairy hand."

It was an ardent student of pianoforte playing who once thus described to me a composition of Schumann's as played by a real master. And with singing it is much the same. For some curious reason your moderate singer will persist in cherishing an utterly erroneous notion that every song should be "treated" in one way—in other words, that when framing his composition, the composer mentally decreed that, to be rendered as he intended it should be, every singer must sink his individuality and render it in one way—and one way only.

Was ever notion more unreasonable? Surely it is the most glaring error possible to imagine that because a melody is simple, because it can be rendered by the average singer after but comparatively little practice, it must be impossible to imbue it with beautiful effects; for no matter how technically simple a composition may be, provided a singer possesses real soul and a sense of poetry he or she can bring out an exquisite beauty and colour from the music which a mere mechanical vocalist who merely regards a simple piece as an easy piece to sing invariably fails to recognise.

It is the thoughtless and mechanical practice of a really musical subject which undermines the musical sense, for the practice of purely mechanical matter should never be "dry" so long as the singer thoroughly grasps the real objects to be attained from that practice. In other words, every exercise, every piece of music that is sung, ought to be rendered with a clearly-defined object. It seems to me that one of the most powerful reasons why the results of years of study are so often unsatisfactory lies in the fact that many singers are far too early occupied with the study of compositions of every sort, adding continually to their stock without devoting sufficient time to the introspective study of each and every piece.

What is the inevitable outcome of this hasty and wholesale method of "learning to sing"? Interpretations which, as I have said, are like outline drawing, accurate enough in detail but comparatively lacking in real soul and wanting altogether in tone and colour. I admit at once, as among artists we all have our favourites, so among song-writers the works of some appeal to us more than do others, in that we respond to one or other of them more readily than to the rest. But, at the same time, I would lay special emphasis on the fact that every song, however simple, should be dealt with by the singer like a separate picture in which specially beautiful effects may be produced, according to the quality and variety of tone and colour.