When the true knowledge of the production of speech and song for every language has been established, when we have a real science of the voice, the teacher comprehending these issues in their entire latitude will be able to teach how to interpret Mozart, Schubert, and Wagner, Rossini and Verdi, Gounod, and every other master in the tongue and the spirit in which he has produced his works.
The genius for execution in the art of singing is with the Anglo-Saxon race, but not for composition, for original conception. It may come, but it is not with it now.
The desire of the singer naturally is to embrace the highest in her or his repertoire. At present it is Wagner. But how can Wagner be rendered without a comprehension of his genius as expressed through his language? The genius of the master and the genius of the language he wrote and composed in cannot be separated. They are soul and body of one and the same entity. Without the comprehension of the genius of the German language, of its idiomatic expression, it is not possible to reproduce what Wagner meant to express by his work. To sing German with an English tongue is an anomaly; it is still English in the real sense of the word, and not German. It is an unnatural proceeding, and therefore injurious to the vocal organs of the singer.
No one would expect a foreigner, for the delectation of a native-born audience, to recite before it poetry in the latter's language, or a native-born person to recite before it in a foreign tongue. In either case such a person would fail. Why, then, song, this sister art and accomplishment?
All these are questions which, though ever so reluctantly, artists will have to face. It complicates their art, but it will also, when understood, make it comparatively easy. Americans will then sing the works of foreign masters with the same perfect ease that they do those of their native composers, and so will persons of every other nationality.
Who will be able to teach a foreign language so well as the natives of each respective country? provided such persons have learned to comprehend the difference between the mode of production of their speech and that of their scholars. In that case only will a German be able to teach an Anglo-Saxon his (the German) language for either speech or song. It will be the same with every other nationality.
The teachers, as a class, are with me. They feel that the efforts of the physiologists to aid them in their vocation are wrong and misleading. They have no faith in the revelation of matter. They know matter is inert, powerless for any purpose without the indwelling of the spirit; that the spirit reigns over and controls every manifestation of life; and that the voice in singing is one of the highest manifestations thereof. They know that song comes from the heart and the soul, while it uses the body for its instrument.
I have been told I must build up before tearing down; before destroying the old I must put something better in its place. I think it a praiseworthy undertaking, in itself, to destroy the false and the harmful. Besides, we cannot erect a new building before the old one has been removed.