"Holding" an Audience.—The singer should carefully watch an audience so as to gauge its attention and sympathies. If it seems impatient, restless, and indifferent, the singer may be quite sure that he or she is exciting no interest. The best course then for one to do is to immediately change the style, alter the tone, give forth his or her best energies, and use every effort to become ingratiated into the good favour of the listeners. If such effects as these fail constantly in their turn, then the aspirant for vocal fame should give up, and devote both time and attention to further study, or to some other means of a livelihood; for a future great singer will not be failing constantly, and to be only a second-rate singer while there are so many is a thing not to be devoutly desired.
Mistakes in Public.—If you make a mistake in singing, do not add to the mischief by allowing it to alarm or disconcert you. Proceed onward as if nothing had happened. You may be quite sure that each one of your audience will not have detected the slip, for they cannot all be critics. But bear in mind that such confidence as your adviser here suggests is not to be too often called into requisition. No great artist will ever make a serious mistake in public. How much more careful then should the young student be!
[ON TIME IN SINGING.]
I need perhaps scarcely remind my readers who are or who wish to be singers that time concerns them quite as much as the conductor, the pianist, the violinist—in short, the whole orchestra. It behoves the student in singing to give early and careful attention to this important feature in his artistic training. You may have the voice of a Rubini, you may be a second Tamburini in quality and extent of voice, but unless you can sing in time yourself, and are able to do so with others, and with the counter-acting influences of an orchestra, you can never hope to rise in your profession. It may be argued that you have no desire to lay yourself out for a career on the lyric stage. Then, however, you shut yourself out from some of the largest prizes in the profession; beyond which there comes the question of oratorio business, and the growing taste for band accompaniments to songs. And if you restrict your ambition to a pianoforte accompaniment, time is needed even with that in order to produce anything like a satisfactory rendering of the piece you may be singing. The accompanyist may be a Sir Julius Benedict, or a Signor Randegger (than whom there is no better in this country, so neglected has this species of musical art-work become); but a perfect rendering depends not so much upon the pianist as the vocalist. If the singer flounders about with neither "rhyme nor reason," it is scarcely reasonable to expect the accompanyist, clever as he may be, to be always at his heels, like a cat after a mouse. I would therefore advise the student to invest his money in a Metronome—the most useful thing with which he could provide himself. They are not dear, bearing in mind their utility, and one will, I am sure, save the student much time and many a fiasco. Learn the working of this useful machine, and practise all your exercises with it. If you go to a good singing master, you should ask him to time your exercises to the pace at which you should sing them, and in this way you will not only be growing in a good habit, but your singing will be characterized by a crispness and a certainty of attack, which will be apparent to all musicians and amateurs with good taste. Your singing master will, no doubt, impress upon you the necessity of singing your songs in time, and especially of slightly accenting the first and third beats in the bar if it is common time, the first and fourth beats when it is compound common or 6/8 time, and the first beat when it is triple or 3/4 time. In this way there will be meaning given to your singing, and those who may be accompanying you will be able to feel where you are, and to keep time with you. In singing a passage like this from Cowen's charming song "Aubade,"—the master, if he knew his business, would instruct his pupil to slightly accent the words as I have indicated with the mark
, and to preserve strict time throughout the passage, and especially in the taking up of the words after the long note on the word sleep. The accompanyist would, we may assume, do likewise with his pianoforte part, and in this way a perfect ensemble would be secured.
