Chopin and Other Musical Essays

by Henry T. Finck

Mrs. Wodehouse, in her article on song in Grove's "Dictionary of Music and Musicians," calls attention to the injurious action of Italian opera on the English School by breeding indifference to the text. "From Handel's time until a very recent date," she says, "Italian operas and Italian songs reigned supreme in England; Italian singers and Italian teachers were masters of the situation to the exclusion of all others. And the habit thus contracted of hearing and admiring compositions in a foreign and unknown tongue, engendered in the English public a lamentable indifference to the words of songs, which reacted with evil effect both on the composer and the singer. Concerned only to please the ears of his audience, the composer neglected to wed his music to words of true poetic merit; and the singer quickly grew to be careless in his enunciation. Of how many singers, and even of good ones, may it not fairly be affirmed that at the end of the song the audience has failed to recognize its language?"

These remarks are quite as applicable to America as to England. We hear singers every week to whom we can listen attentively for five minutes without being able to tell what language they are singing in. Most of these singers were trained by the Italian method: And yet we are told every day that this Italian method, which has so little regard for the distinctively vocal side of singing, is the only true method for the voice. It is time to call a halt in this matter, time to ask if the Italian method is really the one best adapted for teaching pupils to sing in English. That it is the best and only method for singing in Italian, and for interpreting the style hitherto cultivated by the Italians, no one will deny. But whether it is the proper method for those who wish to sing in English, French, or German, and to devote themselves to the modern dramatic style, is quite another question, which must be, partly at least, answered in the negative.

A careful examination of the situation, leaving aside all national prejudice, will show us that each of the two principal methods, as exemplified by Italian and German singers, has its dark and its bright side, and that the cosmopolitan American style of the future ought to try to combine the advantages of both, while avoiding their shortcomings. The dark side of Italian singing has been sufficiently dwelt upon; let us now consider the bright side.

Italy owes much of her fame as the cradle of artistic song and "The Lord's own Conservatory," to climatic and linguistic advantages. Thanks to the mild climate, men and women can spend most of their time in the open air, and their voices are not liable to be ruined by constantly passing from a dry, overheated room into the raw and chilly air of the streets. The Italians are a plump race, with well-developed muscles, and their vocal chords share in the general muscular health and development; so that the average voice in Italy has a much wider compass than in most other countries; and an unctuous ease of execution is readily acquired. Their language, again, favors Italian singers quite as much as their climate. It abounds in the most sonorous of the vowels, while generally avoiding the difficult U, and the mixed vowels Ö and Ü, as well as the harsh consonants, which are almost always sacrificed to euphony. And where the language hesitates to make this sacrifice, the vocalists come to the rescue and facilitate matters by arbitrarily changing the difficult vowel or consonant into an easy one. In this they are encouraged by the teachers, who habitually neglect the less sonorous vowels and make their pupils sing all their exercises on the easy vowel A. No wonder, then, that the tones of an Italian singer commonly sound sweet: he makes them up of nothing but pure sugar. Characterization, dramatic effect, variety of emotional coloring, are all bartered away for sensuous beauty of tone; and hence the distinctive name for Italian singing—bel canto, or beautiful song—is very aptly chosen.

Now, sensuous beauty of tone is a most desirable thing in music. Wagner's music, e.g., owes much of its tonic charm to his fine instinct for sensuous orchestral coloring, and Chopin's works lose half their characteristic beauty if played on a poor piano, or by one who does not know how to use the pedal in such a way as to produce a continuous stream of rich saturated sound. Hence the Italians deserve full credit for the attention they bestow on sensuous beauty of tone, even if their means of securing it may not always be approved. Nor does this by any means exhaust the catalogue of Italian virtues. As a rule, Italian singers have a better ear for pitch, breathe more naturally, and execute more easily than German and French singers, whose guttural and nasal sounds they also avoid. The difference between the average Italian and German singers is well brought out by Dr. Hanslick, in speaking of the Italian performances which formerly used to alternate with the German operas in Vienna: "Most of our Italian guests," he says, "distinguish themselves by means of the thorough command they have over their voices, which in themselves are by no means imposing; our German members by powerful voices, which, however, owing to their insufficient training, do not produce half the effect they would if they had been subjected to the same amount of training. With the Italians great certainty and evenness throughout the rôle; with the Germans an unequal alternation of brilliant and mediocre moments, which seems partly accidental."

It is this element of accident and uncertainty that lowers the value of many German singers. Herr Niemann, for instance, has moments—and, indeed, whole evenings—when his voice, seemingly rejuvenated, not only rises to sublime heights of dramatic passion, but possesses rare sensuous beauty; while on other occasions the sound of his voice is almost unbearable. Niemann, of course, is fifty-eight years old, but many of the younger German singers too often have their bad quarter-hours; and even Lilli Lehmann—whom I would rather hear for my own pleasure than any other singer now on the stage—emits occasionally a disagreeable guttural sound. Nothing of the sort in Mme. Patti, whom Niemann no doubt is right in pronouncing the most perfect vocalist, not only of this period, but of all times. I, for my part, have never cared much for the bel canto as such, because it is so often wasted on trashy compositions. Yet, when I heard Mme. Patti for the first time in New York, I could not help indulging in the following rhapsody: "The ordinary epithets applicable to a voice, such as sweet, sympathetic, flexible, expressive, sound almost too commonplace to be applied to Patti's voice at its best, as it was when she sang the valse Ombra Leggiera from 'Dinora,' and 'Home, Sweet Home.' Her voice has a natural sensuous charm like a Cremona violin, which it is a pleasure to listen to, irrespective of what she happens to be singing. It is a pleasure, too, to hear under what perfect control she has it; how, without changing the quality of the sound, she passes from a high to a low note, from piano to forte, gradually or suddenly, and all without the least sense of effort. Indeed her notes are as spontaneous and natural as those of a nightingale; and this, combined with their natural sweetness and purity, constitutes their great charm." A few months later, when Patti gave one of her innumerable farewell performances, I was again forced to admit that she is the greatest of living lyric sopranos, but took the liberty to express my conviction that "the charm of her voice is almost as purely sensuous as the beauty of a dewdrop or a diamond reflecting the prismatic colors of sunlight."

Patti, in a word, is the incarnation of the Italian style. Her voice is flawless as regards beauty of tone, and spontaneity and agility of execution. Moreover, she avoids the small vices common to most Italian singers, such as taking liberties with the time and the sentiment of the piece for the sake of prolonging a trill or a loud final high note, and so on. At an early stage in her career she followed the custom of the time, and lavished such an abundance of uncalled-for scales and trills and arpeggios and staccatos on her melody, that even Rossini entered a sarcastic protest; but in her later years she has conscientiously followed the indications of the composers. At the same time, she has shown more and more anxiety to win laurels as a dramatic singer. But here the vocal style which she has exclusively cultivated has proved an insuperable obstacle. Although free from the smaller vices of the Italian school, she could not overcome the great and fatal shortcoming of that school—the maltreatment of the poetic text. She could not find the proper accents required in operas where the words of the text are as important as the melody itself; and she has failed therefore to give satisfaction even in such works as "Faust" and "Aïda," which are intermediate between the old-fashioned opera and the music-drama proper. I have been often surprised to hear how Patti, so conscientious in other respects, slights her texts, obliterating consonants and altering vowels after the fashion of the Italian school. Having neglected to master the more vigorous vowels and expressive consonants, she cannot assert her art in dramatic works. Her voice, in short, is merely an instrument. "Bird-like" is an epithet commonly applied to it by admirers. Is this a compliment? A dubious one, in my opinion. The nightingale's voice is very sweet, no doubt, but it is no better than a flute. A bird cannot pronounce words and sing at the same time. The human voice alone can do that—can alone combine poetry and music, uniting the advantage of both in one effect.

On the other hand, have you ever heard anyone compare the voices of Lehmann, Materna, Sucher, or Malten to a bird's voice? Of course not; and the reason is obvious. The point of view is different. Although Lilli Lehmann's voice is almost as mellow in timbre as Patti's, and much richer and warmer, we never think of it as a bird-like or vague instrumental tone, but as a medium for the expression of definite dramatic emotion. And herein lies the chief difference between the Italian and the German schools. An Italian adores singing for its own sake, a German as a means of definite emotional expression.

Now, whether we look at nations or at individuals, we always find that simple beauty of tone and agility of execution in artistic singing are appreciated sooner than emotional expression and dramatic characterization. Hence it is that the Italian school came before the German school. Even in Germany, a few generations ago, the Italian school was so predominant that German composers of the first rank—Gluck, Weber, and Beethoven—found it difficult to assert their influence against it. In Vienna, during the season of 1823, the Rossini furore was so great that none but Rossini's operas were sung; and in Germany almost everyone of the three dozen big and little potentates supported his own Italian operatic company. To-day you look in vain through Germany or Austria for a single Italian company. The few Italian operas that have remained on the repertory are sung in German translations by German singers, and all of these operas together hardly have as many performances in a year as a single one of Wagner's.

Here is a revolution in taste which may well excite our astonishment, and arouse our curiosity as to how it was brought about. It was brought about by the courage and perseverance of a few composers who, instead of stooping down to the crude taste of the fioriture-loving public, elevated that taste until it was able to appreciate the poetic and dramatic side of music; and it was brought about with the assistance of German singers, notwithstanding the great disadvantages, climatic and linguistic, under which these labor in comparison with Italian singers.