DICTION, it may be said, is included in Style; but Style means a good deal more than diction.
Style may be said, indeed, to mean everything that the singer adds to the bare notes and directions of the printed page. These notes and directions are admittedly incomplete—a mere approximation to the composer’s complete meaning. He supplies in this way the bare facts with such additional hints as to expression and interpretation as an imperfect system of notation allows. It is the duty of his interpreters to supply what is missing—to breathe the spirit of life into the dry bones and to convert dead printed notes into living human music.
To this end the singer must possess first of all the requisite insight and understanding to grasp the composer’s purpose, next the personality and magnetism to be able to realise it for his hearers, and lastly the musical taste and knowledge required in order to present it in conformity with the appropriate rules and traditions. In other words, the singer must not merely sing the right notes, but sing them in the right way—with the right accent, the right phrasing, and in the right manner.
What is required may be best realised, perhaps, by comparing the delivery of a fine piece of poetry by a schoolgirl or schoolboy, say, with the delivery of the same lines by an accomplished actor or elocutionist. The words will be the same in both cases, but what a difference in the result! So in the case of music the notes sung will be the same whoever sings them, but the effect will be vastly different when they are sung by the trained artist.
Here it is that the student’s general culture will bear fruit, in the imaginative insight and understanding, the good taste and the expression, which he brings to his task. And here, too, will his musical knowledge and intelligence be more particularly illustrated by the manner in which he conforms to the requirements of the particular kind of music which he is interpreting. For to do this aright a knowledge of the notes alone will not suffice.
He must be familiar also with the varying needs of the different schools of music, with the historical traditions associated with them, and so forth. Opera demands one kind of singing, oratorio another, German Lieder another, and so on throughout; and each of these general classifications can be subdivided in turn.
How different are the requirements of each is best exemplified by the fact that so few succeed in all. One singer will be great in opera, another in oratorio, a third in Lieder; but only in the rarest instances will you find one and the same artist excelling in all. Why is this? Simply because their respective requirements are so different.
For this reason the average artist will, I think, usually be well advised to confine himself to the class of work more particularly suited to his talent. While it is well to cultivate versatility so far as possible, it is a mistake to sing music of a kind for which you are not suited. Patti loved Wagner, for instance, and was a frequent visitor to Bayreuth. But she did not sing his music. She liked to hear it sung by others, but she realised that it was not for her. Voice, personality, training, temperament, all impose necessary limitations.
People blame me sometimes, for instance, for confining myself mainly to music of a certain school. But I think I know best as to this, and that I am exercising sound judgment in adopting this course. There is much music which I admire and love, but I do not always try to sing it. In the same way I may admire frocks which I see on other women, but I do not necessarily try to wear the same myself. I have the good sense to recognise that they would not suit me.
Moreover, the field of music is so vast that to cultivate one or two departments thoroughly will be more than sufficient to tax the energy of the most ambitious. Make yourself master or mistress in your own chosen province, and you will have accomplished quite as much as any one need wish to.