The Voice in Singing. Emma Seiler

It is a matter of complaint among all persons of good taste, who take an intelligent interest in art, and especially in music, that fine singers are becoming more and more rare, while formerly there appears never to have been any lack of men and women eminent in this art. The complaint seems not altogether without reason, when we revert to that rich summer-time of song, not yet lying very far behind us, in the last half of the last century, and compare it with the present. The retrospect shows us plainly that the art of singing has descended from its former high estate, and is now in a condition of decline. When we consider what is told us in the historical works of Forkel, Burney, Kiesewetter, Brendel and others, and compare it with our present poverty in good voices and skilful artists, we are struck with the multitude of fine voices then heard, with their remarkable fulness of tone, as well as with the considerable number of singers—male and female—appearing at the same time.

We first recall to mind the last great artists of that time, whose names are familiar to us because they appeared in public after the beginning of the present century:—Catalani, who preserved to extreme old age the melody and enormous power of her voice; Malibran, Sontag, Vespermann, &c.; the men singers, Rubini, Tamburini, Lablache, and others; and, still farther back, Mara, whose voice had a compass, with equal fulness of tone, of three octaves, and who possessed such a power of musical utterance that she imitated within the compass of her voice the most difficult passages of the violin and flute with perfect facility. Then comes the artiste Ajugara Bastardella, in Parma, who executed with purity and distinctness the most difficult passages from si

to si Скачать книгу