The Voice in Singing. Emma Seiler
singing similar conservatories were established in nearly all the more considerable cities of Italy, and all the energies of the musician were devoted to the highest possible culture of the voice.
But, with solo singing, greater attention was paid to instruments, which were already in those days constructed with the greatest care and skill. With the higher cultivation of single voices, chorus singing also became richer in harmony and embellishment, but as, in vocal music, words accompany the music, the expression of the music becomes more definite and intelligible for the hearer, and thus with the higher cultivation of vocal music, and by means of it, even our whole modern system of harmony has been developed.
Women were, by ecclesiastical law, excluded from participation in church music, and as the voices of boys could be used only for a few years, they did not suffice to meet the ever-increasing demands of church music. At first it was attempted to supply the place of the sopranists and contraltists with so-called falsettists. As, however, these substitutes proved insufficient, the soprano and contralto of boys were sought to be preserved in men. And so, in 1625, appeared the first male sopranist in the Papal chapel in Rome. Such sopranists and contraltists soon appeared in great numbers, and as their organs of singing continued soft and tender as those of women, and their compass was the same, to them the education of female voices was given over exclusively. Thenceforth women became the richest ornament of the opera, then blooming into beauty. But only when the ecclesiastical law forbidding women to take part in church music was annulled, did women begin, in the middle of the last century, to take the place of those male sopranists and contraltists.
It thus became unnecessary to secure longer duration to the voices of boys, especially as these were never able to attain to the peculiar grace of the female voice, and so this class of singers gradually died out. But still in the first half of the present century there were many of them living and sought for as teachers of singing. To the disappearance of this kind of singers, Rossini thinks the decline of vocal art is to be mainly ascribed.
The art of singing rose in the course of the seventeenth century to an extraordinary height of cultivation, and was diffused more and more by means of the opera, then blooming, as we have said, into beauty. But in that brilliant springtime of vocal art, it was not mere externals, such as beauty of tone, flexibility, etc., that were striven for, but, above all, the correct expression of the feeling intended in the composition. This rendered necessary to the singer the most thorough æsthetic culture, going hand in hand with the culture of the vocal organ. For only thus could he succeed in acting upon the souls of his hearers, in moving them and carrying them along with him in the emotions which the music awakened in his own mind. The dramatic singer was now strongly tempted to neglect the externals of his art for the æsthetic, purely inward conception of the music. Certain, at least, it is that to the neglect of the training of the voice (Tonbildung), and to the style of writing of our modern composers—a style unsuited to the art of singing, and looking only to its spiritual element—the decline of this art is in part to be traced. Mannstein says that, with the disappearance of those great masters, power and beauty of tone have fallen more and more into contempt, and at the present day it is scarcely known what is meant by them. True it is, that a beautiful tone of voice (Gesangston), which must be considered the foundation and first requisition of fine singing, is more and more rare among our singers, male and female, and yet it is just as important in music as perfect form in the creations of the sculptor.
But the complete technical education of the earlier singers misled many of them into various unnatural artifices, in order to obtain notice and distinction. The applause of the public caused such trickeries to become the fashion among artists. The multitude, accustomed to such effects, began to mistake them for art. By the gradual disappearance of the male sopranists, instruction in singing fell into the hands of tenor singers, who usually cultivated the female voice in accordance with their own voices, which could not be otherwise than injurious in the uncertainty existing as to the limits in compass and the difference between the male and female organs of voice.
Thus it has come to pass that people are now apt to imagine that they know all that is to be known; and as teaching in singing is generally best paid, the office has been undertaken, without the slightest apparent self-distrust, by many persons who have not the slightest idea what thorough acquaintance with the organs of singing, what comprehensive knowledge of all the departments of music and what æsthetic and general culture, the teacher of singing requires. Very few persons indeed clearly understand what is meant by the education of a voice, and what high qualifications both teacher and pupil always require. The idea, for instance, is very prevalent that every musician, whatever may be the branch of music to which he is devoted, and especially every singer, is qualified to give instruction in singing. And therefore a dilettanteism without precedent has taken the place of all real artistic endeavors. Be this, however, as it may, such is the wide diffusion and popularity of music beyond all the other arts, that the want of singers artistically educated, and consequently also of a recognized sound method of instruction, becomes more and more urgent; and although we have in these times distinguished singers, male and female, as well as skilful teachers, yet the number is very small and by no means equal to the demand.
But now, as every evil, as soon as it is felt to be such, calls forth the means of its removal, already in various ways attempts are making in the department of the Art of Singing to restore it as perfectly as possible to its former high position, and if possible to elevate it to a yet higher state. It was natural that the attempt should, first of all, be made to revive the old Italian method of instruction, and that, by strict adherence in everything to what has come down to us by tradition, we should hope for deliverance and salvation; for to the Italians mainly vocal music was indebted for its chief glory. Without considering in what a sadly superficial way music—and vocal music especially—is now treated in Italy, many have given in to the erroneous idea that any Italian who can sing anything must know how to educate a voice. Thus many incompetent Italians have become popular teachers in other countries.
The old Italian method of instruction, to which vocal music owed its high condition, was purely empirical, i.e., the old singing masters taught only according to a sound and just feeling for the beautiful, guided by that faculty of acute observation, which enabled them to distinguish what belongs to nature. Their pupils learned by imitation, as children learn their mother tongue, without troubling themselves about rules. But after the true and natural way has once been forsaken, and for so long a period only the false and the unnatural has been heard and taught, it seems almost impossible by empiricism alone to restore the old and proper method of teaching. With our higher degree of culture, men and things have greatly changed. Our feeling is no longer sufficiently simple and natural to distinguish the true without the help of scientific principles.
But science has already done much to assist the formation of musical forms of art. Mathematics and physics have established the principal laws of sound and the processes of sound, in accordance with which our musical instruments are now constructed. Philosophical inquirers have succeeded also in discovering the eternal and impregnable laws of Nature upon which the mutual influences of melody, harmony and rhythm depend, and in thus giving to composition fixed forms and laws which no one ventures to question. And more recently Professor Helmholtz, in his great work, “Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen,” has given to music of all kinds a scientific ground and basis. But for the culture of the human voice in singing science has as yet furnished only a few lights. The well-known experiments of Johannes Müller upon the larynx gave us all that was known, until very recently, respecting the functions of the organ of singing. Many singing masters have sought to found their methods of instruction upon these observations on the larynx, at the same time putting forth the boldest conjectures in regard to the functions of the organ of singing in the living subject. But they have thus ruined more fine voices than those teachers who, without reference to the formation of the voice, only correct the musical faults of their pupils, and for the rest let them sing as they please.
This superficial treatment of science, and the unfortunate results of its application, have injured the art of singing more than benefited it, and created a prejudice against all scientific investigations in this direction among the most distinguished artists and teachers, as well as among those who take an intelligent interest in this department of music. It is a pretty common opinion that