7
March 2 3, 1922
MUSICAL COURIER
The Secrets of Svengali
ON SINGING, SINGERS, TEACHERS AND CRITICS
By J. H. DUVAL
We sometimes see a defective canvas by a great painter in an art gallery—one that is partly ruined or - retouched— but it isn’t destroyed nor hidden from view on that account.
If the sale of certain records is not large enough to make them pay,. why not charge a higher price for those records that will appeal only to the cultured few?
In a country where public-spirited persons do so much to advance culture and learning, it seems strange no one has done anything to keep these gems before the public and to make them better known.
All Music Students Need Phonographs.
Any student of singing who can afford to study with a high-priced singing teacher, can well afford to have a phonograph, and he should be willing to pay five or ten dollars for a good record by a great artist who sings an air that he is studying.
It is worth much more than that to a singer, male or female, to hear such examples of Bel Canto as the Battis-tini records.
Chaliapin has made some fine records from “II Barbiere,” “Boris,” “Mefistofile,” etc.
De Luca’s are the acme of finesse and sensuous Latin phrasing.
We have all enjoyed the stirring and charming numbers of the lamented Caruso.
McCormack’s “II Mio tesoro,” from “Don Giovanni,” is a splendid example of Bel Canto of the classical type.
Tetrazzini and Galli-Curci.
Galli-Curci’s “Una voce poco fa” and “Ah, non credea mirarti” are simply exquisite, for Galli-Curci at her best is an excellent artist.
I have often thought what a diva could be made if Galli-Curci and Tetrazzini had all of each other’s qualities and not each other’s defects.
Tetrazzini wrote in 1909:	“In singing I always feel as
if I were forcing my breath against my chest, and just as in exercises, according to Delsarte, you will find the chest leads in all physical movements; so in singing you should feel this firm support of the chest of the highest as well as the lowest notes.”
On the other hand, Galli-Curci gave an interview in 1919 in which she is quoted as saying:	“We are told many fal-
lacies by vocal teachers. One is that the diaphragm must be held firmly in order to give support to the tone. It seems to me this is a serious mistake. I keep the diaphragm relaxed.”
Now if Tetrazzini -had not exaggerated the pressure against the chest all through the range, except on the high notes, where pressure is necessary, she would have a better middle register.
And what a pity that Galli-Curci keeps the diaphragm relaxed—she whose phrasing is so lovely, whose taste so unerring in both fiorature and cantilena. If she would concentrate less on what she terms “Management of the larynx” and more on the air pressure against the chest as she goes up the scale, she would gain in many ways.
Caruso's Breath Support.
When listening to the Caruso records we cannot fail to notice how he puts on that wonderful breath support when making a sudden jump into the higher range of his voice. Sometimes he doesn’t take quite enough pains to hidq the little gasp that accompanies the let-down—or a breath snatched by changing phrases in the upper register. But his defects are the defects of his qualities. How many superb records he has made! The two duos with Scotti, “Amor e ׳ un grillo” and “Addio fiorito asil” from “Madame Butterfly,” show him at his very best.
It is meet that I should draw to the end of this little book with “records” as the subject at hand.
They will give the musical students—instrumental as well as vocal—of our time and the time to come, traditions, true traditions of the master interpreters they could not hear.
“I never heard Planqon,” you say. His record of “Le Cor” is an almost perfect reproduction of his voice. Use a loud needle for Plangon, Caruso, Boninsegna and other big voices, a soft one for Galli-Curci. I repeat that records should be played in the right keys.
So although you can not hear the voices of Patti, Del Puente, the de Reszkes, etc., you can have Battistini, De Luca, Caruso, Boninsegna and Plangon, if this little book will arouse enough interest in them to make a demand. If you will appeal strongly to the better artistic sense of those who conduct the phonograph business, they will not fail to respond, I feel sure.
“Oh, if there only were some records of Trilby,” I hear someone sigh.
But there are.
Have you ever read Du Maurier’s volume?
“I have seen Trilby acted,” or, “I have seen it on the screen,” you reply.
But that won’t do.
To hear Trilby sing take the book itself. Live a little while with those carefree students in the old Latin Quarter. You will hear Svengali play “The Rosemonde of Schubert,” and later, when Little Billie has suffered much and become a great painter, you’ll hear Trilby sing “Ben Bolt,” and “Chanson de Printemps” of Gounod, the “Nussbaum” of Schumann, and even .	.	. the Chopin impromptu in A
flat.
Svengali.
(The End.)
THE CONCLUSION
Article XII
Copyrighted, 1922, by The Musical Courier Company.
THE publication in the Musical Courier of the first ten articles of “The Secrets of Svengali” aroused so much interest that the remaining and concluding articles of this most unusual work are now to be offered Musical Courier readers. The first series of articles appeared in 1920, beginning with the issue of April 29, and additional articles were printed the following year. The present article concludes the work. The complete series in book form will soon be issued from the press of James T. White & Co., New York publishers.—The Editor.
[Contents of Article I.—Svengali Exists, A Trilby Is Possible, Bel Canto, Battistini and Galli-Curci, Relaxing the Lips, The Vowel A (Italian), Two Pernicious Schools of Teaching, How Svengali Brings Out a Voice, Study Italian, To Attack High Tones, Sbriglia’s Exercise to Develop the Thorax, Juliani’s Way of Teaching Bel Canto, Change Vowels, Keeping Same Quality.
Contents of Article II.—Trilby’s Voice, Other Super-Voices, The Head Tone “Trick,” Where the Teachers Fail, The Italian Teachers, If Van Dyke Had Been Well Trained, Position for High Tones, Lips Held Loosely Away from Teeth, Result of Excessive Practise, How to Sing in Upper Register, Voices Ruined by Exaggerated Diction, Breath Control, Battistini’s Example of Bel Canto.
Contents of Article III.—The Pianissimo, Never Sing as Loudly as You Can, Excessive Pianissimi Destroy Brilliancy, In Singing Pianissimo Pronounce Pianissimo.
Contents of Article IV.—Old Neapolitan School of Velocity, Fast Scales, Types of Vocal Teachers, The Trill, Chromatic Scales, Pizzicati, “Aida.” Contents of Article V.—Singing a Gay Art, Carrying Middle Voice Up Too Far, Carrying Head Voice Too Low, Two Sides to Everything, Loose Lips Insure Resonance, Diction, To Understand the Words the Public Must Hear Them, Carrying Quality, “Put the Words in the Voice,” Sarah Bernhardt’s Diction, Caruso’s Lesson on Bel Canto.
Contents of Article VI.—Trilby’s Voice, Mario’s Quality, When Melba Sang, Operatic Master Interpreters, Opera, Despised “Manon,” Director of Orchestra Must Have Feeling for Melodic Line, Kultur’s Campaign Against Latin Music, Absolute Music.
Contents of Article VII.—The Old Italian Classic Masters, Change Expression Without Changing Voice Placement, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven’s “Ah, Perfido!” No Singers for Rossini, The Vocal Effects of Bellini and Donizetti, Battistini Records, Verdi, Maurel, Nabucco Under Mugnone, Paderewski, Mugnone and Nikisch, Gounod.
Contents of Article VIII.—Wagner, De Reszke-Wagnerian Interpreter, The Phonograph and Musical Culture, The Modern Operas, Acting, Maurel, Lecture at the Sorbonne, Song Singing, Trilby and the A Flat Impromptu.
Contents of Article IX.—Trilby’s Letter from London, Her Voice, Undependable, Svengali’s Reply, Diet and Exercise, Dorian Grey’s Portrait.
Contents of Article X.—Trilby’s Letter from Paris, “Are All Singers Trained Alike?” Svengali’s Reply, Individuality, Tamagno, Caruso and De Reszke, Qualities and Defects, The Teacher’s Work.
Contents of Article XI.—Why Trilby Does Not Come to America, The Musical Situation Here, Opera In All Our Cities.]
Boninsegna.
I think the finest records I have heard of a dramatic soprano, are Boninsegna’s “Pace, Mio Dio,” from “La Forza del Destino,” and “Ernani involami.” Her “11 Trovatore” and “Aida” records are the best that exist of those operas. Many young dramatic sopranos who are studying these roles would like to hear the foremost examples of how they should be done.	_
I wonder if some tenor will gain enough public favor some day to demand that the Caruso records be “called in?” Some of the best examples of his voice, made when he was really Caruso, were for a time off the market and have only been put back since his death.
Perhaps those who have the authority in the phonograph companies do not recognize what a barbarous thing it is to the cultured few to deprive them of records that are as precious to the musical, as master paintings in art galleries are to those who are interested in art, or books in libraries to the literary.
One dealer informed me that certain records had been withdrawn because they were not considered up to the standard as records.
I’ll concede they were not. But they were the only ones obtainable of a certain artist, whose superb phrasing and style were the best possible lessons to the student or even tQ the artist of today.
ELL, you see Svengali exists!
And you see how I should have turned Trilby into the nightingale that Glorioli described to Little Billie without any hypnotic powers or strange reedy little wooden instruments!
Some of the scientific reasons for the working out of the things I told Trilby to do to produce vital, yet graceful and floating tones, may be found on the shelves of those interested in the physiological phenomenon of voice production and the anatomy of the vocal organs.
When the savants who make these most interesting and necessary researches, confine themselves to what occurs during singing and not what to do to sing, they are of decided value. But don’t for a moment imagine that reading their eternal disputes and theories ever taught a young singer how to make good tones !	־
Works on Singing.
The great singing masters of the Neapolitan and Venetian schools Of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries have left works on their art and methods, but many of the best have never been translated into English, and one must take a trip to the libraries of Italy or other European countries to consult them.
In these works the maestri speak of years as one in our intense age would consider months.
Even the singers of our own time, when interviewed, never fail to begin a long serious speech about the many years the young student must be prepared to sacrifice. They are generally thinking of their own cases and the hard times they had finding a good enough way of producing their voices to enable them to sing their roles in theaters.
It need not necessarily be so.
If the student has a healthy vocal apparatus and is fairly talented, much can be accomplished by the careful and intelligent working out of the “Secrets of Svengali.”
And, if after three or four months most decided progress in power, steadiness, suppleness, agility and range is not perceptible, the student may be convinced he does not understand these writings. Yet I have tried above all else to keep them clear and easy to grasp; and, if I have done so, I have added my stohe to the Sacred Temple wherein Bel Canto, the fairest of all goddesses, shall reign, as singers, conductors and composers appear before her throne, make their offerings and pass on.
Bel Canto is destined to live despite the intricacies and sudden jars of modern music.
The tide will ebb and flow, and whenart continues to get more and more intricate during a certain period, a reaction finally occurs, and back we go for another spell toward simplicity. In painting, sculpture and literature this has always been true.	.	.	.
So we need not think that Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi were the last of the simple melodists. When the people are tired of being amazed they will want to be charmed. Perhaps not so far ahead in the future there are great composers with missions to lead us out of the turmoil of everything going on at once.
Music may have its Manet, its Whistler.
This future age of Bel Canto will not be an imitation of the early nineteenth century Italian masters, but a development of them. The rhythms, the harmonic backgrounds, the musical figures and orchestral colorings will be different —of the period whenever it occurs—but men will always return to Bel Canto for their greatest delight.
Singers of the Bel Canto school will always be honored. Even in the music of today, the most tuneless of it, the most intricate and declamatory, the voice trained in the free old Italian style, well supported by the breadth, is by far the most effective. For Bel Canto does not necessarily imply the sacrifice of dramatic qualities to the lyric. On the contrary, free floating tones will lend themselves the most readily to variety of expression and real dramatic fervor. The great artists I heard years ago and Chaliapin of today prove that.
* * *
But the years rush on.
Three have already flown by since I shipped Trilby off to Europe, when she became too pressing on Armistice Night, about living up to the Du Maurier traditions.
The names of the master-artists I have mentioned in these pages for the most part are already only memories with the older music lovers of today. The present students have not such models.	.
Some splendid records exist, or existed, of a few of the giants I have conjured up from the glorious past, but the young American striving to become an artist can hardly count on retaining them for references, as the phonograph companies are given to the habit of taking them out of the catalog.	.
The press of all civilized countries bewailed the burning of the library of Louvain.
But where do we read a line about the taking off the market of such exquisite examples of musical art as the records of Battistini, Boninsegna and De Lucia?
“There isn’t enough demand for them” is the answer.
Perhaps a celebrated baritone, with a wonderful organ but not possessing even a shadow of the marvelous phrasing and tone modulation of Battistini, did not like to have comparisons made.
And the Boninsegna records were withdrawn shortly after the first success in this country of a dramatic soprano, who also sings “La Forza del Destino,” but not like Boninsegna.