MUSICAL COURIER
18
May 31, 1923
a mosquito) and he swelled the tone like thunder. I think this is the true natural singing at the lips. Is it not?
Another confirmation of your method, always with the late Gayarre, is the special number published on the first of January, 1922, in the journal La Presisa of Buenos Aires (Argentine Republic). It is a special number dedicated to the memory of Gayarre, who sang once in the opera at Buenos Aires in the year 1877. It appears to be an actual interview given by the Spanish Senator, Signor Valentin¡ Gayarre, the nephew and heir of the singer. Among the anecdotes of his uncle he says, “My uncle shortly before his death intended to write a book about his own singing to condemn all actual singing teachers the closing (break) instead of singing tutto aperto as he did.” Don’t you think this statement is a beautiful confirmation of this very important point of the abolition of the so-called registers? I have written to the director, of that journal ordering a copy of that number and if I can obtain it I will send you same underlining the mentioned lines.
I think I have tried you so much with such a long letter that you never would think could come from a country so distant. Before I close I take the liberty of asking you how much would be your honorary fees in order to consult you about a singing or throat problem of myself. When I was twenty I had a good tenor voice; then came Fregoh and I started imitating him and ruined my throat with a chronic sore throat. After ten years of complete silence I went to Maestro Querze in order to improve my speaking - voice emission. He told me that I had first class material and that I must study singing. Unfortunately he went away forever! Before starting he recommended me to study with one of his best pupils. I went to this gentleman and told him that I would like to study with him but following exactly your book about Caruso’s singing. As he is not a pretentious man he accepted and started my course. After some months following your system I can go down as low as G under the treble staff up to high C sharp. I have obtained this high tone especially by studying and practising the low notes from C down to G.
Kindly let me know your honorary prices so that I can consult you in perfect freedom. Thanking you very kindly in anticipation for your kindness, I am
Yours very truly,
(Signed) Antonio Cornish,
Casilla 1243,
Valparaiso, Chile.
Martha D. Willis to Conduct Summer Classes
On June S Mrs. Martha D; Willis will open in Bryan, Texas, the first of two summer schools of piano instruction and normal training. The second school will open in Waco, Texas, on July 10.
The piano course will include piano master classes for listeners and players, and private instruction, for teachers and students, of technic and interpretation.
The normal course will consist of psychology for music teachers, and the most successful means of presenting music to children, especially emphasizing keyboard harmony, improvisation, rhythmic, melodic and harmonic dictation, melody building and the harmonizing of melodies. Other features will embrace modern technic, tone production, memorizing, and interpretation. Attention will also be given to selections from the works of standard composers, of material for all grades of piano study, with especial reference to their value as teaching pieces.
Residence for the past year in New York, for study and observation, following a sojourn in Oxford, England, where she attended the summer course in music teaching given in that city, has broadened and enriched the training of Mrs. Willis’ earlier years, when she studied with some of the best European masters and was graduated from the Royal Conservatory of Leipsic. Thus she is enabled to bring to teachers and students the fruits of a varied and stimulating experience gained in the great music centers here and abroad, and they are given instruction of an exceptional nature without leaving their homes.
For several years Mrs. Willis has successfully conducted vacation classes for teachers in New York.
Washington Heights Musical Club Launches Its Chorus
At its “closed meeting,” May IS, the energetic and enterprising Washington Heights Musical Club launched its new chorus of women’s voices with great success to the gratification of all concerned in the development of this highly useful movement to make music a social as well as a professional affair. Ethel Grow, herself a distinguished musician, is the conductor, and demonstrated her ability to hold voices together and provide inspirational interpretations. Other numbers on this excellent club program were rendered by Ruth Kemper, violinist, accompanied by Jane Cathcart; Elizabeth Armstrong, violin, accompanied by Robert Low-rey; Virginia Ruggiero, piano; Lawrence Goldman, violin, and Michael Anselmo, violin, accompanied by Julius Schen-del. The chorus was accompanied by Frank Stewart Adams. The entire program consisted of ensemble numbers where members of the club played with each other, and in this manner the club is striving to revive the old custom of ‘making music” among friends just for the fun of it. As the club succeeds in this endeavor it is making American music history.
With patience and study I could ascertain that Caruso always preceded the tone with the vowel; on higher tones this was quite clear and sometimes the vowel was so brief, but it was always there. If the vowel must be governed by the tone production, as several stupid people say, how can they explain this visible proof of your theories? If you listen attentively to all good Caruso reproductions, you can catch the vowel preceding the tone, but of course sometimes it is so brief that the ear is unable to catch it; but my scientific system never fails to show that you are right.
Another very interesting remark I made was that Caruso used to open his throat before a high tone. This was visible in my experiments. I think this is the cause of his powerful ringing upper tones. I had noted this Caruso trick for the high notes but now I am sure he did so. You can easily catch it, viz., in Celeste Aida end, he sings “un trono vicino al SHOL.” In Manon he sings “de NAON cessar” (on the high B flat). I remember very well in the 1902 Ugonotti record he sang "qual favor, qual favor, qual FAVriOR.” The object of the A was to open his throat widely. Kindly take notice of every high note. Even when the high tone is in “i” he opens the throat, viz., in Martha he sings, “ah! di dolor morro, SHI morro.”
I possess a first class Vitrola with a special diaphragm of my own idea. When Mr. Martinelli was here for some days during his trip to Buenos Aires he was very much impressed with my makeshift reproducer and gave me a letter of endorsement to Mr. Child of the Victor Company, but I preferred to keep the letter as an autograph rather than send the same to the Victor people. I do not think my reproducer is worth while for high series production.
Returning to your method, I had also several details from Mr. Querze’s system. This old artist came here in 1894 as dramatic tenor of the season; twenty years later he returned here and started teaching singing. I had the chance of being his pupil for one month, in July, 1921; then he went to New York, where he died in his sixty-eighth year, in February, 1922. He was the master of Reneto Fanelli.
“The voice is a lyric soprano, expressive in its purity and perfection of pitch. It soars as lightly into the high registers as a bird's and is scintillatingly beautiful when it does.”
The Sacramento (Cal.) Bee said the above about May Peterson, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Co.
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His method was similar to yours and only with two exercises. The first and the backbone of the training was la, le, li, lo, lu, sung on each note in a legato form always pushing the voice forward. For him there were no registers ; he used to say, “Please, there is only one emission; you may close the lips but not the throat,” and with his sixty-eight years he sang la, le, li, lo, lu, with his pupils from 8 A. M. to 6 P. M. with a fine, clear tenor voice. He retired from the stage because of heart trouble. He also said, “The voice in front, at the teeth, not in the throat; for good singers the throat does not exist; the breath comes from the diaphragm and the voice is formed on the lips.”
Sometimes he used to tie his neck with a handkerchief and tell a pupil to pull hard while he was singing a tone, in order to prove that his throat was fully open.
The basic principle of his teaching was “the importance of pronunciation” before the singing study. As you see, his empirical method was better than the so-called modern ones.
Another confirmation of your method was the case of the celebrated Spanish tenor, Julian Gayarre, who died in January, 1890. I have read much about this wonderful voice and his case is. just the one you mention on page 142 of your book. I possess the interesting book, Memories of Julian Gayarre, written by him and a friend of his after his death. All the critics were in perfect accord that he sang with no registers. Gayarre’s case interested me so much that I wrote to some artist of his time. I knew that Battistini sang with him in February, 1888, at La Scala !Lohengrin and Favorite afterwards in the same year) and I wrote him asking the favor of some data about Gayarre. I have the answer of Mr. Battistini and he says, “The voice of Gayarre was entirely free, open by nature; its center was that of a baritone and he showed great facility ‘peril piano et forte’; he spun the high C and D.” This information is in accord with Mr. Querze’s, who told me that Gayarre sang with his full voice (not head voice as thin as
Letters from
MUSICAL COURIER READERS
A Letter to Marafioti
[The letter which follows, written, as will be seen, as a personal letter to Dr. Marafioti, is an interesting contribution to the controversy that has arisen since the publication of his book on Caruso’s method of singing.—The Editor.]
Valparaiso.
Signor P. Mario Marafioti,
New York.
Caro Signor Marafioti :
I beg your pardon if I write you in a poor English, but although my name is an English one I am only a native of this country (ChileJ.
The object of this letter is to heartily congratulate you for your wonderful book, Caruso’s Method of Voice Production. Surely you have received several letters of every country of the world, but I make the pretention that mine will be of special gratification and interest to you.
I am not a doctor, artist or a professional in any art but only a simple opera-goer and an observer-amateur. I am thirty-six years old and since the age of ten I have been going to the opera every season; I have therefore heard several artists, but the curious part of my musical inclination is that since fifteen years of age I became passionately interested in voice physiology. Instead of buying useless books (novels, etc.) as other boys did, I ordered from Europe books about the voice. I read several, among them the following authors whose names may be familiar to you: Garcia (the father of the colpo diglottide), Giraldon (Leone), Mayan, Mandl, Lermoyez, Gougenheim, Carelli, Bataille, Kock, Cadier, Dodert, Eustache, S, Reeves, Clip-penger, Fillebrown, Ifrangeon-Davies, Fay, Caruso “How to Sing.”
The more books and treatises I read the more I convinced myself that voice science was a fearful chaos of empirism, and this more shameful since the invention of the laryngoscope by Garcia. Each one had his own theories.
As you see by the list I read also several modern authors, but no one could fill the emptiness I felt.
Together with my readings I went to the opera and made the acquaintance of the best artists that came to our theaters. I heard Ruffo (1900), Stracciari (1902), Paccini, Amato, De Luca, Guildom, Scotti, Nam, Danise, Tatticanti, etc., as baritones; Arambuso (concert tour), Colli, Querze, Bassi (five seasons) Imocenti, Garbin, Constantino, Bravi, Giraud, Paoli, Francischini, Biel, as tenors. We never heard Caruso in Chile.
I read the insertions written by several vocal teachers against your book and theories. I ordered your book at once and since I received it I have read same several times.
I must tell you that your ideas were not new to me, firstly by personal impression and observation, and then by the late Mr. Angelo Querze’s Method of Voice Culture.
Let me explain how I first got the impression of your theories. Since 1892 I became very fond of the phonograph;
I possessed that year the first loud talker in South America, a French apparatus called Liviet. Artists of that machine were no good. In the year 1902 I owned my first wax cylinder phonograph, a small Edison machine; next year a Columbia and in 1903 a very good Italian reproducer called Bettini.
In 1902 I ordered several Italian records, among them two of Caruso’s—Recondita Armonia from Tosca, and an air of Ugonatti, Qui sotto il ciel de la bella Turenna. Caruso was only a good tenor then but I was impressed with his voice that it was musical talking. Then I bought the Pathe Caruso series and since then and with the first Victor records (1904-5) I started the study of Caruso’s voice through his records.
My fixed opinion was that Caruso was always speaking while singing and especially that each tone was preceded by a perfect vowel. Now I remarked his violin-like “i,” never equalled by any other tenor! Finally I was convinced that Caruso’s singing and emission were unique. I remember that when I spoke about him I used to say, “Caruso is the only singer who puts his soul in the vocal cords.”
Now after the reading of your superb work I see that I was right and why Caruso was able to sing the same tone with different accents. Returning to my study of Caruso’s voice I had the conviction of his special singing but not the scientific proof. I think my work may be of interest to you as with the aid of my “recherches” you can shut up several idiots (as I have seen by their articles). In 1913 at last I could finish my work. My idea was to see Caruso’s vowels! But how? The wonderful Victor records gave me the chance. Let me explain to you how I did it.
I arranged a special mechanism to reproduce a Victor record on a glass disc covered with negro di fumo (lamp black). The object of the special mechanism was to make the spiral engraving. The result was a dummy glass record. The inscriptions were similar to those of the original. Caruso record but the speed was optional. A small passage of the record, even a high tone, could be registered on several spirals of the glass record in order to study it. Once the glass record was ready I projected it through a magic lantern highly enlarged. That was the end and triumph! In order to locate the tone under study I make a sharp noise just before the spot; afterwards it was easy to locate the noise vibrations.
DE LUCA
Baritone of the Metropolitan Opera Co.
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