The sun., 1903-03-08
WAGNER'S THEORY OF SINGING
HOW 1T DIFFERS FROM THAT or
HIS WIDOW.

NOW IL DIFfEhS FRO.n . "Hs W.
HIS WIDOW.
mental Philosophy of Song. but He
Gould Not Get singers 70 Carry Out
His ldeas-v0weis and Cousonants.
For years ono Of the most formidable
obstacles In the way Of an immediate ap-
probation OF the WagneriAn music drama
was the atrocious manner In which It's
music was sung. In recent seasons, espe-
cially at, the Metropolitan Opera House,
there has been a revival Of the thing known
as Wagner singing. and 1t has worked
evil In two ways. Tho celebrity OF the
artists who pract ., 1t has persuaded many
that Wagner ought to be sung diherentiy
from other masters or that he cannot be
sung In the same way. 1t has persuaded
still others that Wagner b altogether un-
singable and therefore undesirable. The
prevailing style Of giving utteranoe to
the musical speech Of the composer OF
tristan und Isolde Ia q lion In the path OF
truth, a vicious. snarling, evil hon OF ira
dition, fed fat In the news Of Wahnfried
itself.
OF Jean de Reszkes singing Of Siegfried
and Tristan and thought It could not II 1t.
But now that we know Il, the typical Ger
man Wagner performer still prefers 10
bark, cough or sneese the notes instead
Of producing them In q normal manner,
Sometimes one meets Germans who do
really sing this music, but they are not
usually In Germany. or at any rate they
are not welcomed at B yeuth. In these
benighted States they arc heard with dem
onstrations Of great joy. For We have
come out Of the lerness In which We
were aforetime lost and have learned that
the highest achievement OF the old Italian
art OF singing is the delivery Of Wagner's
music as he. poor man, never heard it,
Consistency has oft been proclaimed a
Jewel and It is as brilliant in art as II h
in religion. Yet those who held some
dozen or more years ago that. II what
Iilli Lehman and Emil FL cher did was
Hght-and even the Ce mans In New
York praised them-then what Alvary
and Elmblad and others Of that ilk did
was wrong. were derided. Only two year,
ago the same preachers Of vocal art held
hat II Jean de Reszke was right Ernest
Van Dyck must be wrong
The theory Of Wagner defamation, ~
held in Germany and taught at By -euth.
is radically incorrect. 1t is not Wagner
theory. Even II 1t were. 1t Is opposed to
the laws Of vocal int, rp citation and there
fore must fail to accomplish the purpose
for which 1t Is striving. The Wagnerian
theory Of the music drama included tn
use Of music as a means OF expression
and that only. The employment OF music
al a means Of expression made II absolutely
essential that every word OF the text should
oe ineligible to the auditor. From this
premise the school of so-called Wagner
singers has developed a theory Of Wag-
merriam defamation which calls for the
most clean-cut treatment Of the conso-
nants With this there should he no quar-
rel, did II not also include such a use o.
the vowel sounds that the de livery Of thos.
pure. sustained tones which constitute
song becomes next to impossible. Wayn"'
did not write the beautiful voice parts o.
his music dramas with the intention oi
hearing them cacklsd In the Bay eu,h
staccato. The reason for saying thai
this is not the way to sing Wagner IL
that Wagner said II was not. There wa
nothing he wished for moro fervently
than an eloquent delivery Of his music
and he knew In what way II was to be at
tained.
He knew that the first duty was that Of
the composer. Unless the music was 40
written that the musical accent should
be identical with that Of the text. every
effort Of the singer properly to phrase the
music would end only In ob-curing the
intelligibiliiy Of the worda Therefore he
strove earnestly to make the poetic and
musical phrasing and accentuation one.
He failed in places. but on the whole he
succeeded. That being the case, it re-
mained only for the singer to sing the notes
precisely as they were written. His first
difficulty was met in the carelessness of
German singers. to whom recitative meant
.laisssez- -aller- In singing. On Sept. 8. 1850.
he wrote TO Liszt:
Nowhere In the score Of my 'Lohengrin
have ] written above a vocal phrase the
word 'recitative; the singers ought not to
know that there are any recitatives In IT,
on the other hand. have besn 50 intent
upon weighing and indicating the verbal
emphasis Of the speech 10 surely and dis
tinctly that the singers need only sing the
notes exactly according 20 their value In
the given tempo in order to get purely by
tia, means the declsmatory expression.
This Ia one of the earliest statements OF
Wagner's wishes In regard TO the manner
In which his defamation should he treated
Now turn TO the essay entitled A Glance
at the German Opera stage of To-day
lEllis's TRANSLATION, In which Wagner says
My sdvic. To friendly dlsPos,d conduc-
tors Of opera might therefore In summed