Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.
Alma Gluck
Time and again, a student will send me an urgent appeal to hear her, saying she is poor and wants my advice as to whether it is worthwhile to continue her studies. I invariably refuse such requests, saying that if the student could give up her work on my advice, she had better give it up without it.
French is, in many ways, more difficult for an English-speaking person to sing. It is so full of complex and trying vowels. It requires the utmost subtlety.
We are rich in the quantity of songs rather than in the quality. The singer has to go through hundreds of compositions before he finds one that really says something.
The sincerity of the art worker must permeate the song as naturally as the green leaves break through the dead branches in springtime.
One does not study for a goal. One sings because one can't help it! The 'goal' nine times out of ten is a mere accident.
Acquiring a repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, so overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies to work and not imagine himself a martyr to art.
The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and one reason only-he can't help doing it.
Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side fairly screams in many of the works put out by every day American publishers.
The student who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art, is the victim of a deplorable species of egotism.
Vocal study before age 20 is likely to be injurious, though some survive it in the hands of very careful and understanding teachers.
When the student has her voice under complete control, it is safe to take up the lyric repertoire of Mendelssohn, Old English Songs, etc. How simple and charming they are!
In the piano, one has the instrument complete before he begins; but in the case of the voice, the instrument has to be developed by study.
