CHAPTER IX

GOOD AND BAD “MAESTRI”

As to the absolute necessity of a teacher there can, I suppose, hardly be two opinions. Much can be learnt from books, no doubt; by listening to other singers; and by working things out for oneself, so far as possible. Also it is a fact, doubtless, that some of the world’s greatest singers have had remarkably little formal instruction.

Mario, for instance, never had a lesson in his life except when Meyerbeer taught him the part of Raymond in “Robert le Diable”--and Meyerbeer, it is hardly necessary to say, was not a singing master.

But such cases are the exceptions, and in the ordinary way there cannot be the slightest doubt that the services of a teacher are absolutely essential to sound progress. There are exceptions, of course. One of these is the great Chaliapine, who represents his own school and has never had any instruction as we understand it. He is by nature endowed with a beautiful voice, and obtains his fine effects by long hours of deep thought and reflection. I have asked him when and how he prepared, and he replied: “I think out my work in the silence of my bedchamber, when I am waiting for sleep, or in the mornings before I rise. In fact, during all my hours of wakefulness I am always visualising the stage, the actors, the audiences, and contriving how best to obtain effects emotional, sentimental, dramatic.”

Grave indeed are the risks run by any student who attempts to supply his own requirements in this matter and to dispense with the skilled advice which only the trained expert can supply--entailing possibly the ruin of his entire career.

It was for lack of such advice in her earlier days that Jenny Lind’s voice was almost ruined at the outset, so that when she went to García for advice his verdict was: “It is quite useless for me to think of teaching you, since you have no voice left.”

Fortunately rest and proper training saved the situation in that case, as we all know, but how easily it might have been otherwise. Other fine voices have, indeed, been irretrievably destroyed by faulty methods continued too long.

A famous case was that of Duprez, a well-known tenor who flourished some seventy or eighty years ago. “I have lost my voice,” he wrote in despair to Rubini, “how have you kept yours?” Rubini replied: “My dear Duprez, you have lost your voice because you have sung with your capital; I have kept mine because I have sung only with the interest.” And there is a world of instruction in this pithy way of putting it.

See to it at all costs, therefore, that you put yourself in the right hands. By which I do not necessarily mean a teacher of world-wide repute--for there are many equally good who do not happen to be so generally known. The supremely important thing is that whoever you go to shall be a man--or a woman, as the case may be--of honour and integrity, who can be trusted to deal faithfully with you, and not a quack or a charlatan.

The teaching of singing is indeed a much simpler matter--though difficult enough--than is commonly supposed, especially nowadays when, as the result of scientific study and research, the underlying physiological principles are so much more thoroughly understood than formerly. Yet there will always be those, I suppose, who find it to their advantage to deal with it as something mysterious and occult; and apparently there will always be those confiding souls willing to take these folk at their own valuation and to put good money into their pockets.

Wonderful indeed are the tales which are told of some of these gentry. In New York, for instance, there is said to be a practitioner of this type who sells to his pupils, in order to give timbre to their voices, bottles (at two dollars each) of Italian water. Beware of the confidence tricksters of the musical profession who claim to transform your voice by some quack method or theory of “nasal resonance” and so on. These people have ruined more voices than one could enumerate.

But one need not go to America to find examples. I am afraid, indeed, that even in my own native land the same sort of thing is not entirely unknown. I have even heard of a teacher in Milan who makes his pupils swear on a crucifix not to reveal the secret of his wonderful “method,” and I have heard of another whose practice it was to make his pupils tie to the legs of the piano pieces of elastic which they were instructed to pull out and let go again, in order to “feel” the gradations of _crescendo_ and _diminuendo_.

But even he seems to have been excelled in invention by another “Professor”--again hailing from the Land of the Stars and Stripes!--whose custom it was to illustrate the art of _mezzo voce_ by means of an umbrella which he opened and closed as his happy pupils, standing before him, swelled and diminished on the chosen note.

Such things, you may say, sound laughable enough, but they are no laughing matter for the unfortunate pupils who happen to be the victims of such monstrous quackery, and I cannot urge too earnestly upon all my readers the supreme importance of choosing a teacher who is above all suspicion--for preference one possessed of a satisfactory diploma obtained at a recognised institution.

Then you may be sure that whether the teacher be better or worse in the purely technical sense, he will at least be an honest man and not one who makes his calling a mere pretext for the plundering of the ignorant and unwary.

Another important question which arises in this connection is as to the advisability of studying at home or abroad, and this, I am afraid, is one of those perplexing matters in the case of which there is a good deal to be said on both sides. I myself have naturally a prejudice in favour of my beloved Italy, the traditional Land of Song, where, I am proud to think, the art of Bel Canto still finds its finest exponents and teachers, and where also there are greater facilities, I suppose, for hearing fine singing than in any other country in the world.

At the same time I am quite prepared to admit that there is a good deal to be said on the other side. It is a great undertaking and responsibility, for instance, sending a young girl to study abroad. The teacher selected may not be a good one, or may not be suited to her particular requirements, when she gets there--although by saying this I do not mean to express agreement with those who contend that a special kind of teaching is required for the singers of every nationality. Whether you study at home or abroad, let your teacher be the best you can obtain.