Singing as a Profession
Words of Advice to Students. Me. Rudersdorff on the Qualifications Necessary to Become a Thorough Singer—Her Experience with Pupils.
To the Editor of the New-York Times:
It is with no presumptive idea of being able to compete with the elegant style and finished writing of the authoress of “The Voice as a Source of Income,” in the Galaxy, whose paper I take the liberty of sending you a sequel. It is with the desire of adding a word for the benefit of those, exclusively, with whose interests I am now so intimately associated—the young students of singing in this country. Since I have settled in Boston for the purpose of imparting my knowledge and experiences to those anxious to become singers, and since Mr. John Dwight has done me the honor of citing me as “almost the only representative left of that great school of dramatic singing,” I have been literally overrun with pupils from almost every part of the States, and, if the limits of your excellent newspaper permit it, I would fain, through its columns, say a few words to many far away, and form a P. S. (in thorough woman’s fashion) to Olive Logan’s paper, thus spreading advice which may be gladly received by many beyond the reach of verbal communication.
How many young girls in America desire to become singers is almost incredible to believe. Poor things, how often do I rack my head for gentle words to answer them! How many offer “to serve me as my maid, or do any manner of work for me, if I will only teach them.” Others offer three or five years of their incomes. Others again, begging to be helped to a church position, to enable them to study, and more ambitious ones, hoping I can teach and also give them church engagements right away. All, however, have one and the same refrain: “Oh, Madame, if I can only become a great singer, and I know, I feel, I can, if you will only teach me!” Most of them come, and after hearing and examining them the main result for all is, without almost any exception, the same utter ignorance of everything that constitutes a singer, and the consequent necessity for long and close studies. And as I will teach no professional pupil, who is not ready to be taught and study thoroughly, I turn scores away because they came every way unprepared for a long course of study.
Yes, most certainly; the voice is a source of income, but I would have those far away know two things: that to get this income, they will first have to spend one, and that the ultimate incomes must be of a necessity of various proportions. In all vocations their great examples stand isolated—suns in a system of satellites. In the world of art and letters, such Sophocles, Euripides, Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Goethe, Schiller, Bulwer, Dickens, Longfellow—Pindar, Canova, Thorwaldsen, Tiziano, Rafaele, Guido Reni, Kaulback, Landseer—Handel, Hayden, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn—Cafarelli, Pasta, Malibran, Lablache, Jenny Lind, Rubini, Mario, Grisi, Adelina Patti, &c., &c.—these (with many others, of course) appear as luminaries on the horizon of history. They command the attention, admiration, and imitation of their contemporaries and posterity, forming the nucleus of schools, round which aspiring neophytes eagerly gather. This is the destiny of the chosen ones; yet, let it not be assumed that it is inglorious not to be such as they were, and that, if you cannot attain the peak of the mountain, you had better not climb at all. “Aut Caesar, aut nihil,” should be the motto of the few, not of the many. The mountain side is lovely with wooded shades, scented flowers, and rippling brooks, where it is pleasant to dwell.
All the would-be singers can be divided into two principle classes: First, the few endowed by a kind of nature with exceptional voices and exceptional musical talents, sometimes reaching to genius; second, those possessing good voices in quality and quantity (yet without being exceptional) and fair musical capacities. But both classes—every one individual of them—in order to succeed must be endowed with the same qualifications application and perseverance. When in my twelfth year I studied for the first time in Paris under Marco Bordogni, my master took me to Lablache that he might hear me, I asked him how I might become a great singer. He answered: “La prima qualificazione, una bella voce, avete. Avete quattrini?” (The first qualification, a fine voice, you possess. Have you got money?”) I answered in the affirmative, when he added: “Ebben, allora no avete bisogno d’altro che di perseveranza, e poi per perseveranza, e poi anchor cento volte perserveranza.” (Well, then, you do not want anything else but perseverance, and then again perseverance, and then again a hundred times perseverance.) When, sixteen years later, I sang Donna Anna to his Leporello, at the Royal Italian Opera, at Covent Garden, in London, he remembered all, and laughingly said: Ebben, pare che l’avete avuta ‘sta benedetta perseveranza.” (Well, it appears that you had that blessed perseverance.)
Well, without these two qualifications, neither or the two classes will achieve anything; with them, either it entitled to the highest position attainable in each sphere, and the necessarily long time of patient, unbroken study will find its ample reward. Let none despond at the slow, often almost imperceptible, progress which marks the first months of study especially, but firmly believe, if the teacher be both cable and conscientious and the pupils docile, that as sure as the sun is shining behind the clouds, so surely must there be success in the end, success to each class according to the qualifications with which they commenced. The first to attain word-wide celebrity, and with it large fortunes. The second, if not gaining crowns, yet coronets, well worth striving for, heart and soul; an honored name, and honorable independence, often even opulence. And you, girls, belonging to this second class, have a still higher incentive to do your work thoroughly and well; you have the glorious mission to create in your far-a-way homes a new, legitimate school of singing, a higher, refined taste. The way in which you have been taught to sing will swiftly tell upon your audience; every engagement in your neighborhood will be yours; in the church you will lead your choir, and through it act upon the ear and perceptions of hundreds in more than one way, not only through the refinement of sound and taste, but also speech; and this is not the smallest item by any means. You will bring round the day when the “good Lord” will be no more your “gut Loawd;” when you “heart” will be such, and not your “haat:” when “kindness” will cease to be “keeindness,” and “shall” will no more be “scheeall.” All this, I beg to state, I hear in one of our first churches Sunday after Sunday. I also hear, “Ant Gawd sed, let theaw ceawth bwing foawth frutt.” This was sung by an American, not a Chinese. I also heard a tenorino frantically cry out for “Marther! Marther!”
To have the power to correct all this, I call a privilege and an honor, and class two are called upon to do it, and, doing it, do endless good. That besides these two classes there are other sub-classes is, of course, unavoidable, but it is not these I would speak of or speak to. To those who, already earning honors and money, come to get the reading of a scena or an oratorio, all honor. In those, however, who also before the public all at once find out that they know nothing, and frightened and frantic rush to a great teacher to root out the mistakes committed by ignorani, there is seldom any good. They study violently for an entire—fortnight! then come with a timid, “Oh Madame, I forgot entirely that I had a concert, and must get up a song.” And away go scales, and a song is learned imperfectly. Then, again scales for almost a week! Then, “Father thinks I need rest.” And so on. These spasmodic students (?) do no one any good, and, when the teacher perceives the symptoms of spasms, are better left to themselves. Smallness is their alpha and omega. Let girls, before they come from a distance to spend money and time, examine themselves to find out if they have any such spasmodic tendencies. If so, let them remain at home.
One more word to all—study music, and study it earnestly. The time has gone by when it was possible for a singer not to be a musician likewise. Moreover, only to Italians can it be permitted (if permitted it can be at all) not to know music for they possess an innate gift of rhythm and phrasing (the latter being the offspring of the first,) which for the purpose of singing in public, renders the knowledge of music to a certain extent unnecessary to them. This gift of rhythm is an invaluable one, and is national. Italians rank pre-eminent; next come the Spaniards and Portuguese, then the Hungarians and the Slavonic races, the Bohemians, Russians, and Poles; then the Germans, Swedes, And Danes; after them the French, and last of all, the English and Americans. This is a fact which every great teacher of singing acquainted with the different nationalities will endorse. Let American singers, therefore, conscientiously study music; above all, the due appreciation of time into its very minutest details. Let them subdivide the divisions of each bar, until every note, dot, and pause has its correct value, not more, not less.
The students should understand that the great teachers of singing teach singing exclusively, not music. They teach the art of breathing, production and cultivation of tone, scales in every form and variety, pronunciation, declamation, accent, and phrasing. All this, but never music. On the contrary, they expect a pupil to be perfect musically in every exercise and aria before coming to learn and sing item and generally a separate teacher is engaged for this, so that no valuable time may be wasted in the singing lessons.
I repeat, consider all of you that “Rome was not built in one day.” There is no great singer who has not studied from three to five years, and this continually, uninterruptedly, making their studies the one great object of their lives. So studied Pasta, Malibran, Viardot, Bosio, Trebelli, Sontag, Lind, Nilsson, and so studies Adelina Patti even now daily, and that is why she is what she is, the most finished singer living.
My great master, the Chevalier De Micherout, in Milan—Pasta’s master, as he was later that of Clara Novello and Catherine Hayes—told me how Pasta, to whose enormous, heavy voice a trill was especially difficult, studied this for five years. But when, at the end of that time, she suddenly introduced it one evening in “Norma,” in the cadence of “Casta Diva,” the very roof of the enormous theatre of La Scala, in Milan, was shaken by the thunders of applause of an astonished and admiring audience, and the great singer’s patient perseverance was rewarded by forty recalls.
Study, study, study, I say to one and all! What is worth doing at all, is worth doing well. Whatever the aim to be which your natural gifts entitle you—let it be the highest or a more modest one—comprehend, encompass this aim completely, entirely undividedly. For the time being, let it be your only object, give it every thought, all your time and all your strength, and doing so, if you are guided by the right teacher, you will infallibly find out in the end that time, money, and perseverance have been well employed.
Erminia Rudersdorff, Boston, Hotel Boylston.
—New York Times, December 27, 1874, page 5.
Why should you care what a long dead dramatic soprano and voice teacher wrote more than a hundred years ago?
Because what Erminia Rudersdorff wrote holds true.
The two classes of singer Rudersdorff outlines, are, if anything, more entrenched within greater subdivision. Case in point? It’s not uncommon to encounter a self-appointed “talent” who can’t read music and doesn’t see the point.
“Why do I need to have a piano?” Said the would-be student to the piano teacher. “Can’t I just come here and practice?” True story. The same mentality exists within the world of voice, vocal students only singing scales and exercises to develop technique—if at all—while in the vocal studio.
Many students of singing still would rather forgo the development of technique and zoom right into repertoire study—and there are plenty of voice teachers who won’t blink an eye and will proceed accordingly, not knowing any better themselves.
Voice teachers still encounter students who offer to be secretary, maid, valet, and houseboy.
Voice teachers still encounter the spasmodic student. They cancel lessons at a whim while in university; or if studying privately, will come for a few lessons, or even a year, then give up because they haven’t obtained fame and fortune fast enough.
Voice teachers still encounter the student who has not mastered, as Rudersdorff has noted, “music.”
To be sure, there are many students who stick with their studies and teachers over a life-time, working assiduously towards their goal. There are also those who enter the studio at midlife having realized they never got their money’s worth for their advanced degree.
Not everyone has the means or the wits to develop their voice. Likewise, there are those with significant talent and resources who are ill-served by their teachers.
Rudersdorff is correct: it takes financial backing—a lot of it.
The matter of perseverance?
It takes a certain mettle and dogged acumen to stay with something long enough to obtain the results which one envisions at the beginning of study. In my own case, the teacher who taught me the most—Margaret Harshaw—was forthright regarding my voice and professional potential, when, after hearing me sing said: “I think you have it.”
Nice to hear, right?
But one can’t live on potential, which is something less than an appetizer.
As it is, I found my way to New York City Opera and the Library of the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center after applying what I was given: combining two careers at once—that of researcher and performer—which suited me to a T.
What sustained me over the long-haul?
Curiosity.
And the ever-abiding desire to sing beautiful music beautifully.
Anna Schoen-Rene notes in her memoir America’s Musical Inheritance: memories and reminiscences (1941) that Ermina Rudersdorff was the first person to bring Manuel García’s teaching to America. Click on her label for more information.
