Reviving the Bel Canto
I am, I candidly confess, rather weary of delivering Cassandra-like utterances on the decline in the art of “beautiful singing,“ (bel canto) and am relieved to think that there is no longer any real need to insist upon the face.
It is at last being universally recognized, thanks to the timely arming which my famous old master, Manuel Garcia, put into the preface on “Hints on Singing” 30 years ago, and which I have been endeavoring to drum into the ears of the world ever since.
Let us, however, remember that what Garcia wrote was not a proclamation of the inevitable. He meant only to express his belief that good singing was “becoming”—not that is had actually become—“as much a lost art as the manufacture of Mandarin china or the varnish used by the old masters.” Indeed, I remember his then telling me, as his pupil and co-editor, that what he was anxious to do was to warn students against neglecting the florid Italian style, which he regarded as the fundamental basis of all true singing. It was the evidence of that neglect that was arousing his fear for the future of the art.
Faint Signs of Hope
Fortunately there are certain faint signs which justify the hope that his warning did not come too late, but it is only quite recently that those signs have begun to assume a definite shape. For instance, there is no longer the same impatience and incredulity when one ventures to point out essential faults of method, mistakes in vocal or traditional interpretation, or deterioration in purity and beauty of style. Comparisons between the past and the present, between the great singers of a bygone day and the leading popular vocalists of the moment, are not regarded so much in the light of illusory exaggeration or even sheer romance. Just within the past year or two, but not much more, the present writer has found himself actually believed by the younger generation of Mozart-lovers, when he has assured them that the celebrated opera singers of the eighties and nineties had the secret of an exquisitely refined vocal art and a faultless treatment of the Mozart line which had certainly not descended to the main body of their followers of today. Still, there were perhaps just a few—a very few—who had inherited, if only in measure, the supreme gifts and traditions of the “old school”; and in the existence of that link, as in that of the one good man who should save the city from destruction, lay the hope of salvation for an art of a value at once inestimable and unique.
When I lectured on “How to sing Mozart” at the Wigmore Hall some 15 months ago I was agreeably surprised to find the interest in the subject so widely extended, so keen in its yearning for information. The attitude of the audience reminded me of the concentrated attention that characterized my American listeners when I used to lecture at Chautauqua during my lengthy sojourn in the Unites States; and it was this newly kindled interest which induced me to reproduce the subject-mater of my “talk” on the singing of Mozart in the form of a short “Essay on the Bel Canto.” I count the increasing demand for this little book among the improving signs to which reference has been made. Another is the extraordinary interest that is now being shown by opera lovers everywhere in the work of the first-rate coloratura singer, whether displayed in the opera house or through the medium of the gramophone.
Obviously a renewed demand on the part of the public for the brilliant florid must of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries cannot fail to have a stimulating influence upon serious students who posses the natural gifts for doing justice to it. At the same time the mere response will not suffice unless accompanied by the right sort of training—a kind of teaching, in fact, more severe and prolonged, more searching in its character, more firmly grounded upon the recognized fundamentals of the old Italian school of singing, than has been in vogue these last three of four decades of deterioration and decline.
Are the teachers with names who are established at the various European centers of vocal study, and to whom young singers with fine voices repair from every part of the globe—are these accredited and voice-trainers actually equipped with the knowledge and experience and traditions essential for the fulfillment of their important and set-imposed responsibility? Upon the answer to that question depends the success of failure of the movement towards a renaissance of the art of “beautiful singing” which present indications seem to justify us in anticipating.
The choice of a good vocal teacher remains, therefore, a vital matter; and also, beyond doubt, a difficult one. It seems to me that the paramount duty is to guard young singers against the danger of falling into incompetent hands. As it is, one may fairly rejoice in certain prevalent signs that the people interested in these matters are beginning at last to profit by the experience of others. They are realizing that what is know as the “Bel Canto”—a term easy enough to utter “trippingly upon the tongue”—is not to be picked up in every studio or to be mastered without troublesome work in the space of a year or two. They are also perceiving more clearly every day the futility of expecting to achieve a successful career either on the operatic stage or in the concert room by the aid of “voice and nothing more.” They are exercising greater discretion at the initial period, when taking the preliminary steps, when entering upon this critical phases of elementary study upon which they whole future art of the singers necessarily depend.
Need of long study
The lives of the great singers show us that their transcendent powers were in almost every case the outcome of long and laborious study, in alliance, of course, with natural gifts of the highest order. Take the instance of Adelina Patti. It is not correct to imagine, as is generally supposed, that she was so liberally endowed by nature as to preclude the necessity for daily practice and all hard work of an elementary kind. The story of her girlhood proves the exact contrary; while according to her own statement, many times confirmed by the fact itself within the actual hearing of the present writer, she was in the habit of singing scales for 10 minutes every morning for her life. And therein lies the very essence of the whole achievement, the secret, if it be one, of the wondrous combination of that is comprised in the exquisite yet fundamentally simple art of the “Bel Canto.” To be able to sing a faultless scale implies at once correct breathing and management of the voice, a true legato, and that absolute flexibility which, besides helping to preserve the organ, enables the singer to master any difficulty that composer yet delivered. Hence the urgent need for the revival which is hoped is “under way,” and the promise whereof affords a joy scarcely inferior to that which will be created by its complete fulfillment.
—Herman Klein, “Reviving the Bel Canto,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 1924, page 16.
How strange to read Klein’s words during New York City’s Coronavirus shutdown: the subway not running during the night for the first time ever, more than million people infected nationwide, and hundreds of my fellow New Yorkers dying daily.
Strange because Klein celebrates the return of bel canto principles after a long absence; years in which there was a world war and the pandemic of 1918.
Considering that it takes a good 4-5 years to train a singer to sing half decently, Klein’s observation is timely. For him, it is 1924, a mere 5 years after millions stopped dying hours afters being infected.
He’s right, of course, The return of bel canto after our own troubled time will depend on highly knowledgable and skilled teachers and students who are prepared to go the distance.
I read his words and tell myself…
Take heart.
Beauty will come back.
Find out more about Klein using his label beneath the title; and the archive and author page.
