Part 2 (1/2)

Friends Can Help.

Advice of friends is a source of value or injury to the singing student.

Advice has its influence. Every word spoken about one's voice and singing helps or injures. If placed in a circle which condemns every effort we make we are held back by that very influence from doing our best. Every judicious word of praise helps us upward. A pupil who is struggling by himself, without a word of cheer in his own home circle has a hard fight of it. For that reason it is very necessary that pupils whose desires are similar, and whose aims are toward the highest, should be gathered together. They help by their words, and often by their looks, the anxious student. ”Forsake not the a.s.sembling of yourselves together,” applies. After a pupil's recital, a judicious teacher will tell his pupils the kind things which the others have said. If unkind things should be said (but a teacher who is himself kind will not hear unkind things) he will keep those to himself, guiding himself, however, by those comments in the future treatment of that criticized pupil. In this connection, a word to the members of the family of the student. A mother, who steps into the practice-room occasionally when she hears good singing and says, ”That was good. I see you are improving,” aids the student as much as a half-dozen lessons will aid. A brother who banters his sister about her singing when he really enjoys it, knows not, oftentimes, that his banter hurts and harms. To be sure, the partiality of the home circle may foster false hopes, but since nearly every one can learn to sing well if rightly trained, that will do less harm than cold indifference and cruel banter.

Renew Thought.

The teacher who does not live in high thought, and who does not attempt to attain a high ideal, does poorer work than he thinks he does. It is an easy matter to settle into a rut and to follow certain lines. These wear themselves out. New ways of imparting time-honored teaching, although they may not change the principles of teaching, must be constantly sought. They will only come to mind by keeping the thought in the highest realm of intellectual possibility to that teacher. One who contemplates with restful care, in that higher realm, the beautiful in music, the way of influencing mind, and the most direct way of causing students to attain that which they need, will ever renew his method of teaching. Such renewal will contain something better than he had before.

Unless constant renewal, or at least frequent renewal, takes place, the rut will be entered upon. The longer one follows it, the deeper he becomes settled in it, and the harder is it to get out from it.

Speaking and Singing.

The basis of good singing is good speaking. The speaking voice in common use during conversation covers a range of five or six notes. Frequently lower and higher notes are called into use, but the high and low notes of the singing voice are seldom used in conversation. The organs which produce voice, from their constant use respond involuntarily to the will. They also do correct work. It is seldom that a person, unless he has deformity, has trouble to p.r.o.nounce any word or syllable, while talking. Would this were true of singers. The student would greatly lessen the amount of his labor and also reduce the cost of his musical education if he were able to speak the words as correctly and as easily while singing as while speaking. It is toward this imitation of the speaking voice that one must constantly strive if he would make rapid progress in voice development. When he has reached the point where he can sing every vowel and consonant perfectly, and with as little effort as when speaking, on every tone of his singing voice, and then have that voice loud enough to be well heard in any hall, the voice is completely and well cultivated.

a.s.sociates.

Singers cannot afford to miss the chance to be among great men. As a cla.s.s, musicians are narrow and that arises from the necessity of giving so much time to technical study. When the chance to meet and a.s.sociate with men of broad minds comes, take advantage of it. Even if the contact be not close some of the light s.h.i.+ning from the great mind will illumine us, and will make us brighter. The great mind is drawing from inspired source, maybe, and the light which comes from that mind drives out darkness from whatever it covers. Light and darkness cannot remain together. Let the mind be thrown open to receptivity when one is in the presence of the acknowledged leader and good clear light, it may be from heaven, will flood the mind and illumine it.

Purity of Method.

Purity of vocal method must not be departed from by teachers. The introduction of new ideas is at best a hazardous undertaking. In the routine of teaching week after week and month after month the teacher finds himself casting about for a new idea. He finds something which pleases him and tries it on his pupils. Most teachers can look back at experiments which have failed. Better decide on a few basic principles and cling to them. The desire to try something new is very liable to be the result of fatigue from overwork. Better take a holiday; go away from the cla.s.sroom and rest. Come back to first principles again and go to work. The result at the end of the year will be better. Every teacher as he grows older resolves his ways of cultivating the voice into something very simple but which, as it condenses, becomes more powerful. There is only one right way and deep thinkers settle on that alike in time.

Mental Recovery.

A teacher cannot do better for himself and his work than to occasionally close the office door and sit quietly by himself for a half-hour. At such time crowd out the thought of all work, all planning, all worries, and all demands. Bring the mind as nearly as can be into inactivity. One will find in the hour when work is resumed that more of value will flood into the mind, he knows not from whence, than he can catch and apply in a great many hours. How many of us have times of refres.h.i.+ng. It is work, work, hour after hour and the wonder is that we do so much and yet do so little. Leave out some of the work and call activity of mind to our aid and we will do more work with much less effort.

Profession or Trade.

An item recently seen reads, ”we would rather be a music teacher in an obscure town than be a prosperous tradesman in a large city.” That has the sound of enthusiasm, and is the feeling of one who has the good of his fellowmen at heart. Every man who enters a profession gives up his life to do good. But few men in any professional life ever make more than a good living. Some can, indeed, save enough to make occasional investments, and these (if judgment has been good) secure a moderate fortune. But no man ever became wealthy from his profession alone. A professional man, however, gratifies his better nature and satisfies cultivated tastes. A man in trade becomes so engrossed in business that his better nature (his refined taste) is dwarfed. That comfort of mind which the professional man has is more to him than the bags of gold of the merchant would be. Probably the writer who made the remark quoted, had in mind the opportunity which the music teacher has to do good. It is a grand field of work, and one who has been engaged in it for several years wants no other. To lead the public by teaching and by public performance into the knowledge of the highest art, is a privilege which should be prized. The music teacher, (even if not so placed by common opinion) stands with the minister and the physician in the good which he does the community.

Heart and Intellect.

Let not the heart be the ruling power all the time. If it is, art sinks into sentimentality. Allow the head to rule alternately with the heart.

Intellect must be applied if any satisfying musical result is to be obtained. Emotion is good, but it needs curbing, shaping and restraining. Emotion, long sustained and unbridled, becomes nauseating.

Emotion in itself is beautiful, but like fire and water, if it once becomes the master, wastes and destroys. Emotion, aroused by imagination and directed by intelligence, serves to give taste to all musical rendition. One without heart is non-satisfying as a singer. Be he ever so intellectual, his singing is cold. Intellect alone, unaided by heart, is like polished steel--cold, brilliant and dazzling. Intellect and heart combined are like the same surface engraved and enamelled in artistic design--chaste, delicate and finished.

Time Ends Not.

We may say with Emerson that ”Time has his own work to do and we have ours,” and with Wood, ”Labor is normal; idleness, abnormal,” but in music there must be times of cessation from labor. Call it change of work, if you choose rather than admit that labor has ceased, but experience shows that no musician can safely follow his calling year in and year out, with no regular period of rest, and save his mind and body. Sooner or later comes a collapse. The human machine breaks down.

Then we shall think of Emerson and Wood as unsafe leaders. Time has his work, but he works in such deliberation and in such ever-changing form that were he one who could feel fatigue, he need not feel it. Time is from eternity to eternity. Time does not occupy a human machine. The music teacher does. Many a teacher has toiled beyond his strength this year. Many will next year. Who will take thought for himself and break loose, if but for a few weeks, and postpone the time of breaking down?

One might say, that with Time, the human soul is from eternity to eternity and there is no breakdown. True, but the residence of that soul while it is in this period of existence, demands much of its attention.