Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843. Various
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Название: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 333, July 1843
Автор: Various
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Журналы
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"Haud passibus æquis."
With us, the pupil commonly begins where he should end; songs are placed before him almost as soon as he has mastered the elements of music. At a time, when his whole study and endeavour should be to form and cultivate the voice, and by long, patient, and persevering exercise, to develop and command its powers, and to acquire flexibility and certainty of execution, his efforts are expended in learning—as it is called—songs. This process may be carried on ad infinitum; but none of the objects of the pupil's study can be ever sung, in the real acceptation of the term, on this method of instruction. The well-known anecdote of the early youth of one of the greatest singers the world has ever known, who, after the drudgery of a daily practice of exercises alone for seven years, was bidden by his master to go his way, the first singer in Europe, is an example of the advantages of the opposite system. The compass of an ordinary tenor is about two octaves, from C below the line, to C in alt. Within this compass, the tenor makes use of two voices; the chest or natural voice—which ranges over the whole of the lower octave and the lower half of the higher octave—and the head-voice or falsetto, which is commonly used throughout the whole of the remainder of the upper octave, the higher notes of which can be reached only in the falsetto. In passing from one 'voice' to the other, especially while descending the scale, a break or crack may be observed in the untutored and uncultivated voice. When this defect has been overcome, and the student has acquired the power of passing from one 'voice' to the other without this break, the voice is said to be joined. The soprano also has to contend with a similar difficulty. It often requires many months of constant and unremitting practice to overcome this natural defect of the vocal organ, and in some voices it is never entirely conquered. An acute ear might often detect the faulty joining of the voice, in both the Grisis, when executing a distant descending interval. This obstacle meets the student at the very threshold of his career; but we have met with many English taught amateurs, who were altogether ignorant even of what was meant by joining the voice. In fact, the art of singing, or of acquiring a mastery and control over the voice, of remedying its defects, and developing its latent powers, is comparatively unknown in England; our professors are for the most part entirely ignorant of the capabilities of the human voice, as an instrument, in the hands of the performer. Many of these observations apply to our instrumental performers. With few exceptions, defective training has, in this branch of the musical art, long prevented us from producing performers of equal celebrity with those who have visited us from the Continent. From them we have become acquainted with effects, which we should have deemed the instruments on which they played wholly incapable of producing. Our young professors now often follow these men to their own country, there to learn of them that proficiency which they would seek in vain to acquire at home.
In the midst of all this ignorance, with our one opera, our anthems, madrigals, glees, and ballads, we nevertheless esteem ourselves a musical people, and every one is ready to exclaim with Bottom, "I have a reasonable good ear in musick!" Music certainly is the fashion now, and no one would dare to avow that he had no music in his soul. It may be thought, that none but a people passionately devoted to music, could produce a succession of patriots ready to sacrifice health and wealth, rather than their countrymen should fail to possess an Italian opera. Some one is ever found equal to the emergency; there is seldom any lack of competitors for the "forlorn hope" of the management of the Italian opera, and, undismayed by the ruin of his predecessors, the highest bidder rushes boldly on to the direction of the Queen's theatre. Forty thousand pounds of debt has been known to have been incurred in a single season; and it has been calculated that a sum little short of a million sterling, besides the produce of the subscriptions and admissions, has been sacrificed to the desire of an Italian opera. Every autumn is rich in musical festivals, as they are called, by which, though the temples of God are desecrated, and the church, in common with the theatre and the concert-room, becomes the scene of gaiety, frivolity, and amusement; and though the speculation is a charitable one, by which it is hoped
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