law of life that nothing new can come into the
world without pain._"

Karen Borneman.

The New Art of the Singer

The art of vocalization is retarding the progress of the modern music
drama. That is the simple fact although, doubtless, you are as
accustomed as I am to hearing it expressed _a rebours_. How many times
have we read that the art of singing is in its decadence, that soon
there would not be one artist left fitted to deliver vocal music in
public. The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe wrote something of the sort in 1825
for he found the great Catalani but a sorry travesty of his early
favourites, Pacchierotti and Banti. I protest against this
misconception. Any one who asserts that there are laws which govern
singing, physical, scientific laws, must pay court to other ears than
mine. I have heard this same man for twenty years shouting in the
market place that a piece without action was not a play (usually the
drama he referred to had more real action than that which decorates
the progress of _Nellie, the Beautiful Cloak Model_), that a
composition without melody (meaning something by Richard Wagner,
Robert Franz, or even Edvard Grieg) was not music, that verse without
rhyme was not poetry. This same type of brilliant mind will go on to
aver (forgetting the Scot) that men who wear skirts are not men,
(forgetting the Spaniards) that women who smoke cigars are not women,
and to settle numberless other matters in so silly a manner that a ten
year old, half-witted school boy, after three minutes light thinking,
could be depended upon to do better.

The rules for the art of singing, laid down in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, have become obsolete. How could it be otherwise?
They were contrived to fit a certain style of composition. We have but
the briefest knowledge, indeed, of how people sang before 1700,
although records exist praising the performances of Archilei and
others. If a different standard for the criticism of vocalization
existed before 1600 there is no reason why there should not after
1917. As a matter of fact, maugre much authoritative opinion to the
contrary, a different standard does exist. In certain respects the new
standard is taken for granted. We do not, for example, expect to hear
male sopranos at the opera. The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe admired this
artificial form of voice almost to the exclusion of all others. His
favourite singer, indeed, Pacchiero