also may one conduct a musical work,
whether it be a child's song or a symphonic poem, in such a fashion
that neither performers nor audience gain a proper conception of what
it means.

[Sidenote: INTERPRETATION IN VOCAL MUSIC]

In the case of vocal music, the key to the emotional content of the
work may almost always be found by carefully studying the words. In
preparing to conduct choral singing, master the text, therefore; read
it aloud as though declaiming to an audience; and when you come to the
performance, see that your vocalists sing the music in such a way that
the audience will be able to catch without too great effort both the
meaning of the individual words and the spirit of the text as a whole.

The great Italian tenor Caruso expressed himself forcibly upon this
point during an interview for the _Christian Science Monitor_, in
1913. In reply to the question "Where do you locate the source of
expression in singing?" he said:

I find it in the words always. For unless I give my hearers
what is in the text, what can I give them? If I just produce
tone, my singing has no meaning.

"Thereupon" (continues the interviewer), "vocalizing a series of scale
passages such as are used in studio practice, Caruso commented":

Now, when I do that, I don't say anything. I may make
musical sounds, but I express nothing. I may even execute
the notes with a good staccato or legato (again illustrating
with his voice) and still, having no words to go by, I make
no effect on my listeners.

Look at the question in another way. Suppose I were to sing
a line of text with a meaning in my voice that contradicted
the idea of the words. Would not that be nonsense? It would
be as much as though I were to say to you "This wood is
hard," and were to say it with a soft voice. People have
observed that I sing as though I were talking. Well, that is
just what I mean to do.

"Singing, then" (the interviewer goes on), "as Caruso began to define
it, is a sort of exalted speech, its purpose being to illuminate the
imagery and sentiment of language. The mere music of singing he seemed
for the moment to put in a subordinate place.

"By way of further emphasizing his point, he referred to a theme in
Donizetti's _L'Elisir d'Amore_, which is used in two opposing
situations--by the soprano in a mood of joy, and by the tenor in a
mood of sorrow. He sang the measures o