There
is no room for cheap vocal virtuosity. The great songs bear the sacred
message of the best and finest in art. They represent the conscientious
devotion of their composers to their loftiest ideals.

I have mentioned three songs which are representative, but there are
numberless other songs which reveal the intimate and personal character
of Schumann's works. One popular mistake regarding these songs which is
quite prevalent is that of thinking that they can only be sung in tiny
rooms and never in large auditoriums. Time and again I have achieved
some of the best results I have ever secured on the concert stage with
delicate intimate works sung before audiences of thousands of people.
The size of the auditorium has practically nothing to do with the song.
The method of delivery is everything. If the song is properly and
thoughtfully delivered, the audience, though it be one of thousands,
will sit "quiet as mice" and listen reverently to the end. However, if
one of these songs were to be sung in a flamboyant, bombastic manner, by
some singer infected with the idea that in order to impress a multitude
of people an exaggerated style is necessary, the results would be
ruinous. If overdone, they are never appreciated. Art is art. Rembrandt
in one of his master paintings exhibits just the right artistic balance.
A copy of the same painting might become a mere daub, with a few twists
of some bungling amateur's brush. Let the young singer remember that
the results that are the most difficult to get in singing the art song
are not those by which she may hope to make a sensational impression by
means of show, but those which depend first and always upon sincerity,
simplicity and a deep study of the real meaning of the masterpiece.

THE LOVE INTEREST IN THE SCHUMANN SONGS

Up to the time Schumann was thirty years of age (1840), his compositions
were confined to works for the piano. These piano works include some of
the very greatest and most inspired of his compositions for the
instrument. In 1840 Schumann married Clara Wieck, daughter of his former
pianoforte teacher. This marriage was accomplished only after the most
severe opposition imaginable upon the part of the irate father-in-law,
who was loath to see his daughter, whom he had trained to be one of the
foremost pianists of her sex, marry an obscure composer. The effect of
this opposition was to raise Schumann's affection to the condition of a
kind of fanaticism. Al