ench coach.

When one has traveled this long road, then he is qualified to sing
English songs and ballads.

AMERICAN SONGS

In this country we are rich in the quantity of songs rather than in the
quality. The singer has to go through hundreds of compositions before he
finds one that really says something. Commercialism overwhelms our
composers. They approach their work with the question, "Will this go?"
The spirit in which a work is conceived is that in which it will be
executed. Inspired by the purse rather than the soul, the mercenary side
fairly screams in many of the works put out by every-day American
publishers. This does not mean that a song should be queer or ugly to be
novel or immortal. It means that the sincerity of the art worker must
permeate it as naturally as the green leaves break through the dead
branches in springtime. Of the vast number of new American composers,
there are hardly more than a dozen who seem to approach their work in
the proper spirit of artistic reverence.

ART FOR ART'S SAKE, A FARCE

Nothing annoys me quite so much as the hysterical hypocrites who are
forever prating about "art for art's sake." What nonsense! The student
who deceives himself into thinking that he is giving his life like an
ascetic in the spirit of sacrifice for art is the victim of a deplorable
species of egotism. Art for art's sake is just as iniquitous an attitude
in its way as art for money's sake. The real artist has no idea that he
is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and
one reason only--he can't help doing it. Just as the bird sings or the
butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist
works.

Time and again a student will send me an urgent appeal to hear her,
saying she is poor and wants my advice as to whether it is worth while
to continue her studies. I invariably refuse such requests, saying that
if the student could give up her work on my advice she had better give
it up without it. One does not study for a goal. One sings because one
can't help it! The "goal" nine times out of ten is a mere accident.

Art for art's sake is the mask of studio idlers. The task of acquiring a
repertoire in these days, when the vocal literature is so immense, is so
overwhelming, that the student with sense will devote all his energies
to work, and not imagine himself a martyr to art.

EMILIO DE GOGORZA

BIOGRAPHICAL

Emilio Edoardo de Gogorza w