OUR MUSICAL CORRESPONDENCE COLUMN.
(With acknowledgments to "The Musical Herald.")
I think I am a tenor, but after taking lessons continuously for six years from sixteen different masters I am still in doubt, and what is more, I am not quite certain whether I want to be. Did not somebody once say that a tenor was not a man but a disease? I am a healthy normal subject, and recently won the lawn-tennis singles at our local tournament. What puzzles me is my upper register. After reaching the top A, if I relax the wind pressure and slant the voice in a slightly backward direction toward the cavities, I can produce a full rich B flat, or even C, with the greatest ease. My family do not like it, but family criticism is seldom satisfactory. Can you tell me whether this is a legitimate use of my vocal resources or not; also, whether the resinous quality of my voice is likely to affected by my wearing stand-up collars of more than 2 1/2 inches in height? I have read somewhere that starched linen is a bad conductor of sound.—Mario Junior.
Answer.—It is hard to tell whether you are a tenor or a forced-up baritone without hearing or seeing you. Tenors are generally short, stubby men with brief necks, while baritones are for the most part tall, spare and long-necked. It was Hans von Bülow who said that a tenor was a disease, but he was a pianist and a conductor. Do not "grouse" if you can sing tenor parts and yet retain the volume and virility of a baritone. Jean de Reszke began as a baritone and is said to have earned £20,000 a year. The nasal tone that you speak of, when it approximates to the whinnying of a horse or, better still, the trumpeting of an infuriated rogue elephant, is a most valuable asset, but should be used with moderation in the family circle. Do not say "resinous"; "resonant" is probably the word you mean. High stand-up collars are certainly to be avoided, as they constrict the Adam's apple and muffle the tone of the voice. A soft turn-down collar, such as those supplied by Pope Bros., is greatly to be preferred and imparts a romantic and semi-Byronic appearance highly desirable in an artist.
I am a railway porter with a good bass voice, and having read that the great Russian singer who has been appearing at Drury Lane began life in that position and is now paid at the rate of £400 a night I am anxious to follow his example, if I can obtain adequate guarantees of success.—Clapham Junction.
Answer.—It is always dangerous to generalise from exceptional individual cases. Are you over six feet high, and have you corn-coloured hair and blue eyes, like Chaliapine? Again, Russian railway porters are in the habit of shouting the names of stations, not only in a loud clear voice, but with scrupulously clear articulation. Do not rashly abandon your career on the railway on the off-chance of a vocal Bonanza. Remember the words of the poet:—
O, ever since the world began,
There never was and never can
Be such a very useful man
As the railway porter!
My voice is of good compass and volume, but it is lacking in the "rich fruity tone" which, according to popular novelists, is indispensable to the exertion of a magnetic influence on the hearer. Is it possible by died to remedy this deficiency?—Contralto.
Answer.—The use of an emollient diet is recommended by some authorities with a view to improving and enriching vocal tone. You might try a course of Carlsbad plums, Devonshire cream, and peach-fed Colorado ham. But it is easy to overdo the plummy tone, which is apt to become cloying.
Kindly explain the following terms taken from an article on Scriabine which recently appeared in a leading daily paper: Psychical conjunctivitis; Katzenjammer; Cephalœdematous; Hokusai; Asininity. What is the difference between the portamento and "scooping"? Why do opera singers show such a marked tendency to embonpoint? Am I wrong in preferring the cornet to any other wind instrument?—Anxious Aspirant.
Answer.—This is not a general information bureau, but we will do our best. (1) Conjunctivitis is properly a disease of the eyes; "psychical conjunctivitis" would be a sort of mental squint. "Katzenjammer" is the German for "hot coppers." "Cephalœdematous" is not in the New Oxford Dictionary, but apparently applies to a sufferer from swelled head. Hokusai was a Japanese artist, and "asininity" is the special quality of the writer of the article from which you have taken these words. (2) "Scooping" is the vulgarisation of the portamento. (3) Operatic singers grow stout because they drink stout; also because much singing tends to expand the larynx, pharynx and thorax, as well as the basilico-thaumaturgic cavaties of the medulla oblongata. (4) There is nothing criminal in preferring the cornet to any other wind instrument. Many pious people prefer Marie Corelli to Milton.
When Araminta said that I must speak to the man next door about his black cat, I was greatly perturbed. It appeared that the animal had acquired the habit of spending the night in our house, and that Harriet didn't like it. I said that black cats brought good luck, and, anyhow, by night all cats were grey. Araminta replied that this one was as black as a bilberry and took fish. Walking out into the garden I began to meditate deeply.
Perhaps you do not immediately grasp what a terrible and dangerous thing it was that Araminta had requested me to do. Between next-door neighbours in the area of Greater London there subsist relations of an infinite delicacy. They resemble the bloom upon a peach. They combine a sense of mutual confidence and esteem with absolute determination not to let it get any further. Mr. Trumpington (Harriet vouched for his name) and myself were certainly acquainted. In a sense you may even say we were friends. If I happened to be murdered or assaulted by a footpad there was not the smallest reason to suppose that Mr. Trumpington would refrain from giving the police every assistance in identifying the criminal. Similarly, if Mr. Trumpington's house caught fire, it was certain that I should be one of the first to offer him the load of our garden syringe.
As things were, what happened was this. Twice or thrice a week we nodded pleasantly to each other over the wall that divided our demesnes, through the interstices of our respective hollyhocks; once, only once, in a mad burst of irresponsible gaiety, Mr. Trumpington has gone so far as to murmur, "Good aft-" to me, and I had responded effusively, "-ernoon."
And now all this atmosphere of quiet sociableness was about to be destroyed through the paltry misdemeanours of a subfuse cat. For I had not the smallest doubt as to what would happen. Mr. Trumpington was a mild amiable-looking man. There was not the faintest prospect of his flying into a rage. He would not say, "What right have you to interfere with the private affairs of another man's domesticated fauna?" He would not ask me why I had inveigled his beautiful black cat on to my poisonous premises. No, we should talk together reasonable, amicably, and as man to man. Mr. Trumpington would promise to do all he could to give his cat pleasant, cheerful evenings at home, and I should agree that it was very hard to prevent a young cat from wanting to see a bit of life.
