Taking advantage of
exceptional opportunities of observation and very early realizing the
importance of an exact chronicling of the results, Mr. Alberto Randegger has
made his life an unusually useful one. With a solid musical foundation and a
quick, analytical mind he has, in the last fifty years, gathered a vast deal
of musical knowledge through contact with great singers.
No one realizes more keenly than the man whose calling brings him
into daily association with noted musicians the value of that association; but
few make the privilege of practical value to others as well as to themselves.
In this respect Mr. Randegger has been an exception. With score and pencil in
hand he has attended rehearsals of the oratorios sung in England during the
last fifty years, marking every phrase and nuance of the great soloists who
have passed before the public in half a century. Certain of these arias he has
published from time to time with the annotations made in the moment of
performance. By this plan he has gathered the best from an authoritative
source; for the soloist of worth is bound to give deep thought and long study
to works demanding sound artistic interpretation. This has been but one phase
of Mr. Randegger’s musical activities, the others, teaching and conducting,
have served to apply and to extend his fund of knowledge.
Had not unexpected events turned
the course of his career toward London, New York would have been his
field of labor; for, accepting an engagement of Max Strakosch as opera
conductor, he got as far as England on his way, when a cholera epidemic
prevented his sailing for America. That was in 1854; and since then he has
found London a congenial home. There Sir Michael Costa became his friend, and
through him he obtained at once an opportunity to begin the study of great
works in their rehearsal and performance, works in many instances that were
given a first hearing under the composer’s direction.
In 1868 Mr. Randegger took the position of first singing teacher at
the Royal Academy of Music, a post
which he has held uninterruptedly since. From 1880 to 1887 he conducted at the
Royal Opera, Covent Garden, in the earlier days of Mme. Melba and Mr. Jean de
Reszke at that institution. Again in 1898, under Sir Augustus Harris, he was
recalled to the same position, mainly for Mozart performances. In 1881 he
assumed the conductorship of the Norwich Triennial Musical Festival.
Born at Trieste in 1832, he will be seventy-two on the thirteenth of next April, bearing his years well as people do who are kept young by love and pursuit of their art.
It was in the studio at
his home in Northumberland Place, a room made to work in, that he talked with
me for the benefit of the readers of The
Etude. The walls are lined with bookshelves holding his scores, many of
them closely annotated; above hang autograph portraits of Liszt, Saint-Saëns,
and many of their contemporaries, and of Mr. Randegger’s pupils who have made
their way in the musical world. In the center of the large, high-ceiled room is
the grand piano where it catches to the fullest the light of the hazy, London
day.
Conversation turned at
once to the oratorio style, on which Mr. Randegger holds broad views; and the
better to enforce his ideas at the outset he took up Mendelssohn’s
“Elijah” at the scene between the prophet and the widow at the moment
of her son’s resurrection from the dead.
“Too many sing oratorio piano and forte,”
he began, “without any trace of insight or knowledge of the meaning of the
words, when it demands, instead, every element of the lyric and dramatic.
“Take this scene, short, full of strong contrasts, capable of
such range of emotion in delivery. The widow at sight of the prophet exclaims
in rage, and grief-stricken: —
“‘What have I to do with thee, O man of God? Art thou come to
me to call my sins unto remembrance? To slay my son art thou come hither?’
Then, still unconvinced of his supernatural powers, but clutching at escape
from her misery, she supplicates:—
“‘Help me, man of God! my son is sick! And his sickness is so
sore that there is no breath left in him! I go mourning all the day long; 1 lie
down and weep at night. See mine affliction. Be thou the orphan’s helper!’
“Then, when the miracle has happened and her son is restored
to life, comes the passionate outburst of full conviction, to be delivered with
tremendous faith:—
“‘Now by this I know that thou art a man of God.’
“It is necessary to read, to study, and to ponder on the text
of such passages to get at their full sublimity and dramatic import. Without
a complete knowledge of the text, the ability to read it understandingly and
to carry to the hearer its full meaning, no singer can expect to sing with
convincing authority.
“I do not mean by that to exaggerate or to overdraw, but to
give the meaning completely as if the idea had spontaneously developed in our
own intelligence and under the conditions in which its delivery is placed.
Ability to read in this way is of preeminent necessity to the singer not alone
of oratorio, but of all musical works down to the song where all is in
miniature and to be approached as such.
“Those capable of only a colorless reading will convey simply the impression of reciting by rote; they make nothing individual or spontaneous in expression. There is no better test of the intellectual and emotional powers of a singer than the reading of some such sublime passage as that quoted from ‘Elijah.’ Here, too, comes into play to high advantage purity of diction, which carries to the hearer the value of the word in its true sense. Until a singer is capable of reading a passage with absolute finish it is wiser to leave the words unsung; for without a correct reading there can be no correct singing of it. To this very reason may be attributed the lack of success of so many who go upon the false lines that to deprive the text of dramatic value is to give it what some are pleased to call the ‘oratorio style.’
“As I just now asserted, in oratorio singing every element of the lyric and dramatic is required according to the situation.
For fifty years I have attended rehearsals and performances of the oratorios, score and pencil in hand, and have marked every phrase, every breath, every cadence of the great singers. Of details I have been a careful student, realizing the importance of gaining an exact knowledge of the immense study which these great singers have given to numbers that they have interpreted. A knowledge of these things is a firm foundation to build upon, and such a method of study pondered over, and redeveloped, as it were, by our own intelligence, gives us the best of insight and traditions.
“My whole life long, from my early years, observation has
been the keynote of my studies. I have learned from the great singers with whom
I have come in contact. A knowledge of the importance of observation has always
remained with me. I have not trusted to memory, but followed at the moment with
my markings every phrase as it was delivered. I have kept the scores with these
same markings for the last fifty years. Some of them I have given out in print,
but always with a preface which stated that I was merely a transcriber of the
thoughts of others. By this course of observation I have developed my own
knowledge; but I hold that there are no hard and fast rules in the singing of
oratorio. The character of the work must be understood. Scan the words
thoroughly; put your heart in them. Take, for instance, the passage in ‘Elijah’
between the prophet and the widow, full of dramatic power and contrasts. Yet
what would even this passage be without intelligent appreciation.
“In teaching I make my pupils read the words first, to see
their intelligence, and the power of their emotions; then I read them aloud
myself that we may to the fullest extent get at the meaning and import. Without
complete knowledge of the declamatory value of the text no singer can command
either an intelligent delivery or one that will impress his audience. But here
again extreme thought must be exercised. You must discriminate between the
small lyric and the large dramatic. You cannot put into a miniature that which
you would put into a big picture. It is in singing as it is in painting: You
may use the same colors, but you must be true to nature; the atmosphere is
quite different in painting indoor subjects and those under a broad, free sky.
“Guided by the teacher the good student will find out how
things should be done; but he will never appear before the public as a good
pupil. He will get all from the teacher that that teacher can convey, but he
will make that all his own. And he must make it so completely his own that it
will be spontaneous.
“Much has been said of relying upon the impulse of the
moment, but there should be no such thing as waiting for the impulse of the
moment to give us our inspiration. That inspiration may be heightened by the
conditions of the moment, but it must be developed and thought out beforehand.
“Tomaso Salvini, the great tragedian, once gave a forcible
illustration on this same point. It was during a dinner, and a noted tenor who
sat next us was speaking of the tremendous impression that Salvini had lately
made upon his audiences, carrying them with him by some unpremeditated piece of
acting done on the spur of the moment. Salvini smiled and said:—
“‘Have you been on the stage so long and yet tell me that I
do these things on the impulse of the moment? Nothing is left to the moment. I
may act no scene twice alike; but every detail, every move is thought out
before I do it, and is the outcome of sleepless nights.’
“Mme. Pistori, of all great actresses, was the most difficult
to act with, for the reason that she placed immense stress upon tone quality
and value. The end of every speech that preceded hers had to be delivered in a
quality of tone that led up to and blended with her own, and gave that which
followed it fullest effect. Over and again the luckless player who lacked
insight had to repeat his lines until she was satisfied. What a hint lies in
this to the singer!
“English is a good language to sing, no matter what is asserted to the contrary. Personally, I class English, next to Italian, as the best language for singing. But the worst of the matter is that so few speak it properly. Quite unfortunately the English do not study English diction, yet they should study it as they study spelling and grammar.
“It was once my fortune to listen to a series of lectures by
a distinguished English clergyman. When he was through I congratulated him not
on their contents, for of the intellectual standard we were assured as a matter
of course, but on the diction of their delivery. It was the purity of that
diction, absolutely musical, that had so charmed me. Untion (sic) in English as is the case
in other languages, and as to the pronouncing dictionaries, nobody consults
them. Avoid conversational English in singing; for that is English in its worst
form.
Keep your ears open; hear the beginning and end. of every syllable. People listen with their ears and mind, and not with their eyes.
“English is music, if you only know how to speak it. The Italian as a singing language I place, of course, first; the English next; French, pretty for small songs, and distinguished by elegance and refinement of diction, I place third; and German, a great language and forcible, I place fourth. But a tender song is not good sung in German; for songs of that type the English language is far more beautiful if properly spoken.
“America has good voices, good teachers, and good methods.
That the females have better singing voices than the males I attribute, not to
the inferior natural quality of the American male voice, but to the fact that
speaking nasally, while it injures the deeper voice of the man, has no effect
upon the higher voice of the woman. Yet I have numbered fine American men
singers among my pupils, the elder Whitney, Charles Adams, and Alberto Lawrence
being of that class.
“To begin right is with the singer an all important matter.
Many have fine voices, yet they do not develop as they should. One of the
great drawbacks to which this is due is neglect of a sound system of
respiration.
“Learn gradually, master one difficulty at a time.
“Do not overstrain.
“Develop the technical and the esthetic hand in hand.
Cultivate the mind as well as the voice.
“Use your powers of observation, and apply to your needs the
example of great artists to whom you listen.”
