David Bispham - Falstaff: Quand'ero paggio - 1902
From Great singers on the art of singing:
THE PROBLEM OF BREATH CONTROL
"The singer should breathe as easily and naturally as animals and people do when they sleep," he began. "But we are awake when we sing; correct breath control, therefore, must be carefully studied, and is the result of un-derstanding and experience. The best art conceals art. The aim is to pro-duce tones with the utmost ease and naturalness, though these must be gained with patient toil. A child patting the keyboard with his tiny hands, is unconsciously natural and at ease, though he does not know what he is do-ing; the great pianist is consciously at ease because he understands principles of ease and relaxation, and has acquired the necessary control through years of training.
"The singer acquires management of the breath through correct position and action of his anatomy. The body is held erect, chest active; the net-work of abdominal muscles constantly gain strength as they learn to push, push, push the air up through the lungs to the windpipe, then through the mouth and nasal cavities." Mr. Bispham illustrated each point in his own person as he described it.
"When the manner of taking breath, and the way to develop the di-aphragm and abdominal muscles, is understood, that is only a beginning. Management of the breath is an art in itself. The singer must know what to do with the breath once he has taken it in, or he may let it out in quarts the moment he opens his mouth. He has to learn how much he needs for each phrase. He learns how to conserve the breath; and while it is not de-sirable to hold one tone to attenuation, that the gallery may gasp with as-tonishment, as some singers do, yet it is well to learn to do all one conve-niently can with one inhalation, provided the phrase permits it.
"I give many vocalises and exercises, which I invent to fit the needs of each pupil. I do not require them to be written down, simply remembered.
At the next lesson quite a different set of exercises may be recommended. I also make exercises out of familiar tunes or themes from operatic airs. It will be found that technical material in the various manuals is often chosen from such sources, so why not use them in their original form. Thus while the student is studying technic he is also acquiring much beautiful material, which will be of great value to him later on.
"Repertoire is a wide subject and offers a fascinating study to the vocal student. He must have both imagination and sentiment, also the ability to portray, through movement and facial expression, the various moods and states of feeling indicated by words and music.
"In taking up a new role, I read the story to get at the kernel or plot, and see what it means. The composer first saw the words of a poem or li-bretto, and these suggested to him suitable music. So the singer begins his work by carefully reading the words.
"I then have the music of the whole work played for me on the piano, so as to discover its trend and meaning its content. If the composer is available I ask him to do this. I next begin to study my own part in detail, not only the important sections but the little bits, which seem so small, but are often so difficult to remember."
Under this head the singer spoke at length of the difficulty some singers encounter when they endeavor to portray character, or differentiate emo-tions. There is endless scope in this line, to exercise intelligence and imag-ination.
"Some singers," continued the artist, "seem incapable of characterizing a role or song. They can do what I call 'flat work', but cannot individualize a role. A singer may have a beautiful voice yet not be temperamental; he may have no gift for acting, nor be able to do character work.
"At the present moment I am preparing several new roles, three of them are of old men. It rests with me to externalize these three in such a way that they shall all be different, yet consistent with the characters as I un-derstand them. Each make-up must be distinctive, and my work is to por-tray the parts as I see and feel them. I must get into the skin of each char-acter, so to say, then act as I conceive that particular person would behave under like circumstances. Many singers cannot act, and most actors cannot sing. When the two are combined we have a singing actor, or an actor-singer. Once there was a popular belief that it was not necessary for the singer to know much about acting if he only had a voice and could sing. The present is changing all that. Many of us realize how very much study is required to perfect this side of our art.
"In this connection I am reminded of my London debut. I was to make it with the Royal English Opera Company. They heard me three times be-fore deciding to take me on. With this formality over, rehearsals began. I soon found that my ideas of how my role an important one was to be acted, did not always coincide with the views of the stage director, and there were ructions. The manager saw how things were going, and advised me to accept seemingly the ideas of the stage director during rehearsals, but to study acting with the highest authorities and then work out the con-ception after my own ideas. Accordingly, I spent an hour daily, before the morning rehearsal, with one of the finest actors of comedy to be found in London. Later in the day, after rehearsal, I spent another hour with a great tragic actor. Thus I worked in both lines, as my part was a mixture of the tragic and the comic. I put in several weeks of very hard work in this way, and felt I had gained greatly. Of course this was entirely on the histrionic side, but it gives an idea of the preparation one needs.
"When the day of the dress rehearsal arrived, I appeared on the scene in full regalia, clean shaven (I had been wearing a beard until then), and per-formed my role as I had conceived it, regardless of the peculiar ideas of the stage director. At the first performance I made a hit, and a little later was engaged for grand opera at Covent Garden, where I remained for ten years.
"While I believe in understanding one's anatomy sufficiently for proper tone production, and all that goes with it, there are many peculiar and un-necessary fads and tricks resorted to by those who call themselves teachers of singing. The more fantastic the theories inculcated by these people, the more the unwary students seem to believe in them. People like to be de-luded, you know. But I am not able to gratify their desires in this direc-tion; for I can't lie about music!
"I was present at a vocal lesson given by one of these so-called instruc-tors. 'You must sing in such a way that the tone will seem to come out of the back of your head', he told the pupil, and he waved his arms about his head as though he were drawing the tone out visibly. Another pupil was placed flat on his back, then told to breathe as though he were asleep, and then had to sing in that position. Another teacher I know of makes pupils eject spit-balls of tissue paper at the ceiling, to learn the alleged proper con-trol of the breath. What criminal nonsense this is!
"As I have said, I believe in knowing what is necessary about anatomy, but not in too great measure. A new book will soon be issued, I am told,which actually dissects the human body, showing every bone and muscle in any way connected with breath or voice. All this may be of interest as a matter of research, but must one go into such minutiæ in order to teach singing? I think the answer must ever be in the negative. You might as well talk to a gold-fish in a bowl and say: 'If you desire to proceed lat-erally to the right, kindly oscillate gently your sinister dorsal fin, and you will achieve the desired result.' Oh, Art, what sins are committed in thy name!"
It is often affirmed that an artist finds experience the best teacher. It must be equally true that the artist-teacher of wide experience in both perfor-mance and instruction, should be a safe guide, just because of this varied experience.
I was impressed with this fact when I recently had the privilege of vis-iting Mr. Bispham's studio during lesson hours, and listening to his in-struction. A most interesting sanctum is this studio, filled as it is with sou-venirs and pictures of the artist's long career on the operatic stage. Here hangs a drawing in color of Bispham as Telramund, in shining chain ar-mor; there a life-size portrait as "Beethoven," and again as himself. In the midst of all is the master, seated at a table. In front of him, at the piano, stands the student. It is an English song she is at work on, for Mr. Bispham thoroughly believes in mastering English as well as other languages.
How alert he is as he sits there; how keen of eye and ear. Not the slight-est fault escapes him. He often sings the phrase himself, then calls for its repetition.
"Sing that passage again; there is a tone in it that is not pleasant-not well-sounding; make it beautiful!" "Careful of your consonants there, they are not distinct; let them be clearer, but don't make them over-distinct." "Don't scoop up the ends of the phrases; make the tones this way"; and he illustrates repeatedly. "Sing this phrase in one breath if you can, if not, breathe here" indicating the place.
The student now takes up an Italian aria. Of course the master teacher has no need of printed score; he knows the arias by heart. He merely jots down a few remarks on a slip of paper, to be referred to later.
The aria goes quite well. At its close the singer goes to her seat and an-other takes her place. A voice of rich, warm timbre. More English-and it must be most exact, to suit Mr. Bispham's fastidious ear.
"Make the word fire in one syllable, not two. Do not open the mouth quite so wide on the word desire, for, by doing so you lose the balance and the tone is not so good."
Another student with a fine tenor was asked to vocalize for a num-ber of minutes. He sang ascending and descending tone-figures, sometimes doing them in one breath, at others taking a fresh breath at top. Some of the syllables used were: "la," "ma," "may," and "mi." He then sang single tones, swelling and diminishing each. It was found that passing from forte to piano was much more difficult than swelling from soft to loud.
The aria "Be not afraid" was now taken up; it was pronounced one of the most difficult solos ever written, and a very valuable composition for vocal training.
"You sing that phrase too loud," cautioned the instructor. "This is not a human being who is speaking, rather it is a heavenly voice. That high note of the phrase should be made softer, more ethereal. Make it a young tone put the quality of Spring into it. The whole thing should be more spiritual or spiritualized. Now go through it again from beginning to end."
When this was finished a halt was called; there had been enough work done for that day. Soon the class was dismissed. The young singers some if not all of them known upon the concert stage-filed out. One young woman remained; she was to have a drama lesson. The master of singing showed himself equally efficient as master of English diction for the spo-ken drama.
And here, for a time, we must leave him at his work.
If we were asked to name one of the best known and best loved of American singers, the choice would surely fall on David Bispham. This artist, through his vocal, linguistic and histrionic gifts, his serious aims and high ideals, has endeared himself to musicians and music lovers alike. We are all proud of him as an American, and take a sort of personal pride in his achievements.
Mr. Bispham has been before the public as actor-singer for many years.
There is no other artist in the English-speaking world who has had greater experience in all kinds of vocal work than this "Quaker Singer," as he calls himself, for he comes from Philadelphia, and is of old English, Quaker, Colonial stock. His professional debut was made in London, in 1891, with the Royal English Opera Company, as the Duc de Longueville in the beau-tiful opera comique, The Basoche, by Messager. The following year he ap-peared in Wagnerian music drama at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, performing the part of Kurwenal, in Tristan and Isolde, without rehearsal. His adaptability to music in English, French, Italian and German caused him to be at once accepted as a member of that distinguished company.
In 1896, Mr. Bispham joined the forces of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, and remained there for a number of years, singing each season alternately on both sides of the ocean. Of recent years he has devoted most of his time to concerts, though he is one of the founders and officers of the Society of American Singers, with which artistic body he frequently appears in the classic operas of Mozart, Pergolesi, Donizetti and others.
My first conference with Mr. Bispham was held in his New York stu-dio. Here, in this artistic retreat where absolute quiet reigns, though located in the heart of the great city's busy life, the noted singer teaches and works out his programs and various characterizations.
