May 27, 1988 The New Federalist Page 7American AlmanacThe
Singer's Birthday Anniversary:Nellie Melba and Scientific Singingby
Carol RuckertNellie Melba, early in her career.May 19 is the 127th
birthday of one of the greatest opera singers of all time, Nellie
Melba. Most younger Americans will not recognize her name, but many
older citizens remember well this fabulous soprano from the turn of
the century. Melba toast and peach Melba were named for her, as
were many little girls born between 1880 and 1910.
The literature on her exceeds that on any other singer, except
Enrico Caruso and Jenny Lind. Melba sang at a time when the status
of opera, 100 years ago, was so great that no country, however
small, was without it in some form or another. In Australia, the
country of Melba's birth, the miners in the gold fields of Victoria
and the cane-cutters in Northern Queensland enthusiastically
attended operas staged in church halls, the Mechanics Institute, or
on billiard tables pushed together to make a stage in the local pub
or hotel.
Melba was fortunate to have been born at a time when some of the
greatest opera composers of history, such as Verdi, were composing
and personally casting the roles and directing their operas. She
made her first appearance at La Scala on March 15, 1893. During
this period she met Verdi, and worked directly with him on
productions of Rigoletto, Otello, and Aida.
Leoncavallo was another composer with whom she was associated,
and she spent long hours with him working through his new opera,
the famous I Pagliacci.
In her writings, she describes spending many hours with Puccini,
who "thoroughly explained his ideas of the music; we rehearsed it
bit by bit; and my score is full of his pencil markings and
annotations."Bel Canto: Beautiful SingingFor almost 40 years, she
filled opera halls with her beautiful voice, a voice that was as
flexible, light, and powerful at retirement as it was when she
began her career. It astonishes most people today to learn that for
Melba, and other bel canto singers, no microphone was necessary to
reach clearly each and every person in the audience with the beauty
and power of the voice.
The bel canto method of voice training is a specifically
scientific approach to singing. In an article recently published in
the New Federalist's American Almanac, "The Rudiments of Tuning and
Registration," Lyndon LaRouche, in describing bel canto, writes:
"The simplest example of this is the way in which the soprano voice
naturally sings in a different quality of voice, in singing the F
of the well-tempered system (at C = 256), as opposed to singing the
next half-tone, the F-sharp. This register shift of the soprano on
the well-tempered F-sharp is determined by the physiology of the
human soprano voice. Singing differently will lead to damaging the
singing voice. Thus, bel canto represents another case of man's
discovery of natural laws, rather than some artificial custom."
Melba's voice was a living example of the validity of this
scientific approach. In her characteristically independent fashion,
Melba applied the principle of register shifts rigorously with her
own voice, shifting at the F-sharp into the middle register. As
LaRouche says, bel canto is not something which is arbitrary, but
is the discovery and use of the natural qualities of the human
voice's potential for singing. Melba describes in her own writings
her discovery of this method. She refers to a period when she was
still training in Australia: a growth began to develop on her vocal
chords, and she knew then that if she didn't change the way she was
singing and placing her voice, she would destroy it. She then
determined to reject "conventional teaching" and instead to
"observe Nature's laws." During training in Paris with Mathilde
Marchesi, who had trained under the elder Garcia of Italy, she
learned how to place the registers.Melba and her harpist, Signorina
Sassoli.Melba and her voice teacher, Madame Blanche Marchesi
(left), in 1887.Question of RegistrationIn her article, "The Care
of the Voice," Melba writes, "I especially advise young singers
above all things to look after the proper posing of the voice. When
I first went to Marchesi, in Paris, without a single vocal lesson I
sang as well as I do today, but for one break in my voice. Marchesi
corrected that at once, and placed the registers properly. If this
had not been done I should have totally lost my voice. Singers will
know of themselves where the break lies between their registers,
and if the teacher tries to force the voice over the break there is
sure to be something wrong. The probable result will be permanent
ruin of the vocal organs. Many a voice is thus ruined in the first
stages of tuition. It is quite possible to sing as an artist and
yet be an exception to the ordinary rule as to the place where the
registers change. A natural peculiarity in this respect should not
be disregarded, I carry my middle register to F-sharp, half a tone
beyond the prescribed limit. If I were a teacher and advocated this
in any special case, I should have the whole fraternity abusing me.
But I know my own voice."
Melba sang for 38 years, retiring from public singing at the age
of 65 after giving her farewell performance at London's Covent
Garden on June 8, 1926. The recordings made of her at the time of
her retirement still demonstrate a voice of seemingly effortless
power and beauty.
A reading of The Melba Method for voice training and singing
demonstrates wisdom which today's singers would find very helpful.
She writes in The Melba Method that a singer should "sing easily,
for it is one of the paradoxes of song that easy singing is good
singing, and difficult singing is bad singing."Sing Happily and
NaturallyExpanding on this idea,
When the voice is badly used you are making complicated
movements of the throat muscles, and many difficulties of your own
making have to be surmounted before the voice can be produced out
at all. Nature does not ask for that. She asks you to sing, not
"try" to sing. To sing happily like the birds, as naturally as you
speak.
She reminds singers that they are communicating a message to the
listeners:
Think of them. Speak to them, telling them the story contained
in the song or aria you are singing. If the singer really thinks of
what she has to say, and of the person to whom she is saying it,
she will have very little time in which to think of herself, or of
whether she can hit this or that note! . . .
When anyone asks you to give them something, there are three
courses to be taken; you can refuse to give it and clutch it to
yourself; you can fling it at the other with force and rudeness;
you can give it graciously and willingly. In these three ways may
the voice be used. It may be held in, it may be forced out, it may
be given to the audience easily and graciously. Which do you do,
and which would you prefer to do? Sing for love, not merely because
you have a voice which someone says will make your fortune. Always
treat the words and music with respect, for they are not yours. You
are merely the vehicle for presenting them to the audience.Respect
the ComposerMelba was insistent that the singer communicate what
the composer intended in the music. She tells the singer to "show
respect to the composer down to the last double dotted
demi-semiquaver; by paying attention to, and carrying out, all
marks of expression; by studying the shape of each phrase and by
handling your voice so as to bring out that shape; and by studying
the relation of each phrase to the whole."
Melba studied very closely with many of the great composers of
opera. In her writings she discusses the suitability of the voices
of various singers to the roles of various characters, and how they
have to be cast accordingly. She states in her "Advice on the Art
of Singing":
When possible, I always study my role with the composer. . . .
If I cannot reach the composer, I study what the music says to me
of the meaning of the libretto. I do not go to the scene of the
story, study the class of people of which the characters belong, or
even read of it from books. I try to get the composer's meaning,
rather than to make a conception of my own of what the part ought
to be. I work this out in my own mind, not from observation of
scene or people.
In his article cited above, LaRouche, describing the purpose of
all classical art to be the perfection of man's use of natural
beauty, writes,
All classical art, as a whole, and in each of the plastic and
non-plastic aspects of art as a whole, has a directed character.
The direction, is the perfection of man's use of natural beauty.
The result of progress is, that the greater perfection so achieved
becomes a higher standard for natural beauty's expression as art.
The discoveries which have established this higher standard persist
as artistic beauty for generations to come; the enjoyment of such
works is the act of reliving the process of discovery, and is thus
of the character of durable artistic beauty on that account. At the
same time, what is proven to have been a valid discovery in the
production of artistic beauty, becomes a principle of natural
beauty thereafter.
Melba, in The Melba Method, describes the eternal task of
songthat it can never be completed in a lifetime.
That is the beauty and fascination of the art. Once you begin to
phrase finely, you will feel more joy in the beautiful finish of a
beautiful phrase than that caused by the loudest applause of an
immense audience. The latter excites for a moment; the former
endures forever.
Musical EducationMelba was a great proponent of using one's
mind. She was constantly reprimanding the singer to use her mind:
"Think the note, and allow it to come." She said that studying the
song before actually singing it "should extend over several hours
daily. First of all, the real meaning of the words must be
understood and, if it is a foreign language which you do not speak,
much time must be spent in translating the words so you know their
meaning. The accompaniment must also be studied, and every phrase
of the voice part played over time and again before attempting to
sing it."
She recommends for children that they be taken to hear great
singers, since, although a great deal will be forgotten, "the
better part will be unconsciously stowed away in the subconscious
mind, to burst forth later in beautiful song through no different
process than that by which the little birds stow away the song of
the older birds." She stresses the importance of a thorough musical
education and notes that her parents insisted that she study piano,
organ, and harmonic composition. Melba recommends music of the
older Italian composers, who "demand first of all the dulcet tones
and limpid fluency, for newer singers." She herself was trained on
the pianoforte, violin, organ, and harp. She could play any score
through and learned operas by herself so that she could form her
own interpretation.
The late Assistant Manager of the Metropolitan Opera, Francis
Robinson, wrote in the American edition of Herthington's biography
Melba:
The quality of musical tone cannot adequately be described. It
has been called silvery, but what does that signify? There is one
quality which it had and which may be comprehended even by those
who did not hear her; it had splendor. The tones glowed with a
star-like brilliance. They flamed with a white flame. There is one
recording which bears all this out, a record made three years
before her first commercial recording. . . . These priceless
cylinders [were] buried for a generation, until a letter from
Geraldine Farrar made them available to William H. Seltsam of the
International Record Collector's Club. . . .
With infinite patience Mr. Seltsam transferred them to discs.
The ungodly wheeze and thump of Mapleson's prehistoric machine are
still there, but so are Melba's octave jumps, leaping through the
murk and fog like a shower of meteors in a winter sky. There is a
roar of applause at the end, and more than ever you know why the
toast, the rich dessert, a cigar, a lipstick, theaters in Dallas,
Texas and a number of other cities, and quite a few little girls
born around 1910, were named Melba. It is the thrill, the lump in
the throat, that a champion and only a champion, can give you.