Besides, for the purpose of singing in his own tongue, an Anglo-Saxon
does not and should not want to acquire any other mode, as he is by
nature in possession of one of the _best_ modes of expression. There
is none intrinsically purer, none possessed of more vigor or power of
expression. There are those with greater softness combined with purity,
but lacking strength, as the Italian; and those with more soulfulness
combined with strength, but lacking purity, as the German. This
native element of purity allied to strength in the Anglo-Saxon, more
especially in the English-American, mode of expression is primarily
the cause of the high position in the artistic world of the American
singer. I ascribe the superiority of the "American" mode of expression
over the "English," when untrammelled as in song, in part to the
greater personal liberty, the greater want of conventionality, the vast
extent of our territory, and our almost constantly clear and unclouded
sky; all these being conditions that assist the free exercise of one's
natural endowments. To reach the best results in the art of singing,
the body as well as the soul must be, as far as possible, untrammelled
in any direction. While the idiomatic expression of the English
language here and abroad is the same, the social restraint and the
conservatism of the English as a nation act against the best outcome
of their gift of song, which demands for its best expression freedom
from conventionality or any other constraint.
Each nation is at its best in its own tongue. Our orators are equal to
any there are in the world. They do not speak according to the Italian,
the German, or any other school. If they did, they would utterly fail
and make themselves ridiculous. Why do people, then, want to "speak"
in this more expansive and soulful manner, called "singing," in these
foreign modes? I know the answer will be that singing and speaking are
things quite apart, having no affinity in their mode of production. I
shall show, as I have already partly shown, that they are of precisely
the _same order_, though different phases of that order; that they
cannot be separated; in so far as the elements which belong to speech
also belong to song, and those which belong to song also belong to
speech; but that they are used in an inverse order in the former as
well as in the latter.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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