Style, in short, is one more of the typical characteristics of the good art-song. The style of a song is unique. No two songs, thoroughly well sung, have exactly the same style. The style is developed out of the music itself; it is implied in the notes as they rest on the printed page; it has awaited the discerning eye of the interpretive artist. And so when a song has been thoroughly understood and ‘lived in’ by the singer, it will always have a personality or style of its own which will hover above the song and embrace every note. An art-song which on hearing does not reveal a unique style is either a bad song or a good song badly sung. [Illustration: Great Singers of the Past. Top: Luigi Lablache and Giovanni Battista Rubini Bottom: Maria Malibran and Angelica Catelani] This type of art, the most delicate, the most personal, the most self-contained, is laid in bewildering abundance at our feet. And some fairly general acquaintance with modern song literature is a necessity for the singer or the concert-goer. A singer can no more understand the songs she sings without at the same time being familiar with others than a student can understand the history of his own country without knowing that of foreign lands. For such a singer to appear in public as an interpreter is simply an insolence. If he ‘specializes’ in modern French songs, the more necessity for him to know old German. You can never appreciate any quality without knowing something of its opposite. And the same rule applies to audiences. The first song one hears in life probably goes unnoticed. The second gives the attention something on which to base a comparison. And every new acquisition thereafter increases the opportunity for comparison--increases the hearer’s pleasure. How much more you have learned about Debussy when you have heard a cycle of Moussorgsky! And if a comparison is necessary between art-songs of one and another lineage, how much more necessary it is of art-songs and folk-songs. It is important for singer and audience to know various types of art-songs. It is much more important to know art-songs and folk-songs. When he does, all that is peculiar to the art-song becomes set off in relief, and all that is common property becomes enhanced in value. A knowledge of folk-songs is a knowledge of humanity in its simplest terms. With it one can ‘walk with kings nor lose the common touch.’ CHAPTER V FOLK-SONGS The nature and value of folk-songs--Folk-songs of the British Isles--Folk-song in the Latin lands--German and Scandinavian folk-song--Hungarian folk-song--Folk-songs of the Slavic countries; folk-song in America. I