James Francis Cooke

“ Most of the renowned recital singers of the last half century, including Schumann-Heink, Sembrich, Wüllner, the Henschels and others, were considerably past their youth when they made their greatest successes. A painting fresh from the artist's brush is raw, hard and uninteresting, till time, with its damp and dust, night and day, heat and cold, gives the enriching touch which adds so wonderfully to the softness and beauty of a picture. We singers are all living canvases. Time, and time only, can give us those shades and tints which reveal living experience. ”

“ Who can remain unmoved by the mystery and psychology of Hamlet, the keen suffering and misery of King Lear, the bitter hate and revenge of Othello, the sweet devotion of Romeo and Juliet, the majesty of Richard III, and the fairy beauty of A Midsummer Night's Dream? In this wonderful kaleidoscope of all the human passions one can find a world of inspiration. I am also intensely fond of Goethe, Heine, and Alfred de Musset. It gives me pleasure to compare them to the great masters of music. Shakespeare I compare to Brahms, Goethe to Bach and Beethoven, and Heine and Musset to Chopin and Liszt. ”

“ Surely we can not say that music is a monopoly of the few who have schooled their ears to enjoy outlandish disonances with delight. Music is perhaps the most universal of all the arts and with the gradual evolution of those who love it, a natural audience is provided for music of the more complicated sort. We learn to like our musical caviar with surprising rapidity. It was only yesterday that we were objecting to the delightful piano pieces of Debussy, who can generate an atmosphere with a single chord just as Murillo could inspire an emotion with a stroke of the brush. ”

“ It is not so much the performer's duty to play mere notes and dynamic marks, as it is for him to make an artistic estimate of the composer's intention and to feel that during the period of reproduction he simulates the natural psychological conditions which affected the composer during the actual process of composition. In this way the composition becomes a living entity—a tangible resurrection of the soul of the great Chopin. Without such penetrative genius a pianist is no more than a mere machine and with it he may develop into an artist of the highest type. ”

“ The singer who sings to the utmost every time is like the athlete who exhausts himself to the state of collapse. This is the only way in which I can account for what the critics term "the remarkable preservation" of my own voice. I have been singing for years in all parts of the musical world, growing richer in musical and human experience and yet my voice to-day feels as fresh and as dear as when I was in my teens. I have never strained, I have never continued rôles that proved unsuited to me, I have never sung when I have not been in good voice. ”

“ Each note in a composition should be polished until it is as perfect as a jewel—as perfect as an Indian diamond—those wonderful scintillating, ever-changing orbs of light. In a really great masterpiece each note has its place just as the stars, the jewels of heaven, have their places in their constellations. When a star moves it moves in an orbit that was created by nature. ”

“ An hour devoted to the minute needs of one pupil is not too much time to devote to so delicate a subject. An intelligent taskmaster will let his pupil demonstrate ten or fifteen minutes and during the same period of rest will discuss and awaken the pupil's interest from an intelligent point of view, that some degree of individuality may color even the drudgery of the classroom. A word of counsel from such a mistress of song as Lehmann or Sembrich is priceless, but the sums that pour into greedy pockets of vocal mechanics, not to say a harsher word, is a regretable proceeding. ”

“ One could never forget Leschetizky's touch, or that of many another contemporary pianist.
"No matter how wonderful the pianist's technic—that is, how rapidly and accurately he can play passages of extraordinary difficulty, it is quite worthless unless he possesses that control over his touch which enables him to interpret the composer's work with the right artistic shading. A fine technic without the requisite touch to liberate the performer's artistic intelligence and 'soul' is like a gorgeous chandelier without the lights. Until the lights are ignited all its beauty is obscured in darkness. ”

“ Art is so great, so all-consuming, that any one with a deep reverence for its beauties, its grandeur, can have but little time for the lower things of life. All that an artist calls for in his soul is to be permitted to work at his best in his art. Then, and then only, is he happiest. Because of my mother's opposition, and because I felt I was strong enough to resist the temptations which she knew I might encounter, I virtually eloped with a copy of Rigoletto under my arm and made my way for the Teatro Constanzi, the leading Opera House of Rome. ”

“ There is something mature in this new style of playing, something that resembles the playing of the other virtuosos she has heard. Who is the great European master who is working such great wonders for her? None other than a celebrated teacher who taught for years in America,—a master no better than dozens of others in America right now. Can the teachers in America be blamed if the parents and the pupils fail to make as serious and continued an effort here? Atmosphere,—bosh! Work, long, hard and unrelenting,—that is the salvation of the student who would become a virtuoso. ”

“ The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does what he does for one reason and one reason only—he can't help doing it. Just as the bird sings or the butterfly soars, because it is his natural characteristic, so the artist works.
Time and again a student will send me an urgent appeal to hear her, saying she is poor and wants my advice as to whether it is worth while to continue her studies. I invariably refuse such requests, saying that if the student could give up her work on my advice she had better give it up without it. One does not study for a goal. ”

“ I have lately come to perceive that the one thing which gives value to any piece of art, whether it be book, or picture, or music, is that subtle and evasive thing which is called personality. No amount of labor, of zest, even of accomplishment, can make up for the absence of this quality. It must be an almost instinctive thing, I believe. Of course, the mere presence of personality in a work of art is not sufficient, because the personality revealed may be lacking in charm; and charm, again, is an instinctive thing. No artist can set out to capture charm ”

“ The difference between a small room and one seating several hundred is far greater than the average auditor realizes. If the mere rattling of silver and china will eclipse this vocal effort in speech I leave to your imagination what must transpire when the singer is called upon to dominate with one thread of song the tremendous onslaught of an orchestra and to rise triumphant above it in a theater so large that the faithful gatherers in the gallery tell me we all look like pigmies, and half the time are barely heard. ”

“ The traveling salesman seems to thrive upon miles of railroad travel as do the crews of the trains, but the virtuoso, dragged from concert to concert by his showman, grows tired—oh, so tired, pale, wan, listless and indifferent! At the beginning of the season he is quite another person. The magnetism that has done so much to win him fame shines in his eyes and seems to emanate from his finger-tips, but the difference in his physical being at the end of the season is sickening. ”

“ Is it not better to learn the profession of opera singing in its one great school, and learn it so thoroughly that one can advance in the profession, just as one may advance in every other profession? The singer in the small opera company who, night after night, says to herself, "To-morrow it must be better," is the one who will be the Lilli Lehmann, the Galli-Curci, or the Schumann-Heink of to-morrow; not the important person who insists upon postponing her début until she can appear at the Metropolitan or at Covent Garden. ”

“ From the very start the singer, particularly the one who aspires to become an operatic singer, should endeavor to discard fear entirely. Think that if you fail in your efforts, thousands of singers have failed in a similar manner in their student days. Success in singing is at the end of a tall ladder, the rungs of which are repeated failures. We climb up over our failures to success. Learn to fear nothing, the public least of all. If the singer gives the audience the least suspicion that she is in fear of their verdict, the audience will detect it at once and the verdict will be bad. ”

“ Like a bedraggled, worn-out circus coming in from the wear and tear of a hard season, he crawls wearily back to New York with a cinematographic recollection of countless telegraph poles flying past the windows, audience after audience, sleeping cars, budding geniuses, the inevitable receptions with their equally inevitable chicken salad or lukewarm oysters, and the "sweet young things," who, like Heine's mythical tribe of Asra, must love or perish. ”

“ Every concert is adequately reviewed by able writers; and singers are continually on their mettle. It therefore follows that while there are opportunities for concert and oratorio singers, there is no room for the inefficient, the talentless, brainless aspirants who imagine that a great vocal career awaits them simply because they have a few good tones and a pleasing stage presence.
This is the age of the brain. In singing, the voice is only a detail. It is the mentality, the artistic feeling, the skill in interpretation that counts. ”

“ I do not believe [243] in working out technical exercises at a table or with a dumb piano. The brain must always work with the fingers, and without the sound of the piano the imagination must be enormously stretched to get anything more than the most senseless, toneless, soulless touch.
Technic with many is unmistakably a gift. I say this after having given the matter much careful thought. It is like the gift of speech. Some people are fluent talkers, precisely as some people can do more in two hours' technical work at the keyboard than others could accomplish with four. ”

“ Indeed, except for the long-haired caricature which the public accepts as the conventional virtuoso there is no "virtuoso type." Here is a business man, here an artist, here an engineer, here a jurist, here an actor, here a poet and here a freak, all of them distinguished performers. Perhaps the enthusiastic music-lover will resent the idea of a freak becoming famous as a pianist, but I have known no less than three men who could not possibly be otherwise described, but who have nevertheless made both fame and fortune as virtuosos. ”

“ There is only one way to sing, that is the right way, the way that is founded upon natural conditions. So much has been said in print about breathing, and placing the voice, and resonance, that anything new might seem redundant at this time. The whole thing in a nutshell is simply to make an effort to get the breath under such excellent control that it will obey the will so easily and fluently that the singer is almost unconscious of any means he may employ to this end. This can come only through long practice and careful observation. ”

“ I have always sought the individual in myself. When I have found him I play at my best. I try to do everything in my own individual way. I work for months to invent, contrive or design new fingerings—not so much for simplicity, but to enable me to manipulate the keys so that I may express the musical thought as it seems to me it ought to be expressed. See my hand, my fingers—the flesh as soft as that of a child, yet covering muscles of steel. ”

“ Technic in acting is more likely to suppress than to inspire. If acting is not inspired, it is nothing. I study the human emotions that would naturally underlie the scene in which I am placed—then I think what one would be most likely to do under such conditions. When the actual time of appearance on the stage arrives, I forget all about this and make myself the person of the rôle.
This is the Italian method rather than the French. There are, to my mind, no greater actors living than Duse and Zacchona, and they are both exponents of the natural method that I employ. ”