A most happy illustration this, I
repeat, for it indicates exactly what vocal teachers of the old school
are doing. They choose the easiest of the vowels and the easiest
melodic intervals, and make the pupils exercise on those constantly,
ignoring the more difficult ones; and the consequence is, that when,
subsequently, the pupils are confronted with difficult intervals in a
dramatic role, they sing them badly and make the ludicrous protest
that the composer "doesn't know how to write for the voice;" and when
they come across difficult vowels they either change them into easier
ones, and thus make the text unintelligible, or else they emit a crude
tone because they have never learned to sing a sonorous U, I, or E
(Latin).
The German principle, on the other hand, is that all vowels (and the
German language has a greater number of them than the Italian) must be
cultivated equally, the difficult ones all the more because they are
difficult. Herr Hey has found in practice that not only can the vowels
which at first sound dull and hollow, like U, be made as sonorous as A
(Ah), but that, by practising on U, the A itself is rendered more
sonorous than it can ever become by exclusive practice on it alone.
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