, and would have learned that
the finest poems of our greatest poets may be enhanced and even
transcended when translated into musical language." It is humiliating
to be obliged to confess that good schools of singing, the absence of
which Vogl deplored, are still lamentably rare, although he himself,
by his example, did much to develop the correct method. We have just
seen how Wagner obtained valuable hints from Schroeder-Devrient.
Similarly, we find that Schubert learned from his friend Vogl, who
alone at first could sing his songs properly, and by showing that they
_could_ be sung encouraged Schubert in developing his original style.
It seems to me that these facts ought to be extremely gratifying and
encouraging to students of vocal music, because they refute the notion
that vocalists can only be interpretative and not creative, and their
fame and influence, therefore, merely ephemeral. On the contrary, they
can, like Vogl and Schroeder-Devrient, even aspire to guide composers
and help to mark out new paths in art: which surely, ought to be more
gratifying to their pride than the cheap applause which the sopranists
and prima donnas of the _bel canto_ period used to receive for the
meaningless colorature arias which they compelled the enslaved
composers to write, or manufactured for themselves.
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