MICHAEL FEND
‘German Bel Canto’: Nineteenth-Century German Singing Manuals in a Political Context
A Conservatoire is the only educational institution which offers students a sense of being
intellectually, emotionally and aurally immersed in their subject. In a Conservatoire
music is everywhere. Many educationalists have found this fervent activity clearly too
much of a good thing, which is why Conservatoires have always been located in separate
buildings, away from the quieter practitioners of tertiary education in the Humanities and
Sciences. Since their foundation in eighteenth-century Neapolitan and Venetian
orphanages, the communal experience of musically vibrating Conservatoires also allowed
teachers and students to escape from their often deprived background. The
Conservatoires were the starting point for music as a way of life. With growing financial
support, which conservatoires received from state governments in nineteenth-century
Europe, composers and, later on, music historians adopted musicians’ life aspirations in
the belief that their art, as much, if not more than, the other arts enjoyed the status of
relative aesthetic autonomy that could justify a purely formal discourse about music
among a mostly bourgeois public.
In the twentieth century, criticism of the elitism of classical music culture and the
formalist discourse associated with it came, at least at first, from Marxist circles troubled
by music’s role in social exploitation. After the declared end of all ideologies in the
1990s, another downside of music culture has come to the fore: its nineteenth-century
role in fomenting polarities between European nations, a downright hatred which
eventually led to the two world wars and countless other atrocities. At the beginning of
the twenty-first century we might be inclined to think that nationalism is no longer an
issue, at least in the European Union of twenty-seven member States, but every day
newspaper reports show nationalism’s malevolent face from around the globe. The
extending rows of bookshelves in university libraries dedicated to nationalism reveal its
undiminished importance to us and, for example, RILM lists no fewer than forty-two
publications on the keyword “nationalism” in music for 2009 alone. “Nationalism” has,
in other words, become a crucial issue for scholars working in the intellectual and
political history of music.
There is a simple way to gauge a wider change in scholarly approach: while Die Musik in
Geschichte und Gegenwart lacks a specific entry in its two issues from the 1950s and
90s, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians discussed the term for the first
time in its 2001 edition. Based on a considerable body of mostly Anglo-Saxon research
from the 1980s and 90s, Richard Taruskin’s article unmasked the parlance of music’s
supposedly universal character as itself hiding a “nationalist agenda”.1 On a
terminological level Taruskin took issue, in particular, with The Harvard Dictionary of
Music (1969) whose editor, Willi Apel, although himself a victim of racial expulsion
from fascist Germany in 1936, is quoted as writing that, “the nationalist movement [in
1
I would like to thank Roger Parker for editing this text. All remaining mistakes are my own. R. Taruskin,
“Nationalism”, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell (London,
2001), XVII, 689.
1
music] is practically nonexistent” in Germany, France or Italy, but that it was “principally
embraced by the ‘peripheral’ European nations”, such as Bohemia, Norway, Russia,
Spain, Hungary and Poland. Apel is further cited as saying that nationalism exhibited a
“contradiction of what was previously considered one of the chief prerequisites of music,
i.e. its universal or international character, which meant that the works of the great
masters appealed equally to any audience”.2 Apel’s argument was based on two
dichotomies: he distinguished between an earlier and a later concept of music, and
detected a compositional practice in north-western Europe at variance with a practice in
some other European countries. Taruskin considered Apel’s view ideologically loaded in
so far as it both “demotes” later nineteenth-century music created outside the FrancoItalian-German triangle and neglects the nationalist attitudes with which especially
German authors propagated their own music as universally valuable.3
With a focus on people’s social and ethical attitudes in Germany, Taruskin himself
distinguished between an earlier, “liberal or inclusive”, and a later, “racialist, exclusive”,
nationalism identifying a turning point in a notorious and ignominious document
published in 1850. For him, “liberal” nationalism was exemplified in the public
recognition of Mendelssohn when he was appointed chief conductor of the Leipzig
Gewandhaus orchestra and director of the city’s Conservatory, as well as director of the
Berlin Cathedral Choir in the 1830s and 40s; whereas nationalist ideology took a
pernicious turn with Wagner’s propagation of a “racialist, exclusive” nationalism in his
1850 article Das Judenthum in der Musik. Taruskin considered this pamphlet “the most
vivid symptom to be found in musical writings of a change in the nature of nationalism
that all modern historians now recognise as a major crux in the history of modern
Europe”.4 Although Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer were Germans, Wagner wanted to
highlight their racial difference and cast doubt on their belonging to the German nation,
although in 1850 Germany was not even a nation state.
Nationalism in nineteenth-century Europe was motivated by politically active ethnic
groups who felt unified by language, religion and cultural tradition, but who did not
usually feel represented by their rulers. Depending on the degree of political realisation, a
nationalist ideology was a boost to the existing system, as in the case of Britain since the
eighteenth century,5 or a force for rebellion against foreign rulers, as in the case of Italy
before its unification in 1861. The ways in which different subgroups of a nation were
W. Apel, “Nationalism”, Harvard Dictionary of Music (London, 1970), 564f., quoted in Taruskin,
“Nationalism”, (as above), 689. Apel’s entry was rewritten in The Harvard Dictionary of Music, ed. Don
Randel (Cambridge Mass., 1986), 527.
3
Taruskin, “Nationalism”, (as above), 689. During the Second World War Alfred Einstein, who had left
fascist Germany in 1933, wrote: “Nationalism is the worst enemy of liberty, independence, truth in the arts
- and in the sciences.” A. Einstein, “Krieg, Musik, Nationalismus, und Toleranz”, Nationale und universale
Musik (Zürich, 1958), 256.
4
Taruskin, “Nationalism”, (as above), 694.
5
Herder employed the term “nationalism” in English spelling when discussing its ambivalent political
effect in: J. G. Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, Werke, ed. W.
Dobbek (Berlin and Weimar, 1969), II, 309. The unresolved tension between his advocacy of national
relativism in cultural products and his developmental scheme of history with its inherent hierarchies is
discussed in D. Gramit, Cultivating Music. The Aspirations, Interests, and Limits of German Musical
Culture, 1770-1848 (Berkeley, 2002), 41-43.
2
2
included or excluded by the ethnically dominant groups (Jews among Germans, Catholics
among the British or Sicilians among the Italians) reveal the cultural practice of
nationalism. The distinction made in saying that “nationality is a condition, nationalism is
an attitude” requires interpretation,6 as is clear from Wagner’s Judenthum article and its
impact on fascists that “nationality” was and is not treated as an unassailable possession.
Nationality does not necessarily create a safe haven for its members; instead membership
is open to conflict. It is a “condition” which can be annulled by nationalist “attitudes”.
That is why nationalism is potentially inherent in a myriad of activities involving many
decisions of in- or exclusion, wherever their authors want to add symbolic value to those
activities, with the intention of generating a feeling of solidarity among participants.
This complex of activities, ideas and sentiments was communicated through written or
spoken language or another symbolic system, such as music. Research into music’s role
in fostering nationalist sentiment during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has
naturally favoured vocal music and has focused on many aspects of opera, such as the
attitudes of composers, librettists, critics and the audience at large. What has been less
scrutinised are the discussion and practice of singing during this period. In which ways
did the opera repertoire and its reception, the singing manuals and their terminology,
change? Crudely speaking, in Germany a clear dominance of Italian in all these areas
gave way to a German hegemony. The dynamics of an exclusory nationalism in the
discussion of Italian singing culture in nineteenth-century Germany are the subject of this
article.
There is consensus among music historians that in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries Italian opera and vocal teaching were prevalent across Europe, with the
exception of France. Singers, too, were mostly Italian and their schooling took place in
Italy with very few teachers publishing an account of their methods. Depending on the
national perspective, opera was an exported or imported art form. Assertions by German
and French writers about the superiority of their music were at first eccentric but became
numerous after the middle of the eighteenth century.7 Mozart’s letter of 1785, in which he
complained about German singers in Vienna being forced to “remain at the Italian
theatre” and in which he ironically enthused about “Germany’s everlasting shame if we
Germans seriously started to think like Germans - to act like Germans – to speak German
– and even to sing in German”,8 gives a snapshot of the practical and institutional
constraints for the various nationalities of singers in the Habsburg capital under Joseph II.
Taruskin, “Nationalism”, (as above), 689.
S. Leopold, “Die italienische Hofoper als internationales System”, in: C. Dahlhaus (Ed.), Die Musik des
18. Jahrhunderts (Laaber, 1985), 147-154; Italian Opera in Central Europe 1614-1780. Vol. I: Institutions
and Ceremonies, ed. M. Bucciarelli, N. Dubowy, R. Strohm (Berlin, 2006), Vol 2: Italianità: Image and
Practice, ed. C. Herr, H. Seifert, A. Sommer-Mathis, R. Strohm (Berlin, 2008), Vol. 3: Opera Subjects and
European Relationships, ed. N. Dubowy, C. Herr, A. Żórawska-Witkowska (Berlin, 2007); two of the
early eulogists of German and French music respectively were: J. F. Reimmann, Versuch einer Einleitung
in die historiam litteratiam derer Teutschen (Halle, 1709), 276, quoted in: A. Gerhard (ed.),
Musikwissenschaft – eine verspätete Disziplin? Die akademische Musikforschung zwischen
Fortschrittsglauben und Modernitätsverweigerung (Stuttgart, 2000), 10; J. L. Le Cerf de la Viéville,
Comparaison de la musique italienne et de la musique françoise (Brussels, 1704-1706).
8
W. A. Mozart, A Life in Letters, ed. C. Eisen, transl. S. Spencer (London, 2006), 505.
6
7
3
But Mozart’s view may not have been representative of the subsequent repertoire and
performing conditions, as the “percentage of German composers [writing Italian operas]
markedly decreased in the 1790s”.9
In 1813, at the height of the Napoleonic wars, which elicited a first wave of Germanic
nationalist fervour, Carl Maria von Weber vented his own resentment against courtprivileged Italian opera by sketching a satirical, allegorical representation of a prima
donna from opera seria in his fragmentary novel Tonkünstlers Leben. The prima donna is
characterised as “a tall, skinny, transparent figure, a face with no features to speak of and
an immutable expression which, however, exudes intense sweetness. She is wearing a
thin, colourless dress with a train sprinkled with small glittering stones which catch the
audience’s eyes”. Her recitative, arioso and stretta consist exclusively of phrases such as
“Oh Dio … addio”, “non pianger mio bene”, “per te morir io voglio”, “sorte amara”.10
Weber’s parodic imagery was not confined to Italian opera. French and even German
opera received similar treatment. After his appointment as Hofkapellmeister in Dresden
in 1817 Weber fought for the improvement of its German activities, to compete with the
court’s Italian opera under Francesco Morlacchi. The association of the court and nobility
with Italian opera, epitomised in Spontini’s appointment at the royal theatre in Berlin in
1820, fuelled existing political tensions because his engagement alienated the literary
German class from the rising star of Rossini, whose European triumph ran counter to
their musical and political aspirations.
Weber’s own position and ideology remained ambiguous. On the one hand he felt
undermined by Morlacchi, on the other hand he wrote a number of arias and cantatas in
Italian. In his opera criticism Weber adopted some of the topoi against Italian opera
which German writers continued to repeat through the nineteenth and much of the
twentieth century, such as his accusation that Rossini’s operas were of a “purely sensual,
unspiritual nature”.11 Still, recent scholarship on Weber has modified the image of him as
a German nationalist composer in the wake of his success with Der Freischütz,
compositionally inspired by opéra comique and first performed for a middle-class
audience at the Schauspielhaus in Berlin in 1821. Weber, whose Dresden repertoire
included many opéras-comiques and who would have included Italian operas by Spontini
and Mozart, had they not been the prerogative of the court theatre, struck a broad-minded
K. Pietschmann, “Zwischen Tradition, Anpassung und Innovation. Italienische Opern für deutsche Höfe
im frühen 19. Jahrhundert”, in: S. Werr and D. Brandenburg (eds.), Das Bild der italienischen Oper in
Deutschland (Forum Musiktheater, Bd. 1) (Münster, 2004), 109.
10
G. Jaiser, Carl Maria von Weber als Schriftsteller. Mit einer… quellenkritischen Neuausgabe des
Romanfragments ‘Tonkünstlers Leben’ (Mainz, 2001); quoted in: S. Döhring, “Tonkünstlers Leben. Das
Bild der italienischen Oper bei Carl Maria von Weber”, Das Bild der italienischen Oper in Deutschland,
ed. S. Werr, D. Brandenburg (Münster, 2004), 98f.
11
An invariant dichotomy in the estimation of German and non-German music stretching from Forkel to
Adorno is exposed in B. Sponheuer, “Reconstructing Ideal Types of the ‘German’ in Music”, Music and
German National Identity, ed. C. Applegate and P. Potter (Chicago, 2002), 36-38; this essay broadens the
author’s extensive documentation of the same problem in: B. Sponheuer, Musik als Kunst und Nicht-Kunst.
Untersuchungen zur Dichotomie von ‘hoher’ und ‘niederer’ Musik im musikästhetischen Denken zwischen
Kant und Hanslick (Kassel, 1987); in addition see: S. Werr, “Sinnliches Vergnügen und reine Kunst. Das
Italienische als Folie des Deutschen”, in Werr and Brandenburg, Das Bild der italienischen Oper, (as
above), 9-20.
9
4
attitude in a letter to his friend Johann Gänsbacher of 1817: “Art has no fatherland and
we should treasure everything that is beautiful, whatever the sky under which it was
created.” Reviewing Morlacchi’s oratorio Isacco (1817) Weber wrote: “The path to the
goal is broad and it takes many forms. It allows space for everybody.”12
Weber’s conciliatory tone was not echoed by Adolf Bernhard Marx (1795-1866),
composer, music historian, theorist and hugely influential editor of the Berliner
allgemeine musikalische Zeitung from 1824 to 1831, who canonised the formal analysis
of Beethoven’s piano sonatas and, as educationalist, co-founded the Stern’sches
Konservatorium in 1850. In Marx’s treatise on singing, Die Kunst des Gesanges (1826),
the institutional and personal dominance of Italian court opera and Catholic church
music, as well as Rossini’s triumphant reception among German audiences, is declared to
be over. In this way Marx concurred with the growing hostility expressed in German
music journals towards Italian opera in general.13 Adopting Hegel’s dialectical scheme of
historical progress by necessity as well as a proselytising tone, Marx maintained that
“with Rossini Italian music had to abandon everything spiritual and had unreservedly to
profess its principle, namely sensual amusement, and, as perfect, it had to celebrate its
international triumph, … so that we [the Germans] can acknowledge with total
conviction: our spirit has a higher need, and only this higher something can give us true
satisfaction”.14 As Sanna Pederson has shown, Marx aggravated his historicalphilosophical argument with the accusation that Rossini’s operas lacked “dramatic sense”
and only provided “fleeting sensual pleasure”.15 He nowhere defined the “higher
something” (das Höhere) which was bestowed only on German music, yet he castigated
readers who preferred to remain neutral to his mission. Two nationalistic strategies were
at play here. He had recourse to Hippocrates’s and later authors’ climate theory,
according to which German and northern music is defined in contra-distinction to Italian,
southern music and, simultaneously, he either included or excluded musicians from the
German fold, as the fate of Spontini in Berlin was to show.
Marx extended his disapproval of Italian music into the field of music theory and the
teaching of singing. He believed that the construction of the tonal system, as well as
melodic, harmonic and rhythmic rules had only been introduced to “facilitate the most
euphonious sound and the most pleasurable comprehension”, as encountered in Italian
opera.16 Italian and German music was thus reduced to two principles: according to
Marx, Italians only compose to give pleasure whereas the Germans demonstrate a
12
C.M. von Weber, Briefe, ed. H.C. Worbs (Frankfurt am Main, 1982), 78, and Dresdner Abend-Zeitung,
1. April 1817, quoted in: S. Döhring, “Tonkünstlers Leben”, (as above), 107.
13
See, f.e., C. Toscani, “’Dem Italiener ist Melodie Eins und Alles’. Italienische Oper in der Leipziger
‘Allgemeinen musikalischen Zeitung’”, and A. Jacobshagen, “Schmetterlinge und Adler. Die italienische
Oper im Musikschrifttum des Biedermeier”, in: Werr and Brandenburg, Das Bild der italienischen Oper (as
above), 137-149 and 159-169.
14
A.B. Marx, Die Kunst des Gesanges (Berlin, 1826), III.
15
S. Pederson, “A. B. Marx, Berlin Concert Life, and German National Identity”, Nineteenth-Century
Music, 18/1994, 90.
16
Marx, Die Kunst des Gesanges, (as above), V. This critique bears resemblance to J. d’Ortigue, Du
Théâtre Italien et son influence sur le goût musical françois (Paris, 1840), 276: “Que la musique y est
sacrifiée au chant; que le chant y est sacrifiée à la roulade, à la fioriture, et à tous les autres procédés du
mécanisme de la voix.”
5
“natural striving for idea and truth”.17 Likewise, the singing profession was perceived as
in need of reform: “Nobody is more alien to German music than singers who emerge
from Italian training. Many more of them can perform a scena by Rossini than a German
song.”18 He held Italian singing schools responsible for German singers wrongly
emphasising the last syllables of words, adding extra vowels or changing from darker to
lighter vowels. In his view the limited success of German opera in the mid 1820s was
directly related to singers’ schooling in Italian opera and language which, in his view,
“almost exclusively teaches the shaping of the voice, very little theory, and a uniform
manner of performance and embellishment”.19 Marx did not want to substitute the old,
exclusively Italian singing practice for a new, exclusively German one, but he was
confident that German musicians had appropriated the operatic culture of their
neighbouring countries with the result that Italian and French music was “sublated” (as
understood by Hegel), that is subsumed within future German opera.20 In a further bow to
Hegel’s scheme, Marx believed that during his lifetime music had “received
consciousness only on German soil”, whereas it had previously “existed unconsciously”
in other countries.21
It is deeply ironic that Hegel, whose ideas A.B. Marx popularised, confessed his intense
enjoyment of Rossini’s operas, which were much en vogue in Berlin in the 1820s, while
completely ignoring Marx’s hero Beethoven: “Rossini’s music is decried by his
opponents as a tickling of the ear. But once we live in its melodies, this music is full of
sentiment, spirited and engaging for mind and heart. Admittedly, it does not embark on
the kind of musical characterisation beloved by the strict German musical attitude.”22 On
a visit to Vienna in 1824, Hegel vowed to stay put for as long as he could afford tickets
for the Italian opera and his journey home. He declared his preference for Rossini’s
Barbiere over Mozart’s Figaro, enthused over the soprano Angelica Catalani and the
bass Luigi Lablache, concluding that “Italian music is made for Italian singers;
everything is made to be sung”.23 Schopenhauer, too, acknowledged his unbiased delight
in Rossini’s operas, castigating German jealousy over their success.24
Despite the popular enthusiasm for Rossini’s operas shared by Hegel and Schopenhauer,
but opposed by the musical literati, the last institution for the exclusive performance of
Italian opera, the Dresden court opera, mounted a dwindling number of productions and
was dissolved in 1832.25 Still, the city remained the German centre for Italian singing
17
Marx, Die Kunst des Gesanges, (as above), V.
Marx, Die Kunst des Gesanges, (as above), VI.
19
Marx, Die Kunst des Gesanges, (as above), VI.
20
Marx, “[Review of] P. v. Winter, Vollständige Singschule (Mainz, 1825)”, Berliner allgemeine
musikalische Zeitung, 2/1825, 168; quoted in: Pederson, “A. B. Marx” (as above), 92.
21
Marx, Die Kunst des Gesanges, (as above), VII.
22
G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über Ästhetik, Werke in 20 Bänden (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), XV, 210f.
23
Quoted in: F. Brendel, Geschichte der Musik in Italien, Deutschland und Frankreich von den ersten
christlichen Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart (Leipzig, 1875), 395f.
24
A. Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, in Sämtliche Werke (Darmstadt, 1989), I, 365, and
Paralipomena, in Sämtliche Werke, V, 544.
25
According to Pietschmann, “Zwischen Tradition, Anpassung und Innovation” (as above), 120f., the last
premieres of Italian operas in German-speaking countries were in Munich (1820), Dresden (1835) semipublic, Vienna (1812), Berlin (1801).
18
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instruction. The filiation of teachers and singers included the castrato Vincenzo Caselli,
who had moved to Dresden after studies with the Bolognese castrato Antonio Bernacchi
(1685-1756). Bernacchi himself had set up a singing school in Bologna in 1738 after a
highly successful career in which he had sung in Handel’s London operas. Bernacchi
counted Anton Raaff among his pupils, while Caselli was known as the teacher of Johann
Miksch (1765-1845). Miksch in turn was made chorus director of the German opera in
Dresden in 1820 at the suggestion of Weber, and taught Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient
(1804-1860) as well as Heinrich Ferdinand Mannstein (1806-1872) and Ferdinand Sieber
(1822-1895). This generation drew very different lessons from their singing teachers.
While Schroeder-Devrient became internationally known for her dramatically powerful
performances of German and Italian operas, Mannstein became a professional singer and
teacher after his theological studies could not provide him with an income.
By entitling his manual Das System der großen Gesangschule des Bernacchi von
Bologna, Mannstein may have hoped, like A.B. Marx, to have history on his side,
although he was describing singing as practised in the eighteenth century and Algarotti
had already upbraided Bernacchi for his obsession with technical difficulties.26 Still,
Mannstein confidently explained that Bernacchi’s singing principles had not been
superseded in subsequent manuals and that they could be summarised in the motto:
“Place your voice well, breath well, pronounce clearly – and your singing will be
perfect”. The nature of Mannstein’s advice, remote from both concrete musical examples
and a hands-on approach, is revealed in his distinction between musical “expression” and
“performance”, where the latter is considered the “body”, and the former the “spirit” of
singing. “Performance” is claimed to resemble “form or disposition in painting”, whereas
“expression” is related to the “idea of the divine, which radiates in us when beholding the
painting. Only under the best conditions of performance and expression can singing
become a work of art.”27 The rudimentary nature of Mannstein’s advice confirms the
long-held view that Italian musicians conveyed their ‘secrets’ orally and little was spelled
out in writing. Although Mannstein’s treatise enjoyed a second edition, a further
publication shows him hopelessly out of step with operatic developments.28 His
subsequent career move to historical novel writing and to the civil service in Dresden
hardly indicates the success of his music teaching.
A.B. Marx and Mannstein had set out two extreme positions for the future of music in
Germany, neither of which left much space for the other. This polarity could not have
facilitated the path of young German composers who might have been keen to
incorporate aspects of the different national traditions in the 1830s. Wagner, who in 1839
sought and received Meyerbeer’s support in Paris, already revealed in his
“Autobiographische Skizze” (1842) the competing nationalist values with which he
retrospectively imbued his formative years. Four experiences stand out: (1) He explained
F. Algarotti, Saggio sopra l’opera in musica (Livorno, 1763), Reprint ed. A. Bini (Rome, 1989), 46.
H. F. Mannstein, Das System der großen Gesangsschule des Bernacchi. Système de la grande méthode
de chant (Dresden, [1835]), 68.
28
“Since the beginning of our century the Germans have pushed the treatment of vocal music to complete
unsungability. In their striving for musical character they imitated recent French composers in harmonic
effect and instrumental superabundance.” H. F. Mannstein, Geschichte, Geist und Ausübung des Gesanges
von Gregor dem Großen bis auf unsere Zeit (Leipzig, 1845), 138.
26
27
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his failure to see Die Feen performed in Leipzig in 1834 because of the dominance of
Italian and French operas in the repertoire. His enjoyment of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i
Montecchi with Schroeder-Devrient in the title role only led him to morally castigate
contemporary Italian and French composers with the aim that the “serious, scrupulous
German” should take steps to “supersede his rivals”.29 (2) In the same year the twentyone year old Wagner bore witness to a sense of internationalism: “’The young Europe’
was haunting me all over, Germany appeared to me only a very small part of the world.
… I was delighted by the beauty of a dramatic plot, wit and esprit: as far as my music
was concerned, I found these two among the Italians and the French. I abandoned my
model, Beethoven. … With this in mind I continued the composition of Das
Liebesverbot. I did not care in the least about its French and Italian reminiscences.”30
However, the Magdeburg premiere was a disaster, in part because of the dissolution of
the company. (3) As musical director in Riga in 1837, Wagner hated the daily rehearsals
and performances of French and Italian operas. His realisation that he himself had begun
to compose “à la Adam” “disgusts” him.31 (4) The description of Wagner’s financially
and professionally humiliating life in Paris between 1839 and 1842 culminated on his
return in a vow of “eternal loyalty to my German fatherland” upon seeing the Rhine with
tears in his eyes.32
During the 1840s singing instruction was revolutionised by Manuel Garcia (1805-1906),
whose physiological investigation, while serving in the administration of a French
military hospital, led him to recognise the position of the larynx and the mouth as crucial
factors in sound production. As his teaching repertoire consisted not only of Italian but
also French opera, he described the pronunciation of different consonants in addition to
conventional pedagogical topics such as vocal timbre, breathing, projection, agility,
articulation, phrasing and expression.33 Ferdinand Sieber learned from the shortcomings
of Mannstein and the systematic approach taken by Garcia. Sieber followed up his
lessons from Miksch with studies in Italy and enjoyed an international singing career
before settling in 1854 as a teacher at Kullak’s Musik-Akademie in Berlin, where he
eventually became professor in 1864. Beginning in 1856 Sieber published a series of
highly popular studies (including many solfeggi) as well as theoretical books over a span
of forty years with many twentieth-century re-editions. One of Sieber’s earliest
publications, the Vollständiges Lehrbuch der Gesangskunst, demonstrates his more
R. Wagner, “Autobiographische Skizze”, Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen, ed. W. Golther (Berlin,
n.d.), I, 10. Wagner’s argument is reminiscent of Marx’ quoted above.
30
R. Wagner, “Autobiographische Skizze”, (as above), I, 10f.
31
R. Wagner, “Autobiographische Skizze”, (as above), I, 12.
32
R. Wagner, “Autobiographische Skizze”, (as above), I, 19.
33
M. Garcia, Traité complet de l’art du chant (Paris, 1840-1847); for a summary of his teaching see D.
Mason, “The Teaching (and learning) of Singing”, The Cambridge Companion to Singing, ed. J. Potter
(Cambridge, 2000), 211-213. Garcia’s recourse to physiology did not remain without its detractors. The
singing teacher Heinrich Panofka (1807-1887), who worked in Paris in the 1830s, in London in the 1840s
and in Florence in the 1860s, chastised fellow teachers for brainwashing pupils with their expertise in
physiology: “Sarebbe lo stesso che un maestro di ballo volesse spiegare a un alunno I movimenti che
debbono fare I differenti muscoli per eseguire questo o quel passo. E d’altro lato, che sono tutte le teorie
che poggiano sulla fisiologia? Ipotesi! Null’altro che ipotesi sostenute da fisiologi famosi, e combattute da
altri non meno famosi fisiologi.” E. Panofka, Voix et chanteurs (Paris, [1870]), 26, quoted in Durante, “Il
cantante”, Storia dell’opera italiana, ed. L. Bianconi and G. Pestelli, vol. 4 (Torino, 1987), 405.
29
8
comprehensive approach, which even included advice on health. Manuals derived from
the Italian training methods can be characterised by their focus on textless exercises, so
that Sieber’s discussion of the pronunciation of vowels and consonants marked a decisive
deviation from tradition. But consonants, which receive special emphasis in German, are
nevertheless treated by Sieber as intrusions to be made as inconspicuous as possible in
performance.34
In this way Sieber spelled out a common problem in contemporary German opera
performance, namely the difficulty of understanding the German texts.35 To all
appearances, one of the crucial advantages of hearing opera in one’s own language had
not come to fruition. In response to this malaise and as a compromise to contemporary
conditions, Sieber introduced into his treatise a section on “Singing with words”,
although his remarks only serve to underline his primary interest in Italian language and
textless exercises.36
A completely rewritten version of his textbook, published twenty years later, indicates
that Sieber felt challenged. Now he wanted to remind students of the “golden rules and
traditions of the old Italian masters” which he “solemnly vowed to uphold” against critics
who promoted “screaming recitation” instead of singing and who “dared to maintain that,
with regards to dramatic expression, contemporary singing culture had superseded the
singing of the previous century”.37 Sieber had a clear remedy for the ills he perceived.
His advice on the treatment of consonants in singing was identical to the earlier manual
except for a footnote, in which he decried the emphasis on consonants in the textbook of
an unnamed colleague.38 All Sieber’s model singers were Italians and his repertoire was
taken from German and Italian composers of previous generations. The Italian
terminology was explained in an appendix. His last manual, Il bel canto, showed his
increasingly vociferous opposition to a differing aesthetic without providing a theoretical
exposition of his own and resorted to a list of musical examples that could be compared
with a museum display.39
Were Mannstein’s and Sieber’s singing manuals not providing what German singers and
composers needed? A critique of the practice, widespread among Italian teachers, to train
only the “mechanics” of the voice, had been formulated at the beginning of the nineteenth
century by Marcello Perino, director of the Conservatoire San Sebastiano in Naples.
“In a vocal song each syllable ought to be completed with its vowel, while the following consonant is
taken along to the beginning of the next syllable. In this way we gain the special advantage of the Italian
language, in which every word ends with a vowel, and, simultaneously, we render a beautiful tone without
in the slightest way offending the language, as we can stay until the end on a series of vowels.” F. Sieber,
Vollständiges Lehrbuch der Gesangskunst (Magdeburg, 1856-8), 90.
35
Sieber, Lehrbuch, (as above), 357.
36
“The clarity of pronunciation must never be sought at the expense of the beauty of the tone; otherwise the
song will denigrate into a musical parlando. This might be appropriate in some kind of recitative or opera
buffa but it would be insufferable in a cantilena.” Sieber, Vollständiges Lehrbuch, (as above), 357.
37
F. Sieber, Die Kunst des Gesanges (Offenbach, [1877]), II.
38
Sieber, Kunst des Gesanges, (as above), 17.
39
“In our time, when the most revolting screaming is propagated with the extenuating device of ‘dramatic
singing’, a collection of songs might be welcome which wants to contribute in giving justice again to bel
canto.” F. Sieber, Il bel canto (Berlin, 1886), Preface.
34
9
Perino demanded a “philosophical” approach.40 He explained that both composer and
singer ought to be comprehensively educated so that the latter could clearly understand
the plot of a composition and bring the emotions to life in performance. In opera a singer
should know how to “conformare non meno la voce col canto al sentimento delle parole,
che l’portamento ed il gesto per ben sostenere il carattere che rappresenta”.41 It is not
clear to what extent his postulate was taken up in manuals of the subsequent decades, but
it would be wrong to assume that Italian singing and tuition was monolithic. In a letter
dated 24 April 1840 Morlacchi complained to Felice Romani about the substitution of bel
canto with “canto declamato” in contemporary Italian opera.42
As we saw earlier, German writers’ hostility towards Italian opera became a constant
theme in the wake of the public’s triumphant reception of Rossini. In the 1850s even a
seasonal appearance of Italian opera in Vienna could not elicit praise from an anonymous
critic. He felt that the audience had taken against this repertoire as old fashioned and
uniformly dull. Moreover, the Viennese opera’s incompetent director did not offer valuefor-money and Verdi’s operas were only enjoyed by the uneducated section of the
general public. The reviewer ended that this three-month season also disadvantaged local
employees and therefore its disappearance would not be missed.43 We might be inclined
to think that such a statement was balanced in 1860 by Leopold von Sonnleithner (17971873), a barrister and former friend of Schubert, who wrote that there was “altogether
only one truth, - not an Italian or German or French. Likewise, there is only one true
school of singing which in all countries and nations must proceed from the same
principles, if it is committed to the same goal, namely the complete education of singers.
This school is described as ‘Italian’ only because it happened to have first acquired fixed
rules and a definite method in Italy, from where also stemmed a significant number of
excellent singers. … The true school … is the most natural, in so far as it treats the
human voice at first as a sounding instrument, just like any other.”44
However, Sonnleithner’s views were not shared in the writings of the musically much
more prominent Franz Hauser (1794-1870). After an internationally successful career as a
“Pochi, anzi pochissimi … sono stati quelli che, senza brigarsi d’altro che di assegnare alcune pratiche
regole intorno a tal scienza, trascurando quelle ricerche che della filosofia son proprie, con farsi cioè
principalmente ad indagare tutto ciò che dalla natura è stato per tale oggetto disposto ed ordinato, si sono
ristretti ne’ confini del puro meccanismo dell’arte, dal quale non mai si sono allontanati.” M. Perrino,
Osservazioni sul canto (Napoli, 1810), 5, quoted in S. Durante, “Il cantante”, (as above), 4, 405.
41
Perrino, Osservazioni (as above), 55.
42
“Secondo le musiche che si scrive ora in Italia vedo che tutti si danno al canto declamato, ma non più
come io intendeva, bensì esagerato e nauseante. Mi pare, che tutto il bello delle moderne composizioni
teatrali consiste nel gridare. Che ha migliori Polmoni è il meglio cantante! E il bel canto espressivo dov'è
andato? E tu nel tuo giornale non levi la tua possente voce per reprimere questo torrente devastatore?” A.
Roccatagliata, Felice Romani librettista (Lucca, 1996), 416f. In a private communication Roger Parker
suggested that Morlacchi probably had Donizetti’s Parisina (1833) in mind.
43
Recensionen und allgemeine Bemerkungen über Theater und Musik, V/1854, 148-158; the repertoire
included Rossini’s La Cenerentola,Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Otello, Bellini’s Norma, five unspecified
operas by Donizetti, one by Mercadante, and four by Verdi encompassing Rigoletto and Il Trovatore.
44
L. von Sonnleithner, “Bemerkungen zur Gesangskunst”, Recensionen und Mittheilungen über Musik,
6/1860, 315, quoted in: T. Seedorf, “’Deklamation’ und Gesangswohllaut’ – Richard Wagner und der
‘deutsche Bel Canto’”, “Mit mehr Bewußtsein zu spielen”. Vierzehn Beiträge (nicht nur) über Richard
Wagner, ed. C. Jost (Tutzing, 2006), 189.
40
10
bass singer in both Italian and German opera, including a guest appearance with
Schroeder-Devrient in London, Hauser became a well-known teacher in Vienna and
Munich; in 1846, he was promoted to the directorship of Munich’s newly founded
Conservatoire. Ominously, he took the sentence from Mozart’s letter, quoted above, as
the motto for his Gesanglehre (1866) and proceeded to denigrate the Italian teaching
tradition, which Mannstein had claimed for himself, for the simple reason that it had
never been codified in writing. Hauser strategically hoped to establish his own scholarly
credentials by vilifying the Bolognese school as a “myth”.45 He considered Italian singing
technique part of a venerable past which budding singers should learn by visiting Italy
after they had become “independent artists”, although the technique would always remain
partly inaccessible to a German student. Likewise, the terminology would probably
forever remain Italian, although he himself took pains to use German vocabulary
wherever possible. While some of his solfeggi are taken from Italian singers, the texted
examples were all borrowed from German composers, with Hauser himself and his friend
Moritz Hauptmann in prominent positions. Crucially, Hauser focussed exclusively on the
singing voice.
By the time of the publication of Hauser’s singing manual, Munich’s musical world had
been turned upside down. In 1864, the newly crowned Bavarian King, Ludwig II (18451886) had sent Hauser into retirement and had invited Wagner to Munich where he
hoped, among other things, to set up a “German Music School”. In 1865 Ludwig even
closed the Munich Conservatoire and made all its employees redundant.46 At first
Wagner solicited the support of the former tenor Friedrich Schmitt, who had started his
teaching employment at the Conservatoire in the year of its closure. Departing from his
own education in Italian methods, the foundation for Schmitt’s teaching career became
his manual, Große Gesangsschule für Deutschland (1854), in which he “sought an
education of the voice founded on the particularities of the German language, although
his exercises unmistakably indicate the model of Italian vocal teaching”.47 However, the
collaboration with Wagner never came to fruition, nor could Wagner realise his own plan
for a “German music School”, which he sketched in a memorandum to King Ludwig in
March 1865. In this text Wagner maintained that the “correct” relationship between
language and singing “still required discovery”, since the model of Italian singing “could
not be applied to the German language. Here language ruins itself and singing is
disfigured.” The foremost goal of the new school would be a “correct development of
singing on the basis of the German language”. Wagner envisioned “the character of this
singing” to be “distinguishable through an energetically spoken accent as opposed to the
“Es findet sich, daß die ganze Geschichte mit Bernacchi und seiner Schule eine Mythe ist, daß weder er
noch sein Lehrer irgend etwas, weder Theoretisches noch Praktisches hinterlassen haben, woraus man auch
nur annähernd auf ihre oder ihrer Zeitgenossen Gesangweise, oder auf die Art ihrer Stimmbehandlung, auf
die sich doch zunächst eine Schule gründen muß, schließen könnte, daß also eine Schule des Bernacchi von
Bologna gar nicht existiert.” F. Hauser, Gesanglehre für Lehrende und Lernende (Leipzig, 1866), 3.
46
See C. Jost, “Wagners Münchener Gegenentwurf zum Hauser’schen Konservatorium”, Musical
Education in Europe (1770-1914). Compositional, Institutional, and Political Challenges, ed. M. Fend and
M. Noiray (Berlin, 2005), 2, 463.
47
Seedorf, “’Deklamation’ und ‘Gesangswohllaut’”, (as above), 188. Schmitt’s curse of the “Italian weed
on the German field of opera” is corroborated in: J. Hey, Richard Wagner als Vortragsmeister, ed. H. Hey
(Leipzig, 1911), 92.
45
11
Italian extended vocalising”. Still, German singers would only be able to reach this goal,
“if the euphonious singing (Gesangswohlklang) of the Italian school remains part of his
education”. A “reflective engagement with Italian singing” will, thus, be part of the
curriculum in the proposed School.48
Wagner thereby radicalised the tension over the presence of Italian teaching methods and
operatic repertoire in vocal tuition among German teachers. To be sure, the “Bericht”
only confirms views that Wagner had apparently first formed when working with
Friedrich Schmitt in Magdeburg in 1834-1836.49 Wagner’s common theme was a
dissatisfaction with singers performing German operas. More specifically, he bemoaned
singers’ imperfect comprehension of the drama and inadequate acting and realisation of
the sonic possibilities afforded by the plentiful combinations of consonants in the German
language. Only when working on Rienzi, Tannhäuser and Lohengrin with the tenor
Joseph Tichatschek (1807-1886) and the baritone Anton Mitterwurzer (1818-1872) in
Dresden in the 1840s did Wagner “realise the special quality of semi-vowels as a
convenient binding agent for legato text-phrasing”. This feature had been overlooked, he
claimed, because it “was not mentioned in any Italian manual”.50
It is debatable, however, whether Wagner’s intended German singing style amounted to a
“modification of the Italian model”, that is an “amalgamation” of the two models.51
Harking back in his memorandum to Schiller’s distinction between ancient (ingenuous)
and modern (reflective) art in the essay on “Naive und sentimentalische Dichtung”, and
more closely adopting its nationalist application in the manner of A.B. Marx (as
discussed earlier), Wagner distinguished between the “immediate” pleasure supposedly
granted to Italians and the “reflected” pleasure enjoyed by Germans as a result of
continuous effort. Comparable with Marx’s scheme of operatic development, Wagner, in
fact, demoted Italian singing technique to the status of an “element of education”
(Bildungsmoment), or a propedeutic tool. Bel canto was clearly meant to be ‘sublated’ in
German singing. On the other hand, in Hey’s memoir, Wagner is quoted as saying that
Tichatschek animated his hope for the “artistic ideal of a German bel canto” and
Wagner’s private enjoyment of Bellini’s melodies is well known.52 This discrepancy will
not be settled by recourse to one unambiguous text, as no text enjoys such privileged
status and the meaning of the central terms were subject to historical change.
When the new Royal Music School opened in Munich in 1867, its artistic director Hans
von Bülow might have seen his dream realised that “in our Wagnerian organisation only
Wagner’s idea will be present,”53 although the composer himself had been ordered by
Ludwig II to leave Bavaria at the end of 1865. Given Wagner’s penchant to “envelop and
R. Wagner, “Bericht an seine Majestät den König Ludwig II. von Bayern über eine in München zu
errichtende deutsche Musikschule”, Sämtliche Schriften, (as above), 8, 135f. “Gesangswohlklang” is a
German paraphrase of Bel canto.
49
J. Hey, Richard Wagner, (as above), 85.
50
J. Hey, Richard Wagner, (as above), 135.
51
T. Seedorf, “’Deklamation’ und ‘Gesangswohllaut’”, (as above), 189f.
52
J. Hey, Richard Wagner, (as above), 135.
53
H. v. Bülow, Briefe und Schriften, ed. M. v. Bülow, 8 vols. (Leipzig, 1895-1908), 4, 61, quoted in Jost,
“Wagners Münchener Gegenentwurf”, (as above), 472.
48
12
devour his appointees like a ravenous reptile”,54 it cannot be claimed with any certainty
that the proposal for newly appointed teachers to reconsider their methods and publish
new manuals would have acted against any “autocratic style”.55 Among the new teachers
at Munich’s Royal Music School was Julius Hey (1832-1909), who had been a student of
Schmitt and who took over his role as the consultant and executor of Wagner’s
ambitions. Despite, or perhaps because he lacked a performance career, Hey is credited
not only with coaching singers at the first Bayreuth festival in 1876, but also with
systematising Wagner’s views in a magisterial treatise of unprecedented scale. While
Sieber discussed the spoken aspect of singing in a mere seven pages, Hey devoted the
whole first volume of his theory to spoken discourse, discussing each vowel, semi-vowel,
diphthong and, above all, each consonant in minute detail, adding a host of poetic
examples but no music ones. From the start, he turned his manual into a training ground
for a national project in which musical and political ambitions were intertwined.56 His
“reasons for the necessity of a ‘German singing manual’” repeated all the stereotypical
dichotomies concerning German and Italian opera and people. He particularly criticised
Italian tutors for wrongly taking “the vowel ‘a’ … as the sole foundation for the entire
development of vocal technique”, whereas German tuition would accord all vowels,
diphthongs and consonants equal importance in order to enhance the words’ “expressive
plasticity”.57 “The throat fluency of the virtuoso singer” supposedly was practised south
of the Alps, while “difficult” work and dramatic “motivation”, “logical emphasis” and
“deep artistic seriousness” were to be found in the north. Of this development “the Italian
singer has no idea”.58 Although the posturing superiority could not be clearer, Hey’s
programme did not amount to a total rejection of Italian schooling. He made his case for
an ideal Wagnerian singer who would “combine vivid emphasis on the meaning of a
word with the melodic accentuation of a vocal phrase in a natural unit, with the aim of
creating a ‘German bel canto’, that is: a singing of simplest truth clothed in a declamation
of perfect style, the melodic rules of which emanate exclusively from the life-giving
rhythm of our language.”59 But in a subsequent long footnote Hey reminisced about the
Italian style before Rossini’s “decline”, when “melody had received shape in the most
noble and universal manner, based on rules of performance that will remain valid for all
times and schools”.60 In support of this statement Hey listed a series of practical studies
written by Italian, French and German singers and teachers, although in this sense he
undermined the case for the existence of an Italian theory of singing.
54
M. Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner. His Life, His Work, His Century (London, 1983), 347.
Jost, “Wagners Münchener Gegenentwurf”, (as above), 472.
56
“All those who follow the calling ought to see it as a matter of honour to participate in the improvement
of the art of German singing with new vigour and an honest will, so that singing might find precinct
homestead, heedful cultivation and fresh prosperity in the fatherland, that has gained unity and grandeur,
and the most inward expression of the German sentiment – singing – has reached its most ideal form, …
and a vocal future is still reserved for the German people.” J. Hey, Deutscher Gesangsunterricht. Lehrbuch
des sprachlichen und gesanglichen Vortrags, 4 vols. (Mainz, 1882-1886), vol. 1, Sprachlicher Theil, 7.
57
Hey, Deutscher Gesangsunterricht, (as above), vol. 2, Gesanglicher Theil, 1, 3f.
58
Hey, Deutscher Gesangsunterricht, (as above), vol. 2, Gesanglicher Theil, I, 6.
59
Hey, Deutscher Gesangsunterricht, (as above), vol. 2, Gesanglicher Theil, I, 83.
60
Ibid.
55
13
By the time this treatise was published, Wagner was dead and Hey had lost his influence
in Bayreuth despite his Kurwenalian loyalty. When Cosima Wagner opened a school in
style training in 1892, she placed in charge the pianist and conductor Julius Kniese
(1848-1905), who had been chorus master at the Bayreuth festival since 1882. As Jens
Malte Fischer remarks: “Under Cosima’s aegis and Kniese’s direction, the Wagnerian
idea of speech-song – or Sprechgesang, as it was later called – was wildly exaggerated.
… Bel canto became a term of abuse.”61 Hey’s treatise was far too bulky and longwinded to become a pedagogical success. His son published a smaller version for
different voices, only reusing a fraction of his father’s text. When Hans Erwin Hey
described recitation of a free, rhythmic-melodic phrasing without text, he rephrased his
father’s description of bel canto: “The kind of preparation, which employs a purely vocal
sound in order to develop positively the expressive potential of a voice, should form a
German bel canto, that is a singing of simplest truth and highest beauty, the melodic rules
of which exclusively emanate from the rhythm of our language.”62 Yet, by omitting his
father’s adjacent footnote with its references to the Italian studies, bel canto became an
ever more abstract term.
The preceding, all-too fragmentary survey allows two provisional conclusions: (a) the
comprehensive identification of Italian operatic singing with the concept of “bel canto” is
untenable, as it was already questioned by Francesco Morlacchi in 1840 in his horror
vision of Italian opera composers adopting a “canto declamato”. It demonstrates that the
characterisation of Italian singing was dependent on the taste, attitude and agenda of the
authors involved. (b) Between the early nineteenth and twentieth century a historical
dynamic took hold in Germany whereby non-German features of opera became
marginalised and German aspects were ever more essentialised. Musicians and music
scholars played their part at all stages. In a German edition of Mozart’s La finta
giardiniera from 1934 the editor thanks the “national-socialist cultural community” for
their “self-sacrificing enthusiam … dedicated to the great German master and fiery
patriot Mozart as well as to the effort in finally rendering justice to the German language
as found in Mozart’s operas, which he under the constraint of fashion had to write in
Italian”.63 The political consequences of such an exclusive musical nationalism were cast.
J. M. Fischer, “Sprechgesang or Bel Canto: Toward a History of Singing Wagner”, Wagner Handbook,
ed. U. Müller and P. Wapnewski (Cambridge Mass., 1992), 528ff, with documentation and examples.
62
H.E. Hey, Der kleine Hey (Mainz, 1913), II, 172.
63
S. Anheisser (ed.), W.A. Mozart, Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe (Berlin, 1934), Preface. I owe this reference to
Michel Noiray.
61
14