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A few words from him regarding tone emission, breathing, or phrasing, have often sufficed to show to a singer that a passage which he had considered unsingable, was really the easiest thing in the world, if only the poetic sense were properly grasped and the breath economized.
The great majority have not had any real musical education, and it is to these that the common notion that Wagner's music is unsingable, that it ruins the voice, is due. The notion that recitative and melody are things opposed to one another is itself a misunderstanding.
A man following so faithfully the intimations of his genius as did Beethoven, withal a man of such striking individuality and force of character, would be sure to disregard to some extent the capacity of his performers. His singers made no end of trouble, stating that their parts were unsingable and asking for alterations.
The programme consisted of the Overture Weihe des Hauses, as well as the Kyrie, Credo and Agnus Dei of the Mass in D, and the Ninth Symphony. The solo parts were taken by Madame Sontag and Fräulein Unger, who protested more than once at the unsingable nature of some of the parts in the Choral Finale when practising them at Beethoven's house. The applause from the very beginning was phenomenal.
It is not one of the interests of life, or, rather, one of life's phases; it is the whole of life, all other interests and actions either sinking into an unsingable region below it, or merely embroidering a variegated pattern upon its golden background.
The style of the music was new to the singers, and they pronounced it unsingable. They begged him to make changes, but Beethoven was adamant. The rehearsals became a grievous labor to all concerned.
Many poems which he would have liked to set were, as he explained in the words I have quoted, full of snags in the way of unsingable words. And though it used to make him uncomfortable to do so, he often felt compelled for this reason to refuse much otherwise excellent poetry that was sent to him with the request that he use it for music.
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