274.—HONEST OPINIONS.
Professional musicians often have questions propounded to them that are quite hard to answer, and occasionally some to which, were the truth answered, the reply would not be particularly enjoyed by the questioner. Very frequently some fond mamma brings her aspiring daughter, who, by the way, hardly knows the difference between the manipulation of the piano and that of the bass drum, and seeks to be told that her fair offspring is an incipient Clara Schumann or Fannie Bloomfield, and only needs a few suggestions from a teacher to be ready to take the concert stage. Or, perhaps the fair damsel has succeeded in singing the first ten bars of "Bel Raggio" and can sing "Home, Sweet Home" (à la Patti) without getting off the pitch more than five times. The aspiring mater insists that the daughter has a heavenly voice and remarkable talent, and will surely be able to graduate next year, and possibly this year, if the teacher is propitious. And she feels personally insulted if the teacher ventures to offer the information that even the first principles of correct breathing are unknown, that the tones are throaty and not "placed" at all,—that her daughter has to have a thing taught to her by hearing it (like a parrot), and cannot read two consecutive measures correctly,—and that it is necessary to have at least a majority of the notes in tune; but when he adds that it will take two or more years to complete the purely theoretical part of the musical education, the pair take their departure in angry haste and declare that they will go to some teacher who knows a little something about music, and who will at least not insult defenseless ladies who call upon him with the most honorable of intentions.
It would save trouble, though it might lose the teacher an occasional pupil, if he were always to be as honest as was the great French teacher and composer, Cherubini.
One day he was appealed to by a singer, a man with a tremendous voice, to tell him what art he had better follow,—if he had not better become a singer. Cherubini at once asked him to sing, whereupon he opened his mouth and the foundations well nigh trembled with his bellowing.
"What shall I become?" he asked, when he had finished.
"An auctioneer," laconically answered the master.
The singer fled.