_A Few Words addressed to Singing-Teachers on the Accompaniment of
Etudes, Exercises, Scales, &c._

It is common for teachers to play their accompaniments as furiously as
if they had to enter into a struggle for life and death with their
singers. At the beginning of the lesson, the lady singer ought to
commence quite _piano_, at _f_ in the one-lined octave, and to sing up
and down from there through five or six notes, without any expenditure
of breath, and should guide and bring out her voice by a gentle practice
of _solfeggio_; and yet you bang, and pound on the keys, as if you had
to accompany drums and trumpets. Do you not perceive that in this way
you induce your pupils to strain and force their voices, and that you
mislead them into a false method? In such a noise, and while you are
making such a monstrous expenditure of strength, to which you add a
sharp, uneasy touch, and a frequent spreading of the chords, how can you
watch the delicate movements of the singer's throat? Is it necessary for
me to explain how such a rude accompaniment must interfere with the
effort to sing firmly and delicately? Are you not aware that a light and
agreeable, but at the same time firm and decided, accompaniment
encourages and sustains the singer, and also assists and inspires her?
You ought, in every way, to seek to cultivate in your pupil the feeling
for the right, the true, and the beautiful; but what is the girl of
eighteen to think of _your_ culture and _your_ sentiment, if you pound
the keys as if you were one of the "piano-furies"?

While this is your mode of accompanying the études, how then do you
accompany the aria, the song? If, for instance, the pupil is singing
tenderly, and wishes to bring out an artistic, delicate shading, you
take advantage of that occasion to make yourself heard, and to annoy the