There are, of course, no rules to be given to guide the student in the choice of music, except the general ones, to choose good music, pleasing music, and music suited to his voice and powers. But those general rules touch incidentally on a few points on which it may be well to offer a few remarks.

Music must suit the Voice.—Your music must not only be appropriate for your voice in compass, but it must be such as has been written for a voice of your kind. This is a most important thing to remember. Nothing is more provoking to a person of good taste and musical knowledge than to hear songs composed for a voice of one class sung by a voice of a totally different character; and yet this is a vice which even good artists will sometimes weakly succumb to. The popular song of Gounod's, "Quand tu chantes berÇÉe," for instance, has been sung to death by many soprani and contralti, in various keys. One would have thought that the words alone would have shown them the utter absurdity of what they were doing; but no, for the sake of producing an effect (upon an audience who naturally supposed that public singers of high standing knew what they were doing, and why they did it), these good ladies committed what I do not scruple to call a vulgar and inartistic blunder. The song is a man's song, and no woman should attempt it.

This fault is one which amateurs are very apt to fall into, and a long list might be made of songs which have suffered this unfair treatment. Soprani sing tenor songs—(I have often, in the early days of the popularity of "Il Trovatore," heard a soprano sing "Ah, che la Morte!"—tenors, those written for soprano—(e.g., I know an amateur tenor whose "crack" song is Iphis' "Farewell" in "Jephtha"). Contralti and mezzo-soprani steal bass and barytone songs, as "But who may abide," from the "Messiah," and basses and barytones return the compliment by appropriating "What tho' I trace," or "O rest in the Lord.")

There is a reason, quite apart from the question of taste, which renders this practice objectionable. A composer of any skill writes his accompaniment as well as his melody with reference to the voice which he wishes to sing it. Now, if that voice be—we will say—a soprano, the accompaniment will be written for a voice of that pitch, as well as of that character and compass; the progressions of harmony will be written with due regard to the actual place of the vocal notes in the scale. But directly the song is sung by a tenor—a voice which pitches every note an octave lower than the soprano—the relation of the vocal notes to the accompaniment is changed; notes that were intended to be fourths above the accompaniment will become fifths below, and progressions which were correct in the composer's intention become wrong in the effect produced by the singer. That is an extreme case, I grant, but it is only a fair instance of the sort of result which follows on such changes, and it is sufficient to show that the rule rests on reason and not caprice.

"Original Keys."—Do not bind yourself, as some think it necessary to do, always to sing your songs in the original keys. Remember that opera and oratorio music, and a large number of modern "ballads," were composed for performance in large buildings, theatres, and concert-rooms. The keys, therefore, were chosen with due reference to that fact, and to the (in many cases) exceptional voices of the singers. The raising of the pitch in later years also affects the question.

Now, if you have to sing in a drawing-room, the pitch, volume of tone, and style of delivery must be appropriate to chamber music, and not to the stage of Covent Garden, and the keys which are necessary for due brilliancy and effect in a concert-room are frequently unsuited to a drawing-room, giving an appearance of strain and noisiness to the singing. A good deal of opera music is as unfit for singing in a drawing-room as would be a grand symphony for performance there; and an artistic singer should bear in mind this principle of fitness in his selection.

At the same time, if it is considered desirable to transpose a song, let it be only for that reason, and let the aim be to produce the same effect, relatively, in the drawing-room, as the song in its original key is intended to produce in the concert-room. Do not transpose recklessly, merely to "suit your voice:" if you are a barytone, for instance, do not sing tenor songs a few notes lower; or, if you are a soprano, do not transpose contralto songs to suit your register. For the character of the music (if the music is good) suits the voice for which it was intended, and there is a risk of destroying that character by giving it to a voice of another kind. This has been proved over and over again on the stage in several notable instances.

Execution.—Do not be too ambitious in selecting florid songs for performance either in public or private. "Fireworks" in a drawing-room rarely please, while in a concert-room they must be very perfect and first-rate in execution to do so. Of course, if you are a professional artist you must include such work in your studies, and even for the amateur the practice of florid music, under a master, is most desirable as an exercise. But where the choice of a song for a concert rests with yourself, sacrifice ambition to prudence, unless your voice is naturally a very flexible one, and your training in that style of music very complete. I give, on this subject, a quotation from an old and experienced writer on music and singing:

"Execution is certainly one of the most difficult parts of musical science. Young singers are desirous of attaining it without reflecting whether, from the formation of the throat and various physical causes, they may ever be able to accomplish their wishes. Few, indeed, possess the power of execution in a pre-eminent degree. It is in part a gift of nature: those who have ever delighted as well as astonished us by their rapid manner of running through divisions must have been naturally endowed with flexible organs.

"... Some voices may be compared to gems which in their original state are dull, and, to those unacquainted with their worth, of no value.... It frequently happens that singers, from timidity or want of proper knowledge in exercising their voices, remain ignorant of their own qualifications. The hinges of a door which have continued for years undisturbed, will, when the door is re-opened, grate harshly on the ear; but every effort renders the harshness more tolerable, until, from frequent use, they move easily. Thus it is with the voice: on the flexibility of the uvula and the muscles connected with it depend both the perfectibility of the shake and execution. But still it must be acknowledged that acquired execution should never be exercised by the side of nature otherwise than sparingly, even where necessity requires it, for the latter possesses an easy velocity which can playfully sport with its subject at will; but, however gratifying the power of execution may be considered by those who possess it, I recommend them not to be indiscriminately lavish, lest they cloy by too great a profusion, and, as Voltaire remarks, 'shine in trills and divisions, at the expense of poetry and good sense.'"

Fashion.—The songs which are "the rage" at any time are always great snares for amateurs. Aspiring young singers hear a ballad charmingly rendered by some great singer, and straightway go home, send for it, and on the first available opportunity treat their friends to their version of it. This is really unfair to themselves, as it throws them into unwise contrast with the public singer who has made the song popular, and whose well-known rendering of it forbids ordinary hearers to judge the rendering of an amateur on its own merits, or by any rule but that of comparison. Moreover, "popular" songs—I mean songs whose popularity is largely due to their having been sung by favourite public singers—are by no means always good in themselves; or, if fairly good, by no means easy; or if good and not difficult, by no means always sufficiently so to make it worth while for an amateur to spend time and study on them. In very many cases the public singer has to sing these songs because he is paid for doing so, and gets a "royalty" on every copy sold; it is simply one development of the hydra-headed art of advertising, and such productions are known by the vulgar name of "pot-boilers," i.e., compositions hastily thrown off to bring in a little money "to keep the pot boiling." If composers who are capable of better things are reduced to making money in this way, we may be sincerely sorry for them; but speaking from an artistic point of view, the practice is reprehensible, and "pot-boilers" are not the kind of music which a young singer, anxious to improve, should waste time or money upon. I am far from saying that there are no good songs to be found among new music, but I think they seldom lie on the top of the pile.

Forming a Repertoire.—In gradually forming your repertoire, or collection of properly studied songs for drawing-room or concert singing, do not be in haste to make it a large one. It is better to know only a few songs and do them really well, than to sing a large number indifferently. If you are studying for the profession, there is a considerable number of songs which you will be expected to know as a matter of course, but over and above such, every singer should have a special repertoire of his or her own, and it is of this that I now speak. Your selection of songs, like your singing, should have the stamp of your own individuality upon it. You should have a little stock of songs, with which your singing is in a way identified, and which you must be able to sing in a manner that at once stamps those songs as your property, so that another person might say, "I could not sing that song before you, it is one of your own."

To form such a repertoire, you may have to go a little out of the beaten track of what is best known at the time. If opera music suits you best, look at the operas, never performed now, of GlÜck, or the less known of Mozart's, or earlier works of Rossini, Auber, &c.; or else try and get hold of works not yet known in England, such as Macfarren's, Wallace's, Purcell's, and a few other such native dramatic composers. In a word, do not limit your notions of operatic music to what you hear year after year at Covent Garden or Her Majesty's.

So, too, in oratorio: search in the less familiar oratorios of Handel, and such of his operas as you can get access to, and carry the same idea out in examining the works of other composers, ancient and modern. Good work has been done of late years by various publishers in publishing many works of this class, and there are plenty of these which are still unfamiliar and unhackneyed.

The same with your songs and ballads: before you rush into the modern fashionable ballad, see if you cannot find a few that you can appropriate among the stores of old English music, or the detached songs of old Italian masters (many of which are magnificent as songs, and utterly unknown at present, except to the few).