Creative method; Richard Tucker on singing

The creative method the National Association of educational broadcasters presidents Richard Tucker on singing here first as Lyman Bryson. In what sense is an opera singer even a great opera singer or a creative artist is he any more than a perpetrator of another man's music. He has a fine voice a warm temperament but more as any singer need. Mr. Richard Tucker and Mr. Bill Cabaniss talked over what it is that an opera singer creates. So there is definitely a difference between creative and interpretive. Activities. For myself I can only say that. As an artist. There is a 10 seem to first interpret the role and then. To create something that you may feel that the composer wanted to bring out to trade for the audiences. Your listening to Richard Tucker on singing. And. Playing.

Are creative. The singer as Creator our one of 10 conversations with creative Americans about the nature of their work. The creative method prepared by WGBH FM in Boston under a grant from the National Educational Television Radio Center. Later we'll tell you how you may obtain excerpts from this and 21 other radio essays on the creative process in American arts sciences and professions. But now Richard Tucker on singing. And here is Bill cavernous. Do you in preparing an operatic role for Metropolitan or for any other company for that matter. Approach the preparation of the role by submerging your own personality or do you make the role itself fit your personality. No I don't think so. I. Get around to

tackling the situation by first. Studying the contents of the roll like character and I don't think it has anything to do with my own personality. I think it's up to the personality himself or herself to create as much. Or interpret the role which they think suited for themselves. I was reading just the other day an interview with your colleague Alice at the palace in which he said that he completely forgot himself when he was building one of his famous character roles. Yes there are moments I can agree with him very much because there are many moments in singing on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera or any of opera house where one has perhaps moved that they are. Just as we say in musical terms taken out of this world and put into the era or in time of the opera and become the character that had a

big character that they are patrolling. That's true. Can we say that there is a strongly creative aspect to the interpreter's role particularly in the field of opera in that every performers interpretation is a little bit different. Oh yes definitely there is. So you are creating something essentially new in a way that's correct. I don't and I have not ever been shall we say dubbed. I use the word dubbed as a copyist. Because we have always a legend shall we say or a Bible which we call in our operatic field of music by which we always can go back and look up as a dictionary that person's interpretation or that person's creative method of singing that particular role or aria or whatever have you. But I never. Have been told that you perhaps look like Caruso but you don't act like Caruso or Gili or Great other tenors be forming. That is something that I have always kept away from because I

feel that today with the advent of so many fine directors which must have been from the metropolitan I was brought in from all over the world. Each person has their own different creative and interpretive measures. You've worked most recently as I understand it with Jose can tell. Yes. And I haven't worked with him yet but I know him and I've seen the production of cutlery Rusticana and in fact they were very disappointed that I couldn't do it this season but I'm hoping to do it on tour this coming spring. And of course next season but I have had the pleasure to work with many many find directors such as Tyrone Guthrie Alfred Lunt. That was the cause if one today was if I'm told to that's correct. Garson Cain and Joseph Mankiewicz. And of course I am as I remember many many many new productions which Mr Bean has brought in and each one has their own different method. Yet. As I have always agreed with them I hate the word tradition because I don't think that is a progressive in this era.

Do you think that there is a peculiar aspect of personality that. Most singers have in common. Do do singers have a personality trait in common that makes them become singers. I think that grows such as the word maturity. On a person because I don't think when you meet a young singer or young person on the stage you can more or less feel by hearing them or seeing them perform on stage that they have some material which is starting to just blossom out. So what we actually see is the bud and it's very difficult to say of a young person that they are great. I don't believe that I never will. It is just like dramatic tennis and I was born. You have to we have to mature the physically and emotionally mature both of course because of the voice does continue to grow doesn't it. That's correct. If properly used. And of course unfortunately not many do that. Can you give us an example or two exactly how you how you go about preparing a

role making creating an effective operatic performance on stage. One of the the the tools that you use. Firstly I study the role musically. And when I know what musically I read re read the story. As far as the meanings of the word what the composer intended for that character and what his part is what part that character is played in the opera. How essential it is improper scenes in certain scenes to create a different atmosphere a change. It is not always love and sometimes it is bitterness sometimes it is mental illness. One has to study these things because if you sing something fortissimo from beginning to end the public will not be in their seats when you are through. Because one does not go for too much. As we call fortissimo gusto for three hours one must be mellow. Also I less it's a very very dramatic

and I don't know any dramatic roles that have been dramatic in the sense from cover to cover. There is always a woman in the case thank God. But that would Briggs out the sweetness and love scenes. I love duets. So after reading and getting the meaning from which the composer meant I then go about really studying musically the role finding out where the pianos are and the mellowness and the forger of that role is when I have that under my belt. I then go to a director who reads with me the synopsis of the opera and we take each scene. And that way sort of walk our way through. Just like a baby walks of young man person going to grammar school. One does not eat steak. We all start with cereal.

And learn step by step that's correct. You mentioned learning exactly what the composer intended with the role. Now. Supposing you're creating a role in an opera by a composer who has been dead for a long time. Mozart for example. You've got tempo markings you've got dynamic markings in the score but these are only approximate. How much of your own. Creativity comes in to the realizing of this music. How far do you have to interpret these markings. I don't think there's any end to which one can interpret these markings. And of course I don't see these markings. I get them from the conductor of the opera who tells me that he has read in the operatic conductor score that there have been certain markings made by his predecessors. Let us say. Let's take a nap or today would you. I sing under the baton of the Dmitri

metropolis of Foster Klaver. Well metropolis as you know. Doesn't go by the markings. I was pretty discusses at the Metropolitan Opera. He received only three studies himself you see. And we often have discussions and I will say there are many many moments where singers and conductors do not agree because only this has come about in the last 20 30 years because as one can listen to recordings today by which they are our best medium the tempos and the tempi which are used on the recordings comparative to today's recordings don't belong in the same league. That would go to four of. Interpellation or four elaborations of the score itself. We know that for example that. A couple of generations back it was considered perfectly legitimate to ornament a vocal line whereas few people do it today isn't that true. That's true but you never get away from the fact that the interpreter the interpreter about

for all regardless of today or fifty years ago was basically the same. By then I mean today with the new admin of directors from all all theaters which are being brought into operas and which makes it a wider scope. Because one man's thinking is not enough it's always good to bring in different people to get their ideas of the theatre and basically as I said the fundamental interpretation of the role is the same but only new injections are made to make it more shall we say modernized. Let me get off onto another subject just briefly and explore it with you. You've been known to say that a real essential for a singer or for. Any creative person is a time of quiet and relaxation and even more specifically finding himself in a church. Do you find

I know that you do a lot a great deal of singing of religious music. Do you find that this using music as a expression of your own spiritual convictions. Tends to express you as a personality. Yes I think that goes a long way towards being the singer than I am today with the. Shall I say the proper and the creative musical background which I was fortunate enough to have. Which helps any singer by that I mean starting to sing as a boy in a choir at the age of six. Through the years being kept close to music has. Has put me in a frame of mind where as one psychiatry friend of vied said to me it is remarkable

how you can turn the faucet of your mind. I suggest doctor and asked me many times to visit his offices so that he can put it down in notes to give to present as a lecture. Because he had never met an artist as myself or any other artist for that matter and that after he has visited me in my dressing room at the Metropolitan after a performance and looking at me and saying how spent and tired I am and yet meeting me across the street for a little. Just as I was a collation an hour later completely. Relaxed and talking about everything but music. That's quite an accomplishment. That's something that I'm quite sure a good many of your colleagues envy you for they do because they do it. But you would feel then that using your voice your music for a specifically religious expression

has in turn added to your own stature musically. Yes it has definitely it has and I am always trying to convince young people today who are seeking careers in music to to get closer to religious music to get closer to choral music to associate themselves with anything that pertains to music because I feel it will only broaden and widen their scope and feelings about music so that when they transpose themselves or shall we say put themselves into the field of opera they will find that everything. Has a tendency to to bring themselves closer to the interpretation of a role and will find that their religious ties. When I say religious a person doesn't have to be necessary often locked in their feelings or religious that they observe everything to their to the letter but just by

being taking a moment or two or an evening going to listen to secular music will bring them sort of a calmness and especially for singers. I have often heard my colleagues men like. Lawrence to that and. Other musical people I meet who are now. Sort of. Some I retired from the field of singing started as a choir singer didn't and that's true. Eddie Johnson the same way I sang in a choir over New York and they have always said to me Richard we have never feared at any moment. That you would be the nervous type because you have been associated with a Temple or synagogue. And when you have to sing for people to lead them in prayer for a religion that is much much more difficult than singing on the operatic stage. Although it's a different interpretive and creative role. But we felt that with two feet on the ground. You sort of have a a an advantage

over the person who is entirely new. And who is just trying to break in in the field of music you would least have at least shall we say like we say in a paper in Brooklyn. Two strikes you haven't got the two strikes. You have ball two balls or three balls before you take a walk to first base. I use that term in baseball because it means it's so much advantageous for any singer to get themselves really are affiliated with any musical organization because basically they will find as the years go I heard that when they start singing with conductors as great. As metropolis of Foster Klaver as I had the privilege of seeing with the great interviewer Toscanini. Basically they found immediately that musically speaking I was on the ball and only because of my youth that I attended the choral organization sang with choruses sang in Temple

choirs sang with other choirs like the scholars in Torah choruses like that Westminster cars that you get a basic training and that will never go in vain. You say the power of singing in a temple in a synagogue is more difficult than singing on the operatic stage. Why would it be more difficult. Is this because it is a more direct expression of your own emotions. That's correct and I don't have the artificial to overstate. There is nothing there is now there is more. Secular music being printed. But years ago it was more. Ad lib. In other words it was more of the creative of the cattle singing and chanting how he felt and how he felt. He put into his prayers and those prayers were related to the people attending the service and they knew naturally as anyone would. Regardless of being a Jew or Gentile a Protestant or Catholic or any any religion is all the same basically because

when you go into a place of worship and you hear something which is a beautiful melody or one with pangs of a cry. You get to feel that emotion immediately and you have to communicated direct that of course you'd like of course. Can you tell us. Briefly the sort of training and the discipline that is necessary to produce a creative artist on the operatic stage we've touched on some of the aspects I know you've mentioned singing in very well groups to make a quick show mation I will say as far as singers American singers are concerned it is a dedicated career just like one would want to become a doctor or lawyer that person has to study and give on themselves. On an average of five four to five hours daily. And if they think that

they are just doing it sort of half has said I would tell them immediately not to waste their time and money because it just takes the twitch of someone's nose and you're turned off the air. I use that phrase only because I remember when I. Was taken out to Hollywood for the Westinghouse program right after my debut 945 the producer of that show mentioned this phrase and I never forgot it. And it only strengthened as the years went on my desire for perfection and many people know that I am a perfectionist. Anything I do because either I put my heart and soul into it 100 percent or I don't do it at all. And for that reason I guess that shows up the success of a person because that's the public the public has every right to criticize and deny

your ascension. Your search for perfection would indicate to me then that you do believe that one never stops learning never never stops and even training oneself never at all. Training today to me is as essential as getting up in the morning and have my orange juice in. Extending advice to young people who have in mind for burying themselves for careers as musicians or singers specifically. What would you have to say about the choice between training in this country and European training. Well I think Mr being of the Metropolitan answered that. It was about two years ago as he's always in search of talent. And also I am always auditioning young singers on my concert tours throughout the country. I always take the time of when someone writes me and tell them when I'll be in that particular city if you contact me at the studio or the hotel we go down to get a piano and I try to give them as much advice as I

can for that moment. Personally I agree with Mr being one that the best talent in the world is right here in America and that's a broad statement to make because when you speak of opera used big you think immediately of the mother country Italy as far as study is concerned. Unfortunately and I quote from a great maestro and a very revered friend Maestro Julio Serafin that the. Young singers of Italy are not taking too much time to study and that he says is only because they have been going through such a very hard economic period after the war and immediately they learn a roll or two. They go out and sing for a couple of thousand lire asked for bread to eat and for that reason we must have patients here in America the young singer has so much advantages over the European because there are so many avenues open to them

where one can study. But the only drawback in America as far as stage is concerned is that there are enough opera houses in America by which a singer can try out their footing on the stage. And that is the reason why we have. The Fulbright Scholarship today Senate the Fulbright always come to my dressing room at the Metropolitan asking me to participate in the search for American talent and to give the go ahead sign and exchange programs. But I've had to decline because of my busy schedule and I will not have my name put on a piece of paper. As a member of a committee unless I myself can give my leisure can really be are you there active of course. I don't believe in having only showering a person if he doesn't participate. And number two I think that the time will come as I have seen in many many leading universities of our land that upper troupes and upper classes are being created and I'm very happy to mention just a few of the Indiana University and seven or eight major opera productions a year and I thought it's terrific that

I've always said to President Harry Wells this is one thing one baby as I call it when I sing there every spring tour but it can really be proud of because he has been a wonderful man at the head of his music department Wilfred Bain Bain who was a personal friend of mine. And under the tutelage of many opera singers at the Metropolitan who give of their time and efforts and that's only one university the other one was University of Minnesota. And just to name a few. So therefore the trend is. Going. It's on the up. Instead of got a bit on the decline because many many American young American people have taken to classical music and that is because of only the medium of records or metropolitan broadcasts. So you see that the barometer is showing that we are on the upper trend. And I would advise. Any young person who wishes to study for a career that the chances here in America are. Very very favorable and getting better and getting better is your own

training American. Did you study in Italy too. No no no. I'm a what we call of full fledged. America. By that I mean I was born in Brooklyn trained in Brooklyn and made my debut at New York Metropolitan Opera House. I am rare like they say musical circles because one really has to go out. And look for wreckage of people who have made their debuts at the Metropolitan outsing in small provinces or sang in Italy running around Europe. I am rare in that sense because Edward Johnson took me right out of the synagogue and put me right into the Metropolitan Opera. Because he had the confidence in me. And of course I well paid my respects of course to my teacher who was passed down rest or soul Paul Althouse who was the form of Wagnerian tenors. Oh yes he was a very great singer. Oh yes Paul and I were like father and son. And I studied with him for 13 years and he wouldn't let me just walk wrong because that's the way he felt about me. The day will come of course the many other people like Emile Cooper

and will for pellet here who have guided me and I'm very very grateful. But again in closing I will say that the young American singer the person who wishes to make the opera feel his career or her career. Do not be afraid just come forward and with courage and conviction. You cannot fail. Thank you very much Mr. Tucker. Richard Tucker on singing. And here again is our host and commentator for the creative method Lyman Bryson. When Mr. Tucker says that there are many fine young voices in America and a voice in America has a chance that a singer has a chance if he wants to do what it's necessary to do in order to be really worth it. Hearing at someplace like the Metropolitan Opera House his own example makes his words especially weighty and reassuring because as he told you he started in the synagogue and he went to the Metropolitan Opera House without any of the long

travail which so many young singers have to go through. Mr. Tucker however went back to this question of interpretation and creation. And I think it's important to note that as he describes it the difference between merely interpret ing a role and creating a role is a matter of depth a matter of artistic commitment a matter of study a matter of knowing what it is you're doing and of being able to throw yourself into the role that you're creating with enough vigor and want to make it live here again. And like so many others Mr. Tucker warns that the talented young person can't go on talent and spontaneity alone. Here or wherever a young person expects to get a start he must have his general education. He must have his musical education. He must have his hard rigorous training and he must be willing to give himself wholly and devotedly to the art if he

expects that singing is going to be one of the great creative actions. And of course if he has the chance which Mr. Tucker thinks he will have then he has to have as Mr. Tucker says courage and conviction to stay by it until a chance develops. Next week another distinguished musician will be our guest. Mr. Leopold Stokowski will talk over with me the problems of the orchestra conductor. Thank you Dr. Bryson. You heard Richard Tucker the singer as Creator our one of 10 Conversations furthering our understanding of creativeness in American arts and professions the creative method as recorded by WGBH FM in Boston under a grant from the National Educational Television and Radio Center. Producer Jack Dee Summerfield with Lowell and Thatcher and Bill cabinets of production associates reprints of highlights from this program

as well as 21 others comprising the creative method and its companion series The creative mind are now available. Send $1 to station WGBH FM Cambridge 39 Massachusetts this attractive booklet also contains a bibliography for further study of the creative mind and method. Mayo $1 to WGBH FM Cambridge 39 Massachusetts next week Leopold's to Koski the conductor as creative are. The creative method is distributed by the National Association of educational broadcasters. This is the ne AB Radio Network.