MMA THURSBY

Although conditions have changed very greatly since I was last regularly
engaged in making concert tours, the change has been rather one of
advantage to young singers than one to their disadvantage. The enormous
advance in musical taste can only be expressed by the word "startling."
For while we have apparently a vast amount of worthless music being
continually inoculated into our unsuspecting public, we have,
nevertheless, a corresponding cultivation of the love for good music
which contributes much to the support of the concert singer of the
present day.

The old time lyceum has almost disappeared, but the high-class song
recital has taken its place and recitals that would have been barely
possible years ago are now frequently given with greatest financial and
artistic success. Schumann, Franz, Strauss, Grieg and MacDowell have
conquered the field formerly held by the vapid and meaningless
compositions of brainless composers who wrote solely to amuse or to
appeal to morbid sentimentality.

The conditions of travel, also, have been greatly improved. It is now
possible to go about in railroad cars and stop at hotels, and at the
same time experience very little inconvenience and discomfort. This
makes the career of the concert artist a far more desirable one than in
former years. Uninviting hotels, frigid cars, poorly prepared meals and
the lack of privacy were scarcely the best things to stimulate a high
degree of musical inspiration.

HEALTH

Nevertheless, the girl who would be successful in concert must either
possess or acquire good health as her first and all-essential asset.
Notwithstanding the marvelous improvement in traveling facilities and
accommodations, the nervous strain of public performance is not
lessened, and it not infrequently happens that these very facilities
enable the avaricious manager to crowd in more concerts and recitals
than in former years, with the consequent strain upon the vitality of
the singer.

Of course, the singer must also possess the foundation for a good
natural voice, a sense of hearing capable of being trained to the
keenest perception of pitch, quality, rhythm and metre, an attractive
personality, a bright mind, a good general education and an artistic
temperament--a very extraordinary list, I grant you, but we must
remember that the public pays out its money to hear extraordinary people
and the would-be singer who does not possess qualifications of this