Vocal Music Quotes

“Then followed a most charming surprise. William mastered his timidity and began to sing. His voice was a little faint and frail, like the family daguerreotypes, but it was a tenor voice, and perfectly true and sweet. I have never heard Home, Sweet Home sung as touchingly and seriously as he sang it; he seemed to make it quite new; and when he paused for a moment at the end of the first line and began the next, the old mother joined him and they sang together, she missing only the higher notes, where he seemed to lend his voice to hers for the moment and carry on her very note and air. It was the silent man's real and only means of expression, and one could have listened forever, and have asked for more and more songs of old Scotch and English inheritance and the best that have lived from the ballad music of the war. Mrs. Todd kept time visibly, and sometimes audibly, with her ample foot. I saw the tears in her eyes sometimes, when I could see beyond the tears in mine. But at last the songs ended and the time came to say good-by; it was the end of a great pleasure.”
― Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs

“It's just one of those remarkable historical ironies that Haydn, superbly trained as a singer in the St. Stephens cathedral choir of Vienna, followed by several more years as apprentice/assistant to the renowned Italian singing teacher Porpora, ultimately became famous as a composer of instrumental music, whereas Mozart, the great piano virtuoso of his age, wrote the first important operas in the modern repertoire and is arguably most highly acclaimed as a writer for the voice.”
― David Hurwitz, Exploring Haydn: A Listener's Guide to Music's Boldest Innovator