ABSTRACT
In his memoirs (Much besides Music, 1951), the Australian writer and critic Thorold Waters provides a vivid picture of the sheer quantity, let alone quality, of London's music scene on a visit to England in 1930:
London's demure illusion of a Silly Season and a sad grey Lent came to my mind on arrival again in 1930. 'Pity you've come just now', my old friend John Tillett, impresario of a host of notable artists, lamented. We've just begun Lent, so there's very little doing, you know!' Forthwith he committed me to concerts of Casals, Elena Gerhardt, and Lotte Lehmann in the ensuing week, and in the next morning's post sent me invitations for 22 others within the fortnight, including the two brilliant violinist sisters Jelly d'Aranyi and Adila Fachiri, Frank Merrick, an English pianist of long repute and beard almost as long, and other quality performers.
Many years before that, he wrote an interesting piece in the British–Australasian magazine (30 June 1910) on the subject of artists coming from Australia to try and make an impression in London, considered the capital of the music world. They were still doing so 50 years later in the 1960s, but by that time Nellie Melba and Florence Austral (note that these singers felt they had to change their surnames from Mitchell and Wilson respectively in order to publicize their origins) were succeeded by the Joans, Hammond and Sutherland. The article written by Thorold Waters (himself the founder of the Sun Aria competition which sent many fine singers to Europe from the Antipodes) was entitled Australian singers and English agents':As a rule, the Australian girl who comes to London to sing says she will be content if during her first six months here she has her chance at a couple of Ballad concerts, but she would also like an appearance at the Albert Hall with the Royal Choral Society. 'Of course', she adds, somewhat modestly, 'I haven't come here with the idea that I can get everything at once.'
What can one say? There are probably 20,000 professional concert singers in England. Of that number some twenty are chosen by Messrs. Chappell and another twenty by Messrs. Boosey to sing at their Ballad Concerts in the course of a season. The Royal Choral Society has openings for, perhaps, 24 singers, and most of those who climb that pinnacle of greatness have a ten or twelve years struggle with the provincial work first. During the last eight or nine years, the influx of Australian singers to England has totalled at least 300, and of that number not more than twenty have sung in the Queen's Hall. There are many excellent artists with as much work as they can do in the Provinces who look upon the Queen's Hall as something quite beyond their reach.
But it is no good telling the newly-arrived singer little home truths like that. It is no good recommending a wait of a few months to see how the land lies. The desire to be up and doing is a commendable Australian trait but most of us could unfold a tale of premature visits to agents, premature auditions and – if we were specially unlucky – premature appearances. Of the 300 or more singers to whom I have alluded, some came direct from their little towns of Tantanoola, Bunyip, Gerung-Gerung, or wherever they might be. They came direct to invade London and the majority felt that they were ready to go in and tackle the agents and get work. Remember, this is the London in which Kreisler, prince of all violinists, walked about for months awaiting the royal pleasure of agents who would not deign to hear him, although he had already played with distinction on the continent.
'Is she ready?' is the first thing an agent asks. 'Ready' may mean two things, either ready with musical knowledge or ready with cash. But we may proceed upon the extremely charitable assumption that the first of these qualifications is the one implied. Now, is the newcomer from Bunyip likely to be ready as the term is understood in a land where the thoroughly equipped singer is expected to have a nodding acquaintance with four languages, a sound familiarity with music, a lot of which has has never been heard yet in Australia, and some distinction of voice, at least?
151The singer who has queened it in a big Australian capital is not necessarily in any better position than the young lady from Bunyip. She arrives feeling that she must make an immediate splash – and she does. It is a matter of knowledge in musical circles that two or three popular artists from Australia made such splashes when they were entrusted with roles in great orchestral works that you couldn't see the conductors for bubbles. When anyone misses twenty bars in (say) Elgar's Apostles the news travels as quickly as indignant conductors and amused bandsmen [i.e. orchestral players] can spread it.
The first person apprised by the conductor is the agent. The agent, it must be borne in mind, is a wily customer. He is a more or less useless individual, pampered out of all proportion to his value to the artist. I have not spent much time on the doormats of agencies since one of the biggest of the genus said: 'You know, it is necessary for the artist to make his own work up to a point, and we come in afterwards'. 'If that is the case,' I thought, 'the thing is to prevent the agents from coming in afterwards'. But the agent has a say in that matter also. His purpose in life – with one or two honourable exceptions – is to keep the new artist out as long as he can, and to come in on a 10% commission basis if the new artist proves too much for him.
Big fees mean big commission, only singers of years' standing get big fees, and the agent only gives an opportunity to a new artist when all other resources have failed. But the majority of concert agencies, if they depended upon commission alone, would have to seek the bankruptcy court. There are more ways to killing a cat than one, and the favourite way with all save half-a-dozen of the London agencies is to secure musical aspirants with money. So long as one has a long, strong purse, 'audition' as conducted by some agents, is a mere empty formula. The fraternal feeling that exists between them and some of the great conductors is too beautiful to behold and for £50 or more one can get a very nice appearance at a really big concert. Just imagine what a lot of fame one can buy for £1.000!
From the aspirant's point of view, this sort of thing is, however, eventually disastrous. The fame lasts, as a rule, just as long as the money lasts. When the money is done, the hands of the whole profession are lifted against the interloper. I remember in an artists' room once hearing a popular baritone asked by the conductor what a new soprano was like. 'Rotten', he said, with more simplicity than gallantry. When I asked him why he was so unkind to a fairly good singer, he retorted, 'My boy, when you have been as long at this game as I have, you will know that everyone who pays for appearances is "rotten" so far as the profession is concerned'.
There are exceptions. In my time, a couple of people have managed to buy their way in. But their purses were very long, and it is questionable whether the fruits the years will bring, will ever quite make up for the preliminary seed that had to be sown.
One need not spend many minutes with an agent to discover his voracity. My very first encounter with one of the kind made me open my eyes very widely indeed. He sent for me 'with a view to mutual business'. The proposition was that I should induce a moneyed friend to put £500 into a big concert venture in Covent Garden Theatre. The moneyed friend was to have a series of appearances at these concerts and I was to have three.
The next time I interviewed an agent, I was offered a tour with a great prima donna. I was to pay £100. A couple of days afterwards I met an Australian contralto reputed to have pots of money. She had been offered the same tour, price £200. Nearly every great instrumentalist who comes to England to make a tour relies for support, vocal and financial, upon two or three people who have been made to understand that fame is a thing to be bought like a ton of coal or a breakfast kipper. Even one or two of the big regular provincial tours – once the pride of their managements and their artists – are now practically financed by silly unknowns.
Fortunately, there are not quite so many blackleg agents as there were three or four years ago. I believe one or two of the agents of those days are now 'doing time' while others are keeping very religiously out of this country to avoid the same experience.
It would be fair to assume that Ibbs and Tillett's agency was not in Thorold Water's sights when he wrote this acerbic but interesting piece, and it is worth pointing out that so many elements of his observations are relevant today.