Kathleen Ferrier: England’s Greatest Contralto, or Fruit Basket?
2003 marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Kathleen Ferrier, an English icon whose continued popularity among a fanatical legion of admirers based in the United Kingdom continues to puzzle and amuse many music and voice (the two are not always synonymous!) lovers still. In a recent article published in the September 2003 issue of Gramophone magazine, Martin Cullingford purports to “tell her story,” but does so in a manner so peculiarly worshipful and devoid of critical and factual balance that his piece strikes me as a useful opportunity to discuss the Ferrier legend and what it says about musical standards and our understanding of the term “artistic greatness.”
First, the bare facts: Ferrier was born in 1912, launched her professional singing career in 1942, made her first recordings in 1944, and died of cancer in 1953. There’s no question that her battle with terminal illness and consequent early death constituted a personal tragedy, and also helped tremendously to fuel her posthumous reputation. The very title of Cullingford’s article “Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow” demonstrates this more clearly than any other evidence we might adduce. But the issue that concerns us here is Ferrier’s claim to musical greatness, and if we exclude the biographical, the extra-musical, and the merely reverential, the case for this becomes shaky indeed.
One of the prime constituents of “greatness” is, of course, “uniqueness”. Now being unique can be either good, bad, or of no qualitative value at all, but let’s have a look at what evidence Mr. Cullingford calls into play for the good sort. First, he baldly asserts that “Ferrier’s deep, English contralto voice is unlike anything cultivated today…” This, of course, is nonsense, first in positing a “national timbre” to the alto register -- but the second half of this statement is even sillier. Has Mr. Cullingford never heard, for example, Nathalie Stutzmann, Ewa Podles, Sara Mingardo or any one of a number of “low” contraltos active on today’s vocal scene? And what does it mean that Ferrier’s sound is not “cultivated” today? Singers “cultivate” their natural endowments. The implication that Ferrier was somehow unique in doing so is merely another contribution to the myth, rather than an observation regarding the reality of what singers actually do.
Ferrier’s “core” repertoire was, in fact, extremely limited. Cullingford points out that “Her performances of Mahler helped ingratiate his work with British audiences, and remain some of the most compelling accounts of his lieder.” The first contention, however, says nothing about the actual quality of those performances, naturally implying that it was their “greatness” that sold the music to British audiences. That this is not necessarily true from a purely logical point of view, however flattering to the British taste, is, I should think, obvious. Cullingford goes on to note, “Her recordings of Baroque arias, while far removed from the approach of today’s singers, possess a somber reflectiveness.” In other words, they are stylistically anachronistic where not simply wrong-headed, and of uniform emotional content. This even some of her most ardent fans (if they have any independent interest at all in the repertoire in question) would probably admit, even while luxuriating in their “somber reflectiveness.”
Indeed, Mahler, Gluck, Handel, the Brahms Alto Rhapsody, and Purcell’s Dido, all share the common thread of expressing sadness, suffering, and world-weariness, certainly an unusual basis on which to build a career. And what of the quality of her work in those composers, her purported specialties? Cullingford treats “her story” as one of an unceasing but short-lived pageant of ecstatic praise. He omits mention of Virgil Thomson’s celebrated description of Ferrier as a “third rate English oratorio contralto,” or any serious contrary criticism at all. ClassicsToday’s own Dan Davis, a proudly card-carrying Ferrier fan, wrote of her recently reissued 1947 Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice: “Ferrier indeed was a memorable singer, if only for the unique timbre of her voice and the emotional power it conveyed. But neither quality is evident in her singing here, which turns Orfeo into an English matron. Contrary to the booklet notes by Alan Blyth, her "Deh! placatevi", with its unfortunate upward and downward scoops, is more a strained rendition of what should be a moving scene than a "desperate appeal" to the Furies; her "Che puro ciel", while better, hardly expresses the "wonder at the serenity of the heavenly scene"; and her "Che faro" is a pale shadow of that powerful aria, thanks in part to Stiedry's speedy tempo.”
Note first of all Davis’ well-chosen word “memorable” rather than “great,” and lest you think it self-serving of me to quote one of my own critics, consider Cullingford’s similar practice and the tiny world of English criticism, in which self-quotation and lazy parroting of received opinion often replace serious musical discussion as “evidence” of quality in performance and recording. Take, for example, the same Alan Blyth as quoted by Cullingford: “I was simply bowled over by the sound of the voice, and the actual radiance of her presence — everybody uses that word, but it’s very true. And the way she was able to communicate directly with her audience.” As one man’s opinion, this is fine and good, but as evidence of the existence of great singing, it’s something else altogether. Perhaps Blyth’s observation has something to do with the fact that the recordings themselves, as is so often the case with “legends,” seldom support the ecstatic claims of true believers.
The most notable case is Ferrier’s Decca recording of Das Lied von der Erde under Bruno Walter, where her hooded sound quality, tremulousness, pitch problems, and other weaknesses of vocal production lead her at times to approximate rather than sing what Mahler wrote (most notably in Der Abschied at the words “Lebens -- trunkne Welt!”). Yes, she was ill at the time this recording was made, and that was very sad, but musical standards exist specifically to reveal the physical frailties of performers for what they truly are, and none of the many tributes to Ferrier’s “spiritual loveliness” (Barbirolli) and “soul full of joy” (Walter) -- tributes doubtless sincerely meant in the period immediately following her death -- get to the musical heart of the matter. After all, what were these artists supposed to say: “We’re sorry she’s dead but she just wasn’t all that great?” Similarly, what does Cullingford hope to prove by quoting Susan Gritton’s blandly meaningless mention of Ferrier’s “extraordinary sound…which seems to outlast interpretive changes.” Gritton won the Kathleen Ferrier Award in 1994. Can you imagine Gritton saying: “Thanks for the prize, but she wasn’t all that great?”
It is actually quite remarkable how carefully phrased some of these purported “tributes” of colleagues sound today, and when the actual musical evidence has been sifted the most Ferrier’s fans seem able to agree on is that she had a “unique sound,” good posture, and an ability to project stoic suffering (but little else). Of all the strange compliments Cullingford cites, none quite matches that of Ferrier’s voice teacher, Roy Henderson, who rather amazingly notes in his book Kathleen Ferrier: A Memoir (Hamish Hamilton:1954), that “Kathleen Ferrier was born with a wonderful cavity at the back of the throat. One could have shot a fair-sized apple right to the back of her throat without obstruction.” What was she, a singer or a fruit basket? Can’t you just see Ferrier’s admirers nodding solemnly at this expression of Henderson’s sagacity? Here is the final, irrational link in the chain of illogic seeking to prove Ferrier’s greatness: the biological argument. Her fantastic theoretical ability to intercept fruit with the back of her throat produced, according to Henderson, “that depth and roundness of tone which was distinctive.” And there you have it.
So where does this leave us: with a singer who had a distinctive tone that some people love, documented by a handful of largely mediocre recordings. Indeed, some of Ferrier’s admirers resemble hard-core audiophiles: they are interested only in “sound,” and not in music. Others have an even weirder perspective. For example, Alan Blyth obligingly tells us that “the sound on its own gives a listener today only about a quarter of the impression that it did when you could see as well as hear her.” How sad it is, Cullingford laments, that “all we have is a six-minute film of her performing at an after-show party (a sound recording from the same party is not synchronized) and a 12-second Dutch newsreel of her arriving at Schiphol airport, both of which can be seen in a forthcoming documentary to be broadcast on BBC4 later this year.” I bet that will be a treat! So Ferrier’s greatness was three-quarters visual, and only one-quarter vocal? Doesn’t all of this sound just a mite odd to you?
About what other legendary musicians will you hear it said that three-quarters of their appeal was visual: Toscanini? Furtwängler? Rubinstein? Maria Callas? Enrico Caruso? Joan Sutherland? Luciano Pavarotti? In fact, discussions of singers usually emphasize the fact that vocal qualities transcend physical deficiencies, particularly on the operatic stage, and a good thing too! Don’t we take for granted an artist’s ability to “communicate” with the audience through the medium of music alone? Shouldn’t we? And shouldn’t the evidence of the music itself be the principal determinant of artistic greatness in a musician? Or should we look instead for the final evidence of her unassailable musical qualities to the full page helpfully included by Cullingford/Gramophone consisting of nine black and white photographic head shots of Ferrier looking, we presume, spiritually luminous?
If the term “greatness” is to have any meaning among critics, music lovers, or even casual listeners, then it must represent more than simply “that which one likes.” And yet that is all we are given in Ferrier’s case, at least as Cullingford defines it here. The matter only becomes more complicated if we take the time to compare her to such artists as Janet Baker or Christa Ludwig, active in much of the same repertoire, and of course singers with equally unique vocal endowments but who are yet demonstrably superior to Ferrier in such musical qualities as accuracy of pitch, rhythm, diction, vocal technique, and expressive range. Perhaps this is the reason that Cullingford deliberately leaves most of the real world out of Ferrier’s “story.” Place her career and accomplishments in context, and she virtually disappears. She has nothing to gain (and much to lose) through comparison to other singers, especially with reference to the musical facts.
Anniversaries of birth and death offer us welcome opportunities to reappraise and reexamine artistic careers. They can also be used, as here, merely to attempt to reinvigorate tired myths and to repeat decades of received opinion. In the years immediately following Ferrier’s death, it’s understandable that few would dare say a word against her, and that her status as a beloved national figure would naturally prevent colleagues and critics from tarnishing the legend, even if that meant speaking their minds absent any malicious intent. Given the tragic circumstances of Ferrier’s life we might have hoped that a goodly distance in time might restore something of a more balanced perspective on her career as an artist, and that a publication purportedly dedicated to supporting and celebrating the highest standards in musical performance on disc might spearhead the effort. Instead, all we can say for certain 50 years after her passing is that Ferrier remains beloved by her fans, and that their loyalty and adulation are based, at least partially, on the fact that she had a really deep throat.
David Hurwitz
