page_title: Charles W. Clark
section_title: Voice and temperament
hierarchical_section_title: Charles W. Clark / Voice and temperament
caption_attribution_description: English: A concert program from 1916
context_page_description: Charles William Clark was an American baritone singer and vocalist teacher. He is generally regarded as the first American baritone singer to be famous in Europe, and as one of the greatest baritone singers of all time. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and America, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian, French and German repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic.
context_section_description: Critics credited Clark with one of the finest baritone voices possessed by an American singer. He was praised for his fine, manly voice, his phrasing and his clear enunciation.
  A note in the Spartanburg Herald appeared on April 5, 1914 which said:
  Clark has been called "an embodied temperament". But the "storm and stress" period of youth is, in him, now refined and mellowed by study, constant singing in the world's great centres of art, and the experiences of life intensely and usefully lived. In his interpretations of the great masterpieces of music one finds, instead of a portrayal, a living picture. The composers' deeper meanings are penetrated and brought forth; every shade of every mood is intensified and presented vividly to the listener. The scholar and thinker are behind all that is sung; and a big voice, glorious in quality and of apparently limitless volume and beauty, is the vehicle of expression for all this fruit of genius and profound labor.
  A note in the Magazine The Musical Leader published on June 4, 1914 expressed the following:
  Clark's position among the world's leading vocalist is due to a combination of the qualities that command success in special styles of singing, united to versatility. His recitals are framed with an eclectic taste and include examples from the Old Italian masters of the eighteenth century to modern French, German, Russian and English composers. He has been hailed in Paris as the great interpreter of Debussy, Faure and living French song writers, and in German as an artist of commanding power in the classical and modern German 'lieder.' He is also recognized as an oratorio singer of genius, and among his most striking and vivid impersonations may be mentioned Judas, in Elgar's Apostles, and the Prophet, in Elijah.
  Clark excelled as a Wagnerian singer. His temperament, his dramatic fervor, and his sincerity fitted him for it. His voice had the power and range for the typical Wagnerian singer, but it had none of the hardness which was too often associated with the performance of Wagner by singers of those years and nowadays.
  In 1903, after having heard Clark sing in German and French, the King of England Edward VII turned to Consuelo, Duchess of Manchester and demanded, "Is Mr. Clark a Frenchman or German?" The duchess replied, with much pride, "He is an American, the same as I am." "Well," exclaimed his majesty, "I never had such a lump in my throat as when he sang 'Ich grolle nicht'".
  Clark had an almost stubborn devotion toward his ideal as an "interpreter of song". He repeatedly refused all offers from the realm of grand opera in spite of the insistence of his friends and fans.
caption: Concert program from 1916
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