Voice Production in Singing and Speaking | Page 6

unsatisfactory
because of inadequate technique. People seem to hope to impress us, on
the stage, with voices that from a technical point of view are crude and
undeveloped, and accordingly lack beauty and expressiveness.
Speakers to-day have often every qualification except voice--a voice
that can arrest attention, charm with its music, or carry conviction by
the adequate expression of the idea or emotion intended.
Is it not strange that a student of the piano or violin is willing to devote
perhaps ten years to the study of the technique of his instrument, while
the voice-user expects to succeed with a period of vocal practice
extending over a year or two, possibly even only a few months?
When the anatomy and physiology of the larynx are considered, it will
be seen that the muscular mechanisms concerned in voice-production
are of a delicacy unequalled anywhere in the body except possibly in
the eye and the ear. And when it is further considered that these
elaborate and sensitive mechanisms of the larynx are of little use except
when adequately put into action by the breath-stream, which again
involves hosts of other muscular movements, and the whole in relation
to the parts of the vocal apparatus above the larynx, the mouth, nose,
etc., it becomes clear that only long, patient, and intelligent study will

lead to the highest results.
It should also be remembered that such an apparatus can easily acquire
habits which may last for life, for good or ill, artistically considered.
Such delicate mechanisms can also be easily injured or hopelessly
ruined; and, as a matter of fact, this is being done daily. A great
musical periodical has made the statement that thousands of voices are
being ruined annually, in America alone, by incompetent teaching. My
experience when a practising laryngologist made me acquainted with
the extent of the ruin that may be brought about by incorrect methods
of using the voice, both as regards the throat and the voice itself; and
contact with teachers and students has so impressed me with the
importance of placing voice-production on a sound foundation, not
only artistic but physiological, that I have felt constrained to tell others
who may be willing to hear me what I have learned as to correct
methods, with some reference also to wrong ones, though the latter are
so numerous that I shall not be able to find the space to deal at length
with them.
The correct methods of singing and speaking are always, of necessity,
physiological. Others may satisfy a vitiated or undeveloped public taste,
but what is artistically sound is also physiological. None have ever
sung with more ease than those taught by the correct methods of the old
Italian masters; as none run so easily as the wisely trained athlete, and
none endure so well. People in singing and speaking will, as in other
cases, get what they work for, but have no right to expect to sing or
speak effectively by inspiration, any more than the athlete to win a race
because he is born naturally fleet of foot or with a quick intelligence. In
each case the ideas are converted into performance, the results attained,
by the exercise of neuro-muscular mechanisms. I am most anxious that
it shall be perceived that this is the case, that the same laws apply to
voice-production as to running or any other exercise. The difference is
one of delicacy and complexity so far as the body is concerned.
It will be understood that I speak only of the technique. For art there
must be more than technique, but there is no art without good methods
of execution, which constitute technique. The latter is nothing more

than method--manner of performance. Behind these methods of
performance, or the simplest part of them, there must be some idea. The
more intelligent the student, speaker or singer, as to his art and
generally, the better for the teacher who instructs scientifically, though
such intelligence is largely lost to the teacher who depends on tradition
and pure imitation. In the present work I shall be so concerned with the
physical that I shall be able only to refer briefly to the part that
intelligence and feeling play in the result.
The qualifications for the successful treatment of vocal
physiology--that is, such a discussion of the subject as shall lead to a
clear comprehension of the nature of the principles involved, and place
them on a practical foundation, make them at once usable in actual
study and in teaching--such qualifications are many, and, in their
totality and in an adequate degree, difficult to attain. After more than
twenty years of the best study I could give to this subject in both a
theoretical and a practical manner, I feel that I have something to say
which