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Updated: May 7, 2025
Next in importance to absolute freedom of voice, which these movements give, is the fact that through them absolute, automatic, perfect breath-control is developed and mastered. These movements give the breath without a thought of breathing, for they are all breathing movements.
There is something utterly unnatural about this holding back of the breath, repugnant to every singer endowed with the right idea of forceful and dramatic delivery. The vast majority of the successful pupils of "breath-control" teachers abandon, very early in their careers, the tiresome attempt to hold back the breath.
Another exercise very valuable in giving breath-control is the following: Produce a tone exactly as before, but every now and then, at regular intervals at first, then at irregular ones, cut the tone off short by suddenly arresting the breath, and, after a very short pause, continue again in exactly the same way without taking a fresh breath; and, as in the above and all other exercises, frequently apply the hand and, when more practised, the more exacting flame test.
It was in 1841 that the ever-beloved Swedish Nightingale, then twenty-one years old, sought him in Paris, with a voice worn from over-exertion and lack of proper management. In ten months she had gained all that master could teach her in tone production, blending of the registers and breath-control. Jenny Lind was to Sweden what Ole Bull was to Norway, the inspirer of noble achievement.
What is perhaps the most important distinction of this method of breath-control and voice-management is the fact that it relieves the throat of all pressure, the correct tension and vibration of the vocal cords being brought about by the reflex action of muscles and nerves.
The doctrine of breath-control was at once adopted, by the most influential vocal scientists, as the basic principle of tone-production. Curiously, neither Dr. Mandl, nor any other advocate of breath-control, seems to have read an article by Sir Charles Bell dealing with this same action, the closing of the glottis against a powerful exhalation.
One teacher may emphasize breath-control and support of tone as the foundations of the correct vocal action, another may give this position to nasal resonance and forward placing. Yet both these teachers may include in their methods about the same topics. The methods seem entirely different, only because each makes some one or two doctrines the most important.
To enumerate and classify all the methods of instruction in vogue would be almost an impossibility. Absolutely no uniformity can be found on any topic. Even among the accepted doctrines of Vocal Science there are many controverted points. Five distinct schools of breathing are represented, two of breath-control. Of well worked-out systems of registers, at least twenty could be enumerated.
The teacher or singer who studies and masters this course never questions or doubts the truth and power of automatic breathing and automatic breath-control; or the wonderful influence on the voice of these movements, which we call true position and action in singing. The third principle of artistic tone-production is High Placing and Low Resonance. Theory.
Other forms of throaty production are taken to show a lack of support, a wrong management of the breath, a need of breath-control, a misuse of nasal resonance, or an improper action of the vocal cords. In all these attempts to interpret sympathetic sensations by means of mechanical doctrines the teacher naturally relies on those doctrines in which he believes most firmly.
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