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Updated: May 19, 2025
This is much like the contraction placed upon the muscles of the body and of the throat by the conscious-breathing, local-effort school. Lift the arm again from the side, and in lifting have the thought or sensation of letting go all contraction of the muscles. Make the arm light and flexible, and use just enough strength to lift it, and hold it in a horizontal position.
There is nothing in the arts or sciences, nothing in the broad field of athletics or physical culture, nothing in the wide world that requires physical development, in which the attempt is made to develop by direct effort as does the local-effort school.
Its influence has been felt, and is today more powerful than ever. Hence the trend of the best thought of the profession is away from the ideas of the local-effort school, away from rigidity and artificiality, and more in the direction of naturalness and common sense.
The disciples of the local-effort school lose sight of the fact that when a muscle is set and rigid, either in attempting to hold the breath or to force the tone, it is virtually out of action; that instead of actually helping the voice it is really preventing a free, natural production, and that other parts are then compelled to do its work; this accounts for many ruined voices.
"To make a part rigid is equal to the extirpation of such part. While it is in a state of rigidity it ceases to take part in any action whatsoever: it is inert and the same as if it had ceased to exist." The local-effort school is accountable for many errors of the day.
It is evident, then, that any local hardening or contracting of muscle, any tension or contraction which would prevent elasticity, would make the removal of all restraint impossible. Hence we find that this first principle is an impossibility with the rigid local-effort school. On the other hand, relaxation, while it may remove restraint, makes artistic control and tonicity impossible.
As an outgrowth of the local-effort school, and as an attempt to counteract its evil tendencies, there is to-day in existence another school or system known as the limp or relaxed school, or the system of complete relaxation. The object of this relaxation is to overcome muscular tension and rigidity. This is the other extreme.
The term local effort is used to describe the direct innervation of the throat muscles. A logical application of the mechanical idea absolutely demands the use of local effort. This is the main argument of the local-effort teachers. Those teachers who discountenance local effort have only their own experience to guide them. They simply know that local effort results in throat stiffness.
There is to-day that which is known as "The New Movement in the Vocal Art" a movement based upon natural laws and common sense and opposed to the ideas of the local-effort school; movement in the direction of freedom of action, spontaneity and flexible strength as opposed to rigidity and direct effort; a movement which advocates vitalized energy instead of muscular effort; a movement which had its origin in the belief that no man ever learned to sing because he locally fixed or puckered his lips; because he held down his tongue with a spatulum or a spoon; because he locally lowered or raised his soft palate; because he consciously moved or locally fixed his larynx; because he consciously, rigidly set or firmly pulled in one direction or another, his breathing muscles; because he carried an unnaturally high chest at the sacrifice of form, position and strength in every other way; because he sang with a stick or a pencil or a cork in his mouth; or because he did a hundred other unnatural things too foolish to mention.
This was followed by the modern school, or "The Local-Effort School" of the nineteenth century, the period which may be called The Dark Ages of the Vocal Art. There is a constant evolution in all things progressive, and this evolution is felt very perceptibly to-day in the vocal world. Great principles, great truths, are of slow growth, slow development.
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