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In the meantime came medical practice, with speedy specialization as a laryngologist, when there were daily consultations with singers and speakers who had employed wrong methods of voice-production; this again led on to the scientific investigation of voice problems, with a view of settling certain disputed points; then came renewed and deeper study of music, both as an art and as a science, with a profound interest in the study of the philosophy of musical art and the psychological study of the musical artist, all culminating in this attempt to help those who will listen to me without prejudice.
It will be found, for example, that such a natural function of life as breathing has to be especially adapted to the requirements of the singing voice; that breathing such as suffices for the average person will not suffice for correct voice-production.
A showman may have a correct method of voice-production indeed, the writer has often studied the showman with admiration but if he speak for hours in the open air in all sorts of weather, a disordered throat is but the natural consequence; and the Wagnerian singer who will shout instead of sing must not expect to retain a voice of musical quality, if, indeed, he retain one at all.
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.
It is practically helpful to the voice-producer and the teacher to think of the resonance-chambers and the ear as bearing a close relationship to the movements essential to tone-production. The sensations from these parts are of importance above all others in voice-production. They are the chief guides, and the attention may to advantage be concentrated on them.
While in Mara's day this no doubt was attributed to a natural gift of voice, modern study of voice-physiology and of the metaphysics of voice-production readily accounts for it.
Americans misuse it even in speech; yet what a valuable possession is an agreeable and pleasant speaking-voice. This abuse of the vocal organs by the great majority of Americans makes the establishment of a correct method of voice-production in this country all the more desirable. Yet, what do we find here?
Dissipation of breath results in uncertainty of voice-production, a branch of the subject which will be taken up in the chapter on "attack." An excellent test for economy of breath is to hold a lighted candle before the mouth while singing. If the flame flickers, breath is being wasted, is coming out as empty air instead of as voice.
When it is considered that the larynx, in which the vocal cords are situated, is permeated by a network of muscles through which it is capable of some 16,000 adjustments and readjustments of shape, all of them pertinent to voice-production, and that the same thing also is true of the pliable portions of the resonance cavities; that these muscles act in response to an even finer network of nervous filament; and that the constant shaping and reshaping of various parts of the vocal tract during voice-emission is directed by messages from the mind, soul, or art-sense of the singer, messages which travel via nerve to muscle the only route by which they can travel it becomes possible to appreciate the importance of the sensory or psychological function which, I hold, should be added to the purely physical ones of motor, vibration and resonance.
The De Reszkes, Caruso, Plançon these have been some of the most notable exponents of correct voice-production who have appeared on the American operatic stage. Let the reader, when next he hears Caruso or Plançon, note that they never strain after an effect, never labor, never grow red in the face, never employ excessive gesture to help force out a note.
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