The Brain and the Voice in Speech and Song

BY F.W. MOTT, F.R.S., M.D., F.R.C.P.
1910
The contents of this little book formed the subject of three lectures delivered at the Royal Institution On the Mechanism of the Human Voice and three London University lectures at King's College on The Brain in relation to Speech and Song. I have endeavoured to place this subject before my readers in as simple language as scientific accuracy and requirements permit. Where I have been obliged to use technical anatomical and physiological terms I have either explained their meaning in the text, aided by diagrams and figures, or I have given in brackets the English equivalents of the terms used.
I trust my attempt to give a sketch of the mechanism of the human voice, and how it is produced in speech and song, may prove of interest to the general public, and I even hope that teachers of voice production may find some of the pages dealing with the brain mechanism not unworthy of their attention.
F.W. MOTT
LONDON
July, 1910
THE VOCAL INSTRUMENT:
THE VOCAL INSTRUMENT AND ITS THREE PARTS
FIG.
In the following pages on the Relation of the Brain to the mechanism of the Voice in Speech and Song, I intend, as far as possible, to explain the mechanism of the instrument, and what I know regarding the cerebral mechanism by which the instrument is played upon in the production of the singing voice and articulate speech. Before, however, passing to consider in detail the instrument, I will briefly direct your attention to some facts and theories regarding the origin of speech.
Language of graphic signs and spoken language have progressed together, and simultaneously supported each other in the development of the higher mental faculties that differentiate the savage from the brute and the civilised human being from the savage. In spoken language, at any rate, it is not the vocal instrument that has been changed, but the organ of mind with its innate and invisible molecular potentialities, the result of racial and ancestral experiences in past ages. Completely developed languages when studied from the point of view of their evolution are stamped with the print of an unconscious labour that has been fashioning them for centuries. A little consideration and reflection upon words which have been coined in our own time shows that language offers an abstract and brief chronicle of social psychology.