HINTS ON TEACHING
“We live in a world of unseen realities, the world of thoughts and feelings. But ‘thoughts are things,’ and frequently they weigh more and obtain far more in the making of a man than do all the tangible realities which surround him. Thoughts and feelings are the stuff of which life is made. They are the language of the soul. By means of them we follow the development of character, the shaping of the soul which is the one great purpose of life.”
Appreciation of Art. Loveridge.
Every year a large number of young men and women go in quest of a singing teacher. The impulse to sing, which is inborn, has become so insistent and irrepressible that it must be heeded; and the desire to do things well, which is a part of the mental equipment of every normal human being, makes outside assistance imperative. Wherever there is a real need the supply is forthcoming, so there is little difficulty in finding some one who is ready, willing, in fact rather anxious, to undertake the pleasant task of transforming these enthusiastic amateurs into full-fledged professionals.
The meeting of the teacher and student always takes place in the studio, and it is there that all vocal problems are solved. Let no one imagine that any vocal problem can be solved in a physics laboratory. Why? Because not one of the problems confronting the vocal student is physical. They are all mental. The writer has reached this conclusion not from ignoring the physical, but from making a comprehensive study of the vocal mechanism and its relation to the singer.
The anatomy and physiology of the vocal mechanism are absorbing to one who is interested in knowing how man, through untold centuries of growth has perfected an instrument through which he can express himself; but no matter how far we go in the study of anatomy and physiology all we really learn is what mind has done. If man has a more perfect and highly organized vocal instrument than the lower animals it is because his higher manifestation of mind has formed an instrument necessary to its needs.
When man’s ideas and needs were few and simple his vocabulary was small, for language is the means by which members of the species communicate with each other. Whenever man evolved a new idea he necessarily invented some way of communicating it, and so language grew. A word is the symbol of an idea, but invariably the idea originates the word. The word does not originate the idea. The idea always arrives first. All we can ever learn from the study of matter is phenomena, the result of the activity of mind.
Thus we see that so called “scientific study” of the vocal mechanism is at best, but a study of phenomena. It creates nothing. It only discovers what is already taking place, and what has been going on indefinitely without conscious direction will, in all probability, continue.
The value attached by some to the study of vocal physiology is greatly overestimated. In fact its value is so little as to be practically negligible. It furnishes the teacher nothing he can use in giving a singing lesson, unless, perchance he should be so unwise as to begin the lesson with a talk on vocal mechanism, which, by the way, would much better come at the last lesson than the first. All we can learn from the study of vocal physiology is the construction of the vocal instrument, and this bears the same relation to singing that piano making bears to piano playing. The singer and his instrument are two different things, and a knowledge of the latter exerts very little beneficial influence on the former.
To reach a solution of the vocal problem we must understand the relation existing between the singer and his instrument.
The singer is a mentality, consequently everything he does is an activity of his mentality. Seeing, hearing, knowing, is this mentality in action. The two senses most intimately associated with artistic activity are seeing and hearing, and these are mental. In painting, sculpture, and architecture we perceive beauty through the eye. In music it reaches us through the ear; but the only thing that is cognizant is the mind. To man the universe consists of mental impressions, and that these impressions differ with each individual is so well understood that it need not be argued. Two people looking at the same picture will not see exactly the same things. Two people listening to a musical composition may hear quite different things and are affected in different ways, because it is the mind that hears, and as no two mentalities are precisely the same, it must be apparent that the impressions they receive will be different. The things these mentalities have in common they will see and hear in common, but wherein they differ they will see and hear differently. Each will see and hear to the limit of his experience, but no further.
To be a musician one must become conscious of that particular thing called music. He must learn to think music. The elements of music are rhythm, melody, harmony, and form, and their mastery is no less a mental process than is the study of pure mathematics.
The human mind is a composite. It is made up of a large number of faculties combined in different proportions. The germs of all knowledge exist in some form and degree in every mind. When one faculty predominates we say the individual has talent for that particular thing. If the faculty is abnormally developed we say he is a genius, but all things exist as possibilities in every mind. Nature puts no limitations on man. Whatever his limitations, they are self imposed, nature is not a party to the act.
Now this is what confronts the teacher whenever a student comes for a lesson. He has before him a mentality that has been influenced not only by its present environment, but by everything that has preceded it. “Man is,” as an old philosopher said, “a bundle of habits,” and habits are mental trends. His point of view is the product of his experience, and it will be different from that of every one else. The work of the teacher is training this mentality. Understanding this it will be seen how futile would be a fixed formula for all students, and how necessarily doomed to failure is any method of voice training which makes anatomy and physiology its basis. Further, there is much to be done in the studio beside giving the voice lesson. Whistler said that natural conditions are never right for a perfect picture. From the picture which nature presents the artist selects what suits his purpose and rejects the rest. It is much the same in the training of a singer. In order that the lesson be effective the conditions must be right. This only rarely obtains in the beginning. The student’s attitude toward the subject must be right or the lesson will mean little to him. The lesson to be effective must be protected by honesty, industry and perseverance. If these are lacking in various degrees, as they often are, little progress will be made. If the student is studying merely for “society purposes,” not much can be expected until that mental attitude is changed. Students always want to sing well, but they are not always willing to make the sacrifice of time and effort; consequently they lack concentration and slight their practice. Sometimes the thought uppermost in the student’s mind is the exaltation of the ego, in other words, fame. Sometimes he measures his efforts by the amount of money he thinks he may ultimately earn, be it great or small. Sometimes he overestimates himself, or what is equally bad, underestimates himself. It is a very common thing to find him putting limitations on himself and telling of the few things he will be able to do and the large number he never will be able to do, thus effectually barring his progress. Then there is always the one who is habitually late. She feels sure that all of the forces of nature are leagued in a conspiracy to prevent her from ever being on time anywhere. She, therefore, is guiltless. There is another one who is a riot of excuses, apologies and reasons why she has not been able to practice. Her home and neighborhood seem to be the special object of providential displeasure, which is manifested in an unbroken series of calamitous visitations ranging from croup to bubonic plague, each one making vocal practice a physical and moral impossibility.
All of these things are habits of mind which must be corrected by the teacher before satisfactory growth may be expected. In fact he must devote no inconsiderable part of his time to setting students right on things which in themselves are no part of music, but which are elements of character without which permanent success is impossible.
A great musical gift is of no value unless it is protected by those elements of character which are in themselves fundamentally right. Innumerable instances could be cited of gifted men and women who have failed utterly because their gifts were not protected by honesty, industry and perseverance.
I have spoken at some length of the importance of the right mental attitude toward study and the necessity of correcting false conceptions. Continuing, it must be understood that the work of the teacher is all that of training the mind of his student. It is developing concepts and habits of mind which when exercised result in beautiful tone and artistic singing. It must also be understood that the teacher does not look at the voice, he listens to it. Here voice teachers automatically separate themselves from each other. No two things so diametrically opposite as physics and metaphysics can abide peaceably in the same tent.
Let me emphasize the statement that the teacher does not look at the voice, he listens to it. The teacher who bases his teaching on what he can see, that is, on watching the singer and detecting his mistakes through the eye, is engaged in an activity that is mechanical, not musical. No one can tell from observation alone whether a tone is properly produced. A tone is something to hear, not something to see, and no amount of seeing will exert any beneficial influence on one’s hearing.
The process of learning to read vocal music at sight is that of learning to think tones, to think in the key, and to think all manner of intervals and rhythmic forms. It is altogether mental, and it is no less absurd to hold that a knowledge of anatomy is necessary to this than it is essential to the solution of a mathematical problem. The formation of tone quality is no less a mental process than is thinking the pitch. If the student sings a wrong pitch it is because he has thought a wrong pitch, and this is true to a large extent at least, if his tone quality in not good. He may at least be sure of this, that he never will sing a better tone than the one he thinks.
A large part of the vocal teacher’s training should be learning how to listen and what to listen for. This means training the ear, which is the mind, until it is in the highest degree sensitive to tone quality as well as to pitch. When there is a failure in voice training it may be counted upon that the teacher’s listening faculty is defective. The gist of the whole thing is what the teacher’s ear will stand for. If a tone does not offend his ear he will allow it to continue. If it does offend his ear he will take measures to stop it.
More is known of vocal mechanism today than at any other time in the world’s history, and yet who dares to say that voice teaching has been improved by it? Is voice teaching any more accurate now than it was a hundred years ago? Did the invention of the laryngoscope add anything of value to the voice teacher’s equipment? No. Even the inventor of it said that all it did was to confirm what he had always believed. An enlarged mechanical knowledge has availed nothing in the studio. The character of the teacher’s work has improved to the degree in which he has recognized two facts—first, the necessity of developing his own artistic sense as well as that of his pupil, second, that the process of learning to sing is psychologic rather than physiologic.
When the student takes his first singing lesson what does the teacher hear? He hears the tone the student sings, but what is far more important, he hears in his own mind the tone the student ought to sing. He hears his own tone concept and this is the standard he sets for the student. He cannot demand of him anything beyond his own concept either in tone quality or interpretation.
Young teachers and some old ones watch the voice rather than listen to it. At the slightest deviation from their standard of what the tongue, larynx, and soft palate ought to do they pounce upon the student and insist that he make the offending organ assume the position and form which they think is necessary to produce a good tone. This results in trying to control the mechanism by direct effort which always induces tension and produces a hard, unsympathetic tone.
The blunder here is in mistaking effect for cause. The tongue which habitually rises and fills the cavity of the mouth does so in response to a wrong mental concept of cause. The only way to correct this condition is to change the cause. The rigid tongue we see is effect, and to tinker with the effect while the cause remains is unnecessarily stupid. An impulse of tension has been directed to the tongue so often that the impulse and response have become simultaneous and automatic. The correction lies in directing an impulse of relaxation to it. When it responds to this impulse it will be found to be lying in the bottom of the mouth, relaxed, and ready to respond to any demand that may be made upon it. To try to make the tongue lie in the bottom of the mouth by direct effort while it is filled with tension is like trying to sweep back the tide with a broom. The only way to keep the tide from flowing is to find out what causes it to flow and remove the cause. The only way to correct faulty action of any part of the vocal mechanism is to go back into mentality and remove the cause. It will always be found there.