SONG, SINGERS, AND PHYSIOLOGY
We are incomprehensible and mysterious beings. We do not know whence we come nor whither we go; we do not know what agencies guide and sustain us—our end is a tragic one. While the soles of our feet closely adhere to the ground, our heads are in touch with the most distant stars. We exercise faculties to perfection whose origin and mode of operation are unalterably hidden from our knowledge. We possess gifts and talents which raise us above the plane of our ordinary existence and inspire us with the belief that we are related to the divinity, are part of the divinity. It has ever been man's aim to penetrate this darkness, to learn to comprehend himself. The vocation of the singer is one to which this knowledge is indispensable. In the fulness of his organization endowed by nature with a divine gift, the singer's aim and desire is to retain and perfect this gift.
The birds sing their same individual song throughout their career. Man, however, sings the song of his soul; a song as endless and as varied as his thoughts. Song with him is not a gift alone, but its exercise is a study, an art. He must sing knowingly; he must ascertain the source of his song and the reason why certain causes produce certain results. Hence the necessity for a science of the voice.
The knowledge of the exercise of our faculties is dependent on the knowledge of life and on that of the spirit, without whose aid no transaction of life of any kind ever takes place. Despairing of his ability to penetrate into the realms of the spirit, aspiring man has ever resorted to that which was next at his command—matter. Hence the effort throughout all of man's history to reach the soul by way of the body. But body and mind, in alliance, have ever succeeded in frustrating these efforts; in keeping the secret of their duality and mutuality intact from the gaze of man. Yet singers are determined to find out something in relation to the voice at least. Finding that we cannot penetrate into the relation existing between mind and matter, the effort is renewed in the most persistent manner to explain the life and the spirit, whose essence and outcome is the voice, by examining into the relation of matter to matter.
Our professor, having discarded the assistance of life and the spirit, dabbles in matter pure and undefiled. This process our young students are invited to attend. They carry their youth and their talent, their high hopes and aspirations, into the dissecting-room, where the spirit of the voice is supposed to reveal itself among the ghastliest spectacles. If a person of ordinary good sense, but not acquainted with these subjects, were to attend a lecture on the physiology of the voice and then attend a singing-lesson based upon the knowledge thus attained, he would be apt to remark: "Can this performance possibly be meant to be in good faith? Is not this man taking advantage of the credulity of this woman, who is giving him her hard-earned money, but to find before long that she has been beggared, not only in purse, but in voice and spirit as well; that she has not been benefited in any sense, but sadly robbed and betrayed?"
The persistency with which the modern scientist attempts to hammer a voice out of the larynx and surrounding material tissues and other physical agencies is a cardinal sin against the holy "spirit." When he uses this supposed knowledge for coining it into money at the expense of trusting and aspiring singers, he commits a malpractice, for which some day he will have to go to the penitentiary of his own conscience; that is, if he is in possession of any. "Vocal bands, mucous membranes, tissues, ligaments, muscles, hollow spaces, air-pressure,"—these are the factors productive of the voice divine; matter, nought but matter; not a spark of the divine afflatus, not a spark even of life.
Journals devoted to the voice are full of these things. I will quote but a single instance. At the Music Teachers' National Convention, held in New York, in June, 1898, a sensation was created by Dr. Frank E. Miller (see Werner's Magazine for August, 1898, page 490) saying:
"In other words, I wish to say that the action of the cavities or hollow spaces is anterior and prior to the action of the vocal bands in production of tone and tone-quality in our organs of speech. With this novel fact I announce an original discovery."
It is such stuff as this that these people feed upon and believe in as revelations of great moment. Yet Dr. Miller and his coadjutors might sit before these cavities or hollow spaces till the end of time, looking, observing, probing, measuring, weighing, and determining their relation to the vocal bands and vice versa, and not a vestige of the spirit of the voice would ever make its appearance. The last conundrum of this kind, and it has special reference to my discoveries, is as follows: "May not the disturbance of speech known as stammering or stuttering be mainly a condition caused by the putting out of gear of one air-chamber in its relationship to other air-chambers, whereby the air-pressures during the speech-act are at war with one another, resulting in the well-known manifestations?" (Werner's Magazine for September, 1898, page 59). Air-chambers and air-pressures again. I protest against being made particeps criminis in any such proceeding.
When we go back to the earliest recorded times and find traces of an attempt at expression by means of crude signs or figures impressed upon the clay, we can see more of the potentiality of a science (or a civilization) arising therefrom than we can from the teachings of the laryngoscopists, who claim that the voice can be evolved from the relations of various forms of matter to one another, without even a trace of the spirit accompanying them.
Not many years since audiences of intelligent persons were invited to watch a dark tent in which two men were so closely tied together (as it was supposed) that they could not possibly move a limb. From this tent noises would arise as of the dragging of chains along the floor, bells ringing, etc., interposed now and then by a chair being flung through the air. All this was done by the "spirits." This was a proceeding not unlike the one now going on in the materialistic school in connection with the spirit of the voice. There is no more likelihood of the latter arising from the dark tent of the matter they are investigating than of a real spirit appearing in that other tent. The performance, besides, is not as amusing, no chairs being flung, etc. The audience is looking on gravely expectant, but all remains forever monotonously, solemnly, ominously, and cadaverously silent and resultless.
The living grain of corn a blind hen after much scratching succeeds in digging out from beneath a barn-yard floor bears a closer resemblance to life, and hence to the voice, than the relations a professor of physiology scratches together out of the various parts which he supposes make up the instrument of the voice. These attempts are so contrary to reason and common sense that in any other science their originators would be laughed to scorn for their pains.
The other great issue with physiologists in connection with the voice is that of breathing. Clavicular breathing, costal breathing, diaphragmatic breathing, etc.—these are some of the terms in common use, and the "modes" of breathing commonly practised. Each of these modes is supposed to be practised separately and at the will of the performer. They are praised and recommended or condemned according to the special view of the practitioner. Systems are based on these special modes and schools arise therefrom. What one "school" practises is condemned by another. And how could it be otherwise, all being wrong?
Being homogeneous entities, whose wholesome existence is based upon a harmonious coöperation of all parts, we cannot practise breathing from a special part without every other part more or less participating. The act of breathing being our most vital performance, every other part would suffer if it were confined to any special part. Our entire system, therefore, must participate therein; the hemisphere of the abdomen no less than that of the thorax; both hemispheres coöperating with each other and with other streams introduced into our system through the pores and every other opening in the body. For a moment, and for an especial expression, one part may prevail over another; but the true artist will always breathe in such a manner that after such an effort all parts will again harmonize and balance one another. He will have such control over his breathing powers that he can at any time throw the balance of power into one direction; but he will never let any one direction continue to prevail over any other.
Every theory heretofore advanced in respect to our mode of breathing, being based upon false premises, is wrong in the abstract, and impossible of practical execution.
If I have expressed myself strongly, it is because I feel strongly the injury which has been wrought by this so-called "science" of the laryngoscopists. It has in thousands of instances hindered the natural development of the voice, and has in many other directions done incalculable harm; while it has in no direction ever done any good. It has oppressed the intellect, depressed the spirit, and suppressed the soul of singers. Let me add but this: What would be the use of the most scientifically constructed stove, filled with the most appropriate fuel, if the flame were wanting to set fire to this fuel? Supposing the laryngoscopists to comprehend the intricate construction of the stove (the body), the highly sensitive and complicated apparatus of the fuel (the instrument of the voice)—both of which, however, they are greatly in the dark about—the flame would still be wanting to set fire to this fuel and fill the stove with the holy glow of song. This flame (the life, the spirit) they do not even pretend to be able to furnish. They only give us the stove and the fuel, which remain forever dark, cold, lifeless, inert.
To set myself up in judgment regarding these important issues, or to place my judgment over that of so many eminent persons in the past as well as the present, may appear to be a presumptuous, rash, bold, and almost unwarranted undertaking. It is not my fault, however, that there should be such utter confusion existing in these matters; that no one should have ever succeeded in reducing this chaos to any kind of order; that I am the heir, so to say, to this condition of affairs; the trustee to this inheritance, who is to make use of it to the best advantage of all that are interested.
Nor is it my fault that, not by dint of superior endowments, or any other qualities of a superior order, but simply through the discovery of the dual nature of the voice, I should have obtained an insight into, a mastery over, these matters never before enjoyed by any man. Yet there seems to be a disposition on the part of some persons to throw blame on me for these facts; in place of furthering, to suppress, this knowledge; in place of probing and investigating, to assume that it is simply the outcome of a somewhat more than lively imagination. It appears to me that this is partly done in the interest of the vast literature on these subjects now in existence, which will become obsolete and valueless as soon as the truth in matters of the voice has been established.
I dare say this simple fact, "We breathe and speak through the œsophagus in conjunction with breathing and speaking through the trachea," for real knowledge, is worth all of the entire literature on the voice, as a science, now in existence.
The science of the voice, as I understand and am trying to explain and establish it, is one not so much of mechanical issues, though they have their share in it, as one in which the spirit, this heretofore unapproachable issue, performs the greatest and most vital part. It is a question of life, and every issue and every agency governing life are involved in it. How vast a science this science of the voice therefore is, can be better imagined than at once fully comprehended. I am far from being able to present it in all its aspects, but shall endeavor, as I have already partly done, to continue to give a general outline of it.
It will take time and patience for any one to acquire this knowledge, but the reward will be more than commensurate. To superficially obtain it from others is not sufficient; one must learn to know it of one's own knowledge. It is an academic study, embracing many sciences. A person must enter into it with his whole being if he wants to get hold of the spirit thereof and be truly benefited thereby. He must identify himself with this knowledge, must become part and parcel thereof, or it must become part and parcel of him. When this is done, true teachers of the voice will arise, for here is a chance for greatness to assert itself. It will be death to all hackneyed knowledge and charlatanism.
When the true knowledge of the production of speech and song for every language has been established, when we have a real science of the voice, the teacher comprehending these issues in their entire latitude will be able to teach how to interpret Mozart, Schubert, and Wagner, Rossini and Verdi, Gounod, and every other master in the tongue and the spirit in which he has produced his works.
The genius for execution in the art of singing is with the Anglo-Saxon race, but not for composition, for original conception. It may come, but it is not with it now.
The desire of the singer naturally is to embrace the highest in her or his repertoire. At present it is Wagner. But how can Wagner be rendered without a comprehension of his genius as expressed through his language? The genius of the master and the genius of the language he wrote and composed in cannot be separated. They are soul and body of one and the same entity. Without the comprehension of the genius of the German language, of its idiomatic expression, it is not possible to reproduce what Wagner meant to express by his work. To sing German with an English tongue is an anomaly; it is still English in the real sense of the word, and not German. It is an unnatural proceeding, and therefore injurious to the vocal organs of the singer.
No one would expect a foreigner, for the delectation of a native-born audience, to recite before it poetry in the latter's language, or a native-born person to recite before it in a foreign tongue. In either case such a person would fail. Why, then, song, this sister art and accomplishment?
All these are questions which, though ever so reluctantly, artists will have to face. It complicates their art, but it will also, when understood, make it comparatively easy. Americans will then sing the works of foreign masters with the same perfect ease that they do those of their native composers, and so will persons of every other nationality.
Who will be able to teach a foreign language so well as the natives of each respective country? provided such persons have learned to comprehend the difference between the mode of production of their speech and that of their scholars. In that case only will a German be able to teach an Anglo-Saxon his (the German) language for either speech or song. It will be the same with every other nationality.
The teachers, as a class, are with me. They feel that the efforts of the physiologists to aid them in their vocation are wrong and misleading. They have no faith in the revelation of matter. They know matter is inert, powerless for any purpose without the indwelling of the spirit; that the spirit reigns over and controls every manifestation of life; and that the voice in singing is one of the highest manifestations thereof. They know that song comes from the heart and the soul, while it uses the body for its instrument.
I have been told I must build up before tearing down; before destroying the old I must put something better in its place. I think it a praiseworthy undertaking, in itself, to destroy the false and the harmful. Besides, we cannot erect a new building before the old one has been removed.
As for this new science, I am doing what I can to put it into shape, to give a visible and tangible form to it as it has developed in my mind. The world has been able to do without it so long, those interested in these matters must have a little patience.
I specially appeal to the young to devote themselves to these studies and to thus become the precursors in the application of principles which are destined to revolutionize the vocal science of the world; the old being often too old to get out of lifelong practices, no matter how erroneous. I appeal in like manner to the students of medicine, and to those of every other branch of science, whose aim is the knowledge of man in any of, and all, his relations.
