IV
A highly beneficial form of physical exercise is found in the regular daily practice of singing. All the muscles of the abdomen and thorax are strengthened by this exercise; the lungs are developed to their greatest normal capacity, and the habit is formed of breathing at all times in the most healthful manner. Both the circulation and the digestion share in the benefits derived from regular vocal practice, and the general health inevitably reflects the advantages incident to a proper performance of these most important bodily functions. An erect and graceful bearing, with well poised head and shoulders and firm, elastic step, can be secured through the correct practice of singing more readily than in almost any other way.
Yet the professional use of the voice imposes considerable restrictions on the singer’s habits of daily life. As Sir Morell Mackenzie has said, the singer is an athlete who must always be in training. A perfect condition of the voice demands a perfect state of general health. The singer must plan his whole life in conformity with the demands imposed on him by his art. The slightest indisposition of any kind is almost invariably reflected in the voice. Under the conditions in which people in the usual walks of life are placed, slight colds and trifling upset states of the digestive organs are a matter of almost no concern. But with the professional singer conditions are entirely different. So delicate and finely adjusted are the laryngeal muscles of the cultivated voice that their ‘tone’ may be upset by apparently insignificant causes. The mucous membranes of the larynx and throat are also highly sensitive to severe and unfavorable conditions.
It is necessary, therefore, for the singer to study himself, to learn by experience what is good and what is bad for him. This is a matter in which individual peculiarities play so great a part that only very general rules can safely be laid down. Singing within less than two hours after the eating of a hearty meal is almost certain to have an injurious effect on the voice. Exposure and over-fatigue must be carefully avoided. Stimulants, especially alcohol and tobacco, have a markedly bad influence on the mucous membranes of the throat. But beyond general statements of this kind, so obvious indeed that their truth is fairly well known, little can with safety be said as to the regimen imposed on the singer. That one man’s meat is another man’s poison is most strikingly true in its application to the voice. Many famous singers have been excessive smokers without seeming to suffer any ill results from the habit. Yet with most vocalists tobacco has a very irritating effect on the mucous membranes. So, also, with regard to eating and drinking, the widest differences of individual constitution are seen. Hot drinks are beneficial to some voices, injurious to others; cold drinks and ices are equally contradictory in their influence on the voice. All these questions of daily habit must be decided by each singer for himself and experience is the only safe guide.
There is a class of dangers to which the voice is exposed, entirely distinct from the influence of unfavorable conditions of the general health. Most of the throat troubles to which singers and public speakers are liable are directly traceable to a wrong use of the vocal organs. One of the most striking facts regarding the voice is this: If the voice is correctly produced it is benefited by exercise and improves steadily, year after year, in power, beauty, and facility of execution. On the other hand, when the voice is wrongly or imperfectly used exercise has exactly the opposite effect. Badly produced voices constantly deteriorate; their use results in course of time in throat troubles, of which the number and variety seem almost inconceivably great.
One general trouble lies at the bottom of all the throat ailments which follow on a wrong use of the vocal organs. This is a state of muscular strain suffered by the delicate muscles of the larynx. Every incorrect manner of producing vocal tone imposes an excessive degree of effort on these muscles. On the practical side the difference between the correct production of tone and any wrong use of the voice may be stated thus: When the voice is correctly used each tiny muscle of the larynx exerts exactly the right degree of effort in its contraction. To just this amount of exertion the muscles are fitted by Nature and in it they find their normal and healthful exercise. Incorrect tone production, on the other hand, always involves an excessive expenditure of effort on the part of the laryngeal muscles. The throat is in a state of muscular stiffness, in which all the muscles are contracted with more than their normal and appropriate degree of effort.
Muscular stiffness is indeed possible in any part of the body. It can be well illustrated as follows: Take a pencil and a sheet of paper and copy a few lines of what you are reading; grasp the pencil with all the strength of your fingers and exert all the power of your hand and arm in forming the letters. You will find that your arm and hand tire after a few minutes of writing in this manner. This follows from the expenditure of vastly more effort than is required for the purpose of writing.
All the muscles of the body are arranged in opposed pairs and groups. As your hand rests on the table, the contraction of one set of muscles brings the thumb and the first two fingers together so as to grasp the pencil. An opposed set will, by their contraction, spread these fingers apart, and the pencil will be released. If, now, both these sets of muscles are contracted at the same time the pencil is held stiffly, and the hand moves to form the letters only by the exertion of considerable effort. The muscles themselves are stiffened by this simultaneous contraction of opposed pairs and groups.
Throat stiffness, the characteristic feature of all incorrect vocal actions, is exactly similar in its nature to the stiffness of the hand and arm just considered. The laryngeal muscles are also arranged in sets which oppose their action one to another. One set (the posterior crico-arytenoids) opens the glottis, another set (the arytenoideus and the lateral crico-arytenoids) closes the glottis and brings the vocal cords on tension. Now, if the glottis opening muscles are contracted during tone production, the opposed muscles must put forth enough strength to overcome the effects of this contraction in addition to that which they are normally called upon to exert. This applies also to all the other sets of laryngeal muscles. Through this excessive tension the delicate laryngeal muscles are strained and weakened, and in the course of time the voice is permanently injured. This condition of throat stiffness is by no means uncommon, a matter for which modern methods of voice culture are to a certain degree responsible. The attempt to manage the vocal organs directly is very apt to lead to excessive tension of the muscles.
Throat stiffness is very insidious in its workings. It tends always to become more pronounced and to impose a constantly greater strain on the voice. Yet in its beginnings the singer may be completely unaware of any trouble. The muscles of the larynx are very poorly supplied with sensory nerves, so poorly, indeed, that under ordinary circumstances we are utterly unconscious of their movements. Owing to this fact, a condition of strain may exist without making itself manifest by any painful sensation. It thus comes about that a singer may suffer from the constantly progressing effects of throat stiffness before its results are so pronounced as to be painful.
Yet there is one infallible way of determining whether a voice is correctly used, or whether, on the contrary, its production is characterized by excessive muscular tension. This is found in the sound of the tones. Any degree of throat stiffness is invariably reflected in the sound of the voice. A throaty quality of tone always results from an incorrect manner of production, and this quality can result in no other way. While a keen and highly experienced ear is needed to detect a slight degree of throatiness, any ordinary observer can hear this condition when it is very pronounced. True, it is very much easier to detect a throaty quality in the voice of some one else than in one’s own voice. The singer labors under this disadvantage, that he can never hear his own voice as clearly and with the same discrimination as can the people who listen to him. Yet by practice and careful attention this difficulty can in great measure be overcome.
For the cure of throat stiffness and its attendant ills the physician can do but little. Even the diagnosis of the condition can hardly be said to lie within his province. In very bad cases a swelling of the muscles inside the larynx can be detected, as well as a sympathetic congestion of the mucous membranes. The existence of nodes on the vocal cords, rather a rare condition resulting from long-continued vocal strain, can also be determined by laryngoscopic examination. But in the case of the great majority of singers suffering from the effects of throat stiffness the only competent diagnosis is made by the vocal teacher, whose ear is sufficiently trained and experienced to hear the exact nature of the trouble. Further, it is the vocal teacher alone who can relieve and permanently cure the condition. The physician can allay the inflammation of the mucous membranes and can temporarily stimulate the vocal muscles. But no lasting relief can be given in this way. Only one real cure is possible. That is the abandonment of the incorrect habits of tone production and the adoption of the correct manner of using the voice.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A certain allowance must be made for popular forms of speech in dealing with the subject of chest resonance. It is plain that the air in the chest cavity could not possibly be thrown into regular vibrations. In the acoustic sense the chest is not a hollow space, but a solid body. Filled as it is with the spongy tissue of the lungs, as well as the heart and the great blood vessels, there is no room for the formation of air waves or the oscillation of air particles. Another form of resonance is involved here, what is known in acoustics as sounding-board resonance. The reinforcing vibrations of the chest are those of its bony structure, which vibrates according to the same principle as the sounding-board of a piano.
[2] Overtones, or harmonics, are the tones produced by the vibrations of the individual parts of a resonating body, into which it automatically divides itself. See Vol. XII.
[3] Overtones. Cf. note above.
CHAPTER II
VOCAL CULTIVATION AND THE OLD ITALIAN METHOD
Historical aspect of vocal cultivation—The modern conception of voice culture; the mechanical and psychological methods—Ancient systems—Mediæval Europe—The revival of solo singing; the rise of coloratura—The old Italian method—The bel canto teachers: Caccini; Tosi and Mancini; the Conservatoire method; the Italian course of instruction; theoretical basis of the Italian method.
Musical historians generally agree that the training of voices for the purposes of artistic singing had its beginnings about the year 1600. Voice culture as a distinct department of musical education is held to date no further back than the time when solo singing first began to attract the attention of educated musicians. This view, however, is altogether misleading. From its very beginnings the art of music in Europe was built upon the foundation of singing; no other type of music was, indeed, recognized as a legitimate branch of the art until music had progressed through several centuries of development. Music was brought up to the beginning of its present stage of evolution through the working out of theories which were exemplified in practice only by the use of voices. Counterpoint, the basis of musical composition until well along in the seventeenth century, had its origin in vocal music; throughout its entire history, up to its highest expression in the music of Palestrina and his school, contrapuntal writing was applied only to works composed for voices. Even if no records were to be found of any means used for training the voice, the conclusion would be inevitable that, throughout all these centuries (roughly speaking, from the sixth to the seventeenth), some attention must have been paid to vocal development and technique. It is true that anyone endowed with a good voice can sing, with some degree of facility, any simple music which he has the ability to memorize. No technical training of the voice is needed to enable one to sing simple songs. Folk-music was the possession of the great mass of the people to whom any ideas of vocal management were utterly unknown. This was also true of the various classes of minstrels, troubadours, etc. Although theirs was purely a vocal art, the only training their voices ever received was that incidental to the actual singing of their music. But for the performance of the music incorporated in the Roman ritual throughout all its history this untutored style of singing would not have sufficed. A much better command of the voice was needed than can be acquired merely through the unguided singing of simple folk-songs and lays. Precision, power, and facility of voice were demanded in the music of the church and these could not have been hit upon by accident. The chances are all against a voice falling into the correct manner of production if called upon to sing music of any difficulty without some definite instruction. This will be made clearer by a consideration of the peculiar problem involved in any extended use of the voice.