Psycho Vox; or, The Emerson System of Voice Culture

by Charles Wesley Emerson

The mind expresses its degree of development through the vocal mechanism. As the individual rises in development, more thought is expressed in his voice. The voice of a baby has little mind in it; it reports little more than physical sensations. If its physical sensations are agreeable, the “coo” tells it more clearly than words could. As the mind continues to develop, one power after another manifests itself in the voice until we hear thought, affection, and choice speaking in unmistakable tones.

The voice is educated through inducing right states of mind while using it. Mont Blanc rises shoulder to shoulder with other mountains; then, towering above them, its brow pierces the clouds. One speaking while inspired with a sense of its sublimity need not be told not to speak on a high pitch, for he will feel no impulse so to do. Education means to draw out; therefore all true education is from within. If there ever was an age of the world in which this needed to be said, it is to-day. Materialism has spread all over the civilized world, influencing men in religion and in education. I admit that man is influenced by environment, but it must be remembered that man is not confined to material environment alone, his immediate environment is Spirit. Man learns not only from without, but from within; not through sense merely, but through soul.

Singing is heart speaking to heart; inward life speaking to inward life. The power of moving the feelings is the power by which the world is governed. A person may possess reason, but reason must speak in the form of feeling before it becomes effective in influencing others. Elementally considered, the singing and the speaking voices are one. Good teaching for the one is good teaching for the other. The first step in educating the voice is to teach the pupil to think in sounds. The voice is capable of expressing every mental activity—intellectual as well as emotional. The voice rarely fails to reveal the lower order of feelings, as physical pleasure or pain; it can also reveal the higher realm of feelings,—benevolence, love of truth for its own sake, love of good, sympathy with all conscious being, hope, faith, and all spiritual perceptions.

The mind must be trained to the perception of beautiful vocal sounds; it must hold these sounds as ideals while practising with the voice. It is at this point that the chief difficulty in vocal culture arises, viz., that of keeping the mind constantly and exclusively concentrated upon its ideals. If a person holds the right ideal steadily before his mind while properly practising, repetition will cause this ideal to take dominating possession of the tones, and thus shape them to itself and become incarnated in them.

I once heard a most interesting conversation between two gentlemen, one of whom was a Russian violinist. A young Italian had been entertaining a company by playing upon a violin. The Russian asked to see the instrument, and said to a gentleman sitting near, “This is a very old violin—probably a hundred years old.” The other replied, “I suppose it must be very valuable, then, for we are told that the longer a violin is played upon the better it becomes.” “Ah, my friend,” continued the Russian, “that all depends upon what kind of music has been played upon it. The tone of this violin indicates to my mind that it has deteriorated in value in consequence of its having been compelled to discourse music of an inferior quality.”

What a revelation in nature! The molecules that compose the wood of a violin can be marshalled into harmony by the music played upon it! If in the mind of the violinist there is melody and harmony of a high order, it finds its way through his fingers into the bow that touches the strings, and all the molecules of the resounding wood waltz into harmonious forms. What a spectacle for the eye of reason to see all these molecules begin to form into line and step out to the concord of sweet sounds born of the mind of the musician!

If this principle is true of the violin, is it not pre-eminently true of the vocal organism which was designed by its infinite Creator for the especial purpose of responding to the activities of the mind that inhabits it? As the mind thinks mystery, grandeur, or solemnity, the vocalized breath is shaped into corresponding forms of expression. In the throat is a beautiful instrument, made by Him who made the soul to require such an organ for its expression.

It is a fatal mistake to consider the voice as something separate from the man. The true voice is the soul incarnated in tone.

The mission of the voice is to communicate to others what is in the soul of each. The eyes of no two persons receive the same rays of light. All men know more than one man, because each person has his own individual point from which to view life and the world. If we listen not to the report of others, our lives will contain but little truth. A person with a grand intellect lies as open to the thoughts of others as the placid lake to the stars which it nightly reflects. Narrow minds will entertain only those thoughts which come to them through some channel in favor of which they maintain a prejudice. The receptive mind will “prove all things” by entertaining all things, and then “hold fast that which is good.”

This power to communicate thought through sound is beautiful and mysterious. A person listening to an orchestral composition often finds that the thoughts awakened in him correspond to those which inspired the composer.