The Psychology of Singing / A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern

by David C. Taylor

In direct proportion to the prominence given to the idea of mechanical management of the voice, the difficulties of teachers and students became ever more pronounced. The trouble caused by throat stiffness led the teachers to seek new means for imparting the correct vocal action, always along mechanical lines. In this way the progress of the mechanical idea was accelerated, and the problem of tone-production received ever more attention.

Faith in the imitative faculty was gradually undermined by the progress of the mechanical idea. With each succeeding generation of master and pupil, the mechanical idea became more firmly established. Something akin to a vicious circle was involved in this progress. As attention was paid in practical instruction to the mechanical operations of the voice, so the voice's instinctive power of imitation was curtailed by throat stiffness. This served to make more pressing the apparent need of means for the mechanical management of the voice. Thus the mechanical idea found ever new arguments in its favor, based always on the difficulties itself had caused.

It is impossible to assign a precise date to the disappearance of the old Italian method. The last exponent of the old traditions was Francesco Lamperti, who retired from active teaching in 1876. Yet even Lamperti finally yielded, in theory at least, to the mechanical idea. In the closing years of his active life as a teacher (1875 and 1876), Lamperti wrote a book descriptive of his method, A Treatise on the Art of Singing (translated into English by J. C. Griffith and published by Ed. Schuberth & Co., New York). When this work was about ready for the press, Lamperti read Dr. Mandl's Gesundheitslehre der Stimme, containing the first definite statement of the opposed-muscular-action theory of breath-control. At the last moment Lamperti inserted a note in his book to signify his acceptance of this theory.

Vocal mechanics was at first studied by teachers of singing as a matter of purely academic interest. No insufficiency of imitative teaching had ever been felt. Teachers of the transition period, even so late probably as 1830, had in most cases no reason to be dissatisfied with their methods of instruction. Garcia himself started out modestly enough to place the traditional method, received from his father, on a definite basis. His first idea, announced in the preface to the first edition of his École de Garcia, was to "reproduce my father's method, attempting only to give it a more theoretical form, and to connect results with causes."

Interest in the mechanics of the voice continued to be almost entirely academic until the invention of the laryngoscope in 1855. Then the popular note was struck. The marvelous industrial and scientific progress of the preceding fifty years had prepared the world to demand advancement in methods of teaching singing, as in everything else. When the secrets of the vocal action were laid bare, a new and better method of teaching singing was at once expected. Within very few years scientific knowledge of the voice was demanded of every vocal teacher.

Nothing could well be more natural than a belief in the efficacy of scientific knowledge of the vocal organs as the basis of instruction in singing. Surely no earnest investigator of the voice can be criticized for adopting this belief. No one ever thought of questioning the soundness of the new scientific idea. The belief was everywhere accepted, as a matter of course, that methods of instruction in singing were about to be vastly improved. Vocal theorists spoke confidently of discovering means for training the voice in a few months of study. The singer's education under the old system had demanded from four to seven years; science was expected to revolutionize this, and to accomplish in months what had formerly required years.

Even then tone-production was not seen to be a distinct problem. The old imitative method was still successfully followed. No one thought of discarding the traditional method, but only of improving it by reducing it to scientific principles. But that could not last. Soon after the attempt began to be made to manage the voice mechanically, tone-production was found to contain a real problem. This was of course due to the introduction of throat stiffness.

From that time on (about 1860 to 1865), the problem of tone-production has become steadily more difficult of solution in each individual case. This problem has been, since 1865, the one absorbing topic of Voice Culture. Probably the most unfortunate single fact in the history of Voice Culture is that scientific study of the voice was from the beginning confined solely to the mechanical features of tone-production. Had scientific investigators turned their attention also to the analysis of the auditory impressions of vocal tones, and to the psychological aspect of tone-production, scientific instruction in singing would probably not have been identified with mechanical management of the voice. All the subsequent difficulties of the vocal profession would almost certainly have been avoided.

Every attempt at a solution of the problem of tone-production has been made along strictly mechanical lines. Attention has been devoted solely to the anatomy and physiology of the vocal organs, and to the acoustic principles of the vocal action. Since 1865 hardly a year has passed without some important contribution to the sum of knowledge of the vocal mechanism. For many years this development of Vocal Science was eagerly followed by the vocal teachers. Any seemingly authoritative announcement of a new theory of the voice was sure to bring its reward in an immediate influx of earnest students. Prominent teachers made it their practice to spend their vacations in studying with the famous specialists and investigators. Each new theory of the vocal action was at once put into practice, or at any rate this attempt was made. Yet each new attempt brought only a fresh disappointment. The mystery of the voice was only deepened with each successive failure at solution.

A review in detail of the development of Vocal Science would be of only academic interest. Very little of practical moment would probably be added to the outline of modern methods contained in Part I.