The mechanism of the human voice

by Emil Behnke

From Mr. Lennox Browne's "Medical Hints on the Production and Management of the Singing Voice," by permission of Messrs Chappell and Co.

The front outline A of the shaded figure represents the chest after full expiration; the black continuous line A gives the increase in size of the chest, and the descent of the diaphragm, indicated by the curved transverse lines, in full abdominal respiration. The dotted line C shows the retraction of the diaphragm and of the abdominal muscles in forced clavicular inspiration. The varying thickness of the line B indicates the fact of healthy breathing in a man being more abdominal than in woman. The outlines of forced inspiration in both sexes are remarkably similar.

The combined forms of midriff and rib breathing are the right method of inspiration, while collar-bone breathing is absolutely wrong, and should never be made use of. The reasons of this are not far to seek. The lower part of each lung is large and broad, while the upper part is cone-shaped, and very much smaller. It is self-evident, therefore, that by downward and sideways expansion (enlarging the lower part of the lungs) you will inhale a much greater quantity of air than by drawing up the collar-bones. This consideration alone should suffice to prove the utter falseness of collar-bone breathing. Collar-bone breathing has also the additional disadvantage of causing much fatigue, because all the parts surrounding the upper region of the lungs are hard and unyielding, so that a great amount of resistance has to be overcome (the "lutte vocale" of French authors), while the very opposite is the case with the lower part of the lungs.

Mr. Lennox Browne, who was, I believe, the first to direct the attention of English readers to this matter, says,[C] "Clavicular [collar-bone] breathing is a method of respiration totally vicious, and to be avoided. By it the whole lower part of the chest is flattened and drawn in, instead of being distended; consequently the lower or larger part of the lungs is not inflated. It is a method never exercised by nature in a state of health, but only when, from disease, either the abdominal or chest muscles cannot act; and it is the method least efficacious in filling, as it is the one calculated to most fatigue the chest; for it compresses the vessels and nerves of the throat, and this leads to engorgement and spasmodic action of the muscles."

We may well pause here and give another moment to the consideration of this most important subject. The lungs, as we have seen, are the bellows of our vocal organ; they supply the air which is the motive power on which the voice depends. Without air no tone can be produced. Nay, more, life itself must cease without it. Breathing goes on regularly while the voice is silent; but in speaking and singing both inspiration and expiration have to be regulated according to the nature of the phrases to be spoken or sung. If the speaker does not know how to take breath and how to control the expiration, his delivery will of necessity be jerky and uncertain. But in the singer it is even more important that he should be able to fill his lungs well, and, having done this, to have absolute command over his expiration; because while the speaker can arrange his sentences, his speed, and his breathing-places very much at his own pleasure, the singer is bound by the music before him. It must, therefore, be his aim to cultivate a proper method of breathing with the object of first getting, with the least possible fatigue, the largest possible amount of air in the most scrupulously careful manner, so as to prevent even the smallest fraction of it from being wasted. Yet how seldom is breathing systematically practised as an indispensable preliminary to the production of tone! I have no hesitation in saying that the subject is, in many instances, dismissed with a few general observations. Pupils, of course, take breath somehow, and teachers are glad to leave this uninteresting part of the business, and to proceed to the cultivation of the voice.

It may be as well to add that what has been said so far about right and wrong methods of breathing is not by any means mere theory, but that any one can convince himself of the truth of the rules laid down by making a few experiments with the spirometer, an instrument for measuring the breathing power of the chest by indicating on a dial the exact number of cubic inches of air expelled from the lungs. This breathing power will be found to vary according to the way in which the inspiration has been accomplished. In my own case, for instance, the spirometer should register, according to the table of comparative height and breathing power compiled by John Hutchinson, 230 cubic inches. Having suffered from severe attacks of bleeding from the lungs, my maximum with midriff and rib breathing is only 220, but with collar-bone breathing I barely reach 180!

During the Summer Session of the Tonic Sol-fa College I carefully tested the breathing capacity of ten students, and found that there was an average excess of midriff and rib breathing over collar-bone breathing to the extent of 25 cubic inches: the least amount of their increased power was 12 cubic inches, and the greatest was 45! I imagine that these figures are more eloquent than any words, and I think it superfluous to make any further comment on them.

I am strongly of opinion that breathing exercises, especially in the case of intending public singers, should always be carried on with a spirometer,[D] because that instrument enables us with the greatest accuracy to check results which otherwise can only be guessed at.

If this suggestion were acted upon we should certainly no longer be distressed by that intolerable and never-ceasing tremolo which now so frequently mars many, in other respects, fine voices. It is a curious, and at first sight unaccountable, circumstance that this great fault is specially noticeable amongst French singers. But at the Conservatoire de Musique in Paris students are deliberately taught the wrong method of inspiration; for, as we gather from the "Méthode de Chant du Conservatoire de Musique," they are told to "flatten [or draw in] the abdomen" and to "bulge out the chest." Thus the mystery is at once cleared up, because the tremolo arises almost invariably from a weakness of the muscles of the midriff or diaphragm, to which attention has already been called in these pages. Owing to the abdomen being drawn in, the midriff never properly contracts; the muscles are not sufficiently exercised, and consequently have not power enough to resist the pressure that is brought to bear upon them in singing. They tremble, and this trembling being communicated to the lungs, which are resting upon them, the stream of air they give forth, loses its evenness and continuity, with the result I have just stated. It will be seen from the above explanation that this tremolo, one of the greatest vices besetting modern singing, and which has hitherto been held by many to be incurable, may be got rid of completely, though perhaps not very quickly, by the simple remedy of lung gymnastics on the right principle. The tremolo may certainly also arise from weakness of some muscles in the voicebox or larynx, by which the tension of the vocal ligaments is diminished and increased in rapid alternation. But this is a case for a medical man, which does not fall within my province to discuss, though I am justified in saying, on the authority of Mr. Lennox Browne,[E] that even in many of these cases the effect is clearly attributable to faulty breathing, since there is seldom any local disease of the larynx; while exercise on a right method of breathing will cure the spasmodic action of the laryngeal muscles with but little or no medical treatment.