Garcia has accepted the division made by Müller, and universally adopted in science, of the chest, falsetto and head registers. I employ the same distinctions—a fact which it seems worth while to mention, simply because every teacher and school have their own terminology, and instead of falsetto we have fistel, throat, and middle or neck voice, &c. These denominations of the same registers have thus far only increased the obscurity prevailing in the art of singing.
MY OWN OBSERVATIONS WITH THE LARYNGOSCOPE
In giving an account of my own observations with the laryngoscope, I premise that laryngoscopy has of late attracted much attention among the learned, and that Czermak, Turk, Merkel, Lewin, Bataille, &c., have published a series of valuable observations, all of which, however, with the exception of Bataille’s, were made in the interest of science, for pathological purposes especially. My aim, in the employment of the laryngoscope, has been directed exclusively to the discovery of the natural limits of the different registers of the human voice; and although I have thus been able to observe many other interesting processes, it would not at all accord with the design of this book to communicate observations which have no direct relation to the culture of the voice in singing, and which come better from men of science than from a teacher of vocal music.
In using the laryngoscope while the breath is quietly drawn, I saw, as Garcia did, the whole larynx wide open, so that one could easily introduce a finger into it, and the rings of the trachea were plainly visible.
a. Arytenoid cartilages.
b. Epiglottis.
c. Trachea.[ 2 ]
d. Vocal chords.