those higher qualities that are summed up in the word "artistic." It would be a physical, not an art product, a product generated by the body without the coöperation of the mind or soul. When it is considered that the larynx, in which the vocal cords are situated, is permeated by a network of muscles through which it is capable of some 16,000 adjustments and readjustments of shape, all of them pertinent to voice-production, and that the same thing also is true of the pliable portions of the resonance cavities; that these muscles act in response to an even finer network of nervous filament; and that the constant shaping and reshaping of various parts of the vocal tract during voice-emission is directed by messages from the mind, soul, or art-sense of the singer, messages which travel via nerve to muscle—the only route by which they can travel—it becomes possible to appreciate the importance of the sensory or psychological function which, I hold, should be added to the purely physical ones of motor, vibration and resonance. For by it these functions are enlisted in the service of art and made immediately and exquisitely responsive to the emotional exaltation of music and song. Nor are these vague terms. Psychology of song and psychological action in general may seem indefinite
and unintelligible. They become, however, absolutely definite and intelligible when the part played by the nerves as intermediaries between mind and muscular action of a subtle and highly refined order is appreciated. The mind presses the button, the nerves carry the messages, and muscle acts instantaneously and responsively.
The student need not despair because so many separate acts seem necessary to the production of even a single tone. It is true that air has to be taken into the lungs and emitted from them; that it must be controlled by the singer as it passes up the windpipe; that the vocal cords and other parts of the larynx must be given their specific adjustment for each note; and the cavities of resonance shaped in sympathetic coördination with those numerous adjustments, while the lips also have their function to perform. But it is equally true that correct instruction supplemented by assiduous practice merges all these separate acts into one. The singer thinks the note, forms what may be called a sounding vision of it in his mind, and straightway the vocal tract adapts and coördinates all its parts to the artistic emission of that note. It is auto-suggestion become habit through practice.
Because the larynx is so important a factor in generating voice, writers on voice-production have described it with much minuteness, and because of these minute descriptions readers may have obtained an exaggerated idea of the size of this organ. But one of the marvels of voice-production is the smallness of the organ in which voice is generated, the size of the average larynx being about two inches in height by an inch and a half in width. Yet so numerous are the adjustments in shape of which this small organ is capable that the phenomenal soprano, Mara, could make 100 changes in pitch between any two notes in her voice, and as this had a compass of twenty-one notes, it follows that she could produce no less than 21,000 changes in pitch within a range of twenty-one notes. While in Mara's day this no doubt was attributed to a natural gift of voice, modern study of voice-physiology and of the metaphysics of voice-production readily accounts for it. It needs an ear naturally or by training so delicately attuned to pitch that not only all the fundamental notes of a voice, but all the numerous overtones at infinitesimal intervals are heard in what may be called the singer's mental ear; that the nerves convey each of these sounding mental conceptions to the
intricate system of muscles in the larynx and resonant cavities and that the right muscles immediately adjust the larynx and cavities of resonance to the shape they have to assume to sound the corresponding note. Every vocal tone is, in fact, a mental concept reproduced as voice by the physical organs of voice-production, so that every vocal tone is, in its origin, a mental phenomenon. That is why an inaccurate ear for pitch results in a vocalist singing off pitch. His mental conception of the note is wrong, the message conveyed from the mind over the nerves to the muscles of the vocal organs is wrong, consequently they shape themselves for a note that is wrong, and, when the note issues from between the singer's lips, it is wrong—wrong from start to finish, from mind to lips. Thus again is illustrated the intimate connection between psychology and physiology in voice-production, and the necessity of having every function concerned therein so thoroughly trained that every act from mental concept to sounding voice is correctly performed through a habit so thoroughly acquired that it has become second nature. In common parlance one might say to the student of song, "Get the correct voice-habit and keep it up," for that really is what it amounts to, only it is necessary
that great stress should be laid on the word "correct."
It now becomes necessary to describe the larynx, and this I will endeavor to accomplish without puzzling the reader with too many technical terms. The study of the larynx was made possible by the invention of the laryngoscope in 1855 by Manuel Garcia, a celebrated singing-master. It is a simple apparatus—which, however, does not detract from but rather adds to its value as an invention—and has been a boon to the physician in locating and curing affections of the throat. Its essentials are a small mirror fixed at an obtuse angle to a slender handle. Introduced into the mouth it can be placed in such position that the larynx is reflected in the mirror and thus can be observed by the operator. Those who have had their throats examined with the laryngoscope will recall that the operator wears a reflector over his right eye. Through a central perforation in the reflector he views the image, which is seen the more clearly for the light thrown upon the laryngoscopal mirror by the reflector. It would be possible after comparatively little practice with the apparatus for a singer to examine his own larynx. But it would be most inadvisable for him to do so. Either he soon would become "hipped" on the subject of innumerable imaginary throat troubles, or his voice-production would become mechanical, which is very different from the spontaneous adjustment of the vocal tract described above.
