a high one or not. I repeat that with voices which naturally are high, falsetto is not a "dodge," but a legitimate artistic effect. Furthermore, singers who in addition to control of the regular registers have control of falsetto, frequently find physical relief in passing from head to falsetto and back again.
Basses are of three different kinds. Basso profundo is the lowest bass; basso cantante is a flexible bass usually unable to sing quite as low as basso profundo; baritone is the highest bass—a voice midway between bass and tenor and partaking somewhat of the quality of both. The bass compass parallels that for contralto and alto at an interval of an octave and, in their use of the registers, basses and contraltos and baritones and altos have much in common. As with contralto, the natural singing register of basses is the chest register. The middle register is awkward to establish in bass voices, as the size of the larynx gives a large open cup space which is unsuited to the chest register. Therefore, with basses, when the capacity of the chest register is exhausted, it is best for the production of the notes above to make a complete change of adjustment to head register. Thus in bass the middle register practically is eliminated.
The high bass or baritone compass is from
It was seen that the question of registers with altos and contraltos was a complicated one, and similar complications exist with baritones. Some baritones can employ the middle register with ease, so that like certain contraltos they can sing in three registers—a rather weak chest register, middle and head (or falsetto) registers. The training of baritones is difficult, and should be determined by the tendency of the individual baritone voice—whether it inclines toward bass or toward tenor. For example, Jean de Reszke was at the beginning of his career the victim of faulty voice diagnosis. He was pronounced a baritone and trained for baritone rôles, with the result that he suffered from an exaggerated condition of fatigue after every appearance. Later the probable tenor quality of his voice was discovered, and when it had been developed along physiological lines best suited to its real quality, undue fatigue after using it ceased.
The division of the vocal scale into registers is not an artifice. It is Nature's method of assisting vocalization, her way of relieving the strain of the voice. A certain portion of the vocal scale lies naturally
in the chest register. But if this open adjustment is carried up too far, the tones are strained and eventually ruined. On the other hand if, at the proper point, the singer passes into the middle register, the strain is relieved; and the relief experienced is even greater when passing from middle into head, entirely releasing one set of muscles and calling an entirely new set into play.
The so-called "breaks" in the voice occur at points where one register passes into another; and it should be the aim of proper instruction in voice-culture to eliminate the breaks. They are due to the change in adjustment which each register calls for. The best method of "blending the registers"—of smoothing out the breaks—is to bring a higher register several tones down into the one below and thus bridge over the passage from one adjustment to another. To do this consciously would defeat its aim. It must be done in spontaneous response to the mental conception of the tone or phrase to be emitted. It must become second nature with the singer, a physiological adjustment in answer to a psychical concept—a detail, in fact one of the most important details, in that true physiology of voice-production which also takes psychical conditions into consideration.