All that a writer on the training of voices can do is to lay down general lines, and give comprehensive suggestions. The teacher, to make any use of them must be indeed a teacher, not a mere mechanically automatic individual of only sufficient calibre to take the directions of a writer, and give them again. He should be both enthusiastic in his work, and willing to spend his strength in patience if he would have a choir of boys to sing reliably well. It is of the greatest importance that work should be set out on right lines, and that a thoughtfully prepared scheme should be arranged before commencing. I would here give my experience of two choirs I had at different times in agricultural districts, and in one of them I was well satisfied with the progress we made, while in the other my work was completely thrown away. The reason for the failure in the second instance (which I foresaw from the outset) will be gathered from the following account of our plan of campaign. The choir was a village one which met for rehearsal once a week. The organist attended and presided at a harmonium, and, nolens volens, I had at the beginning of each practice to take the choir through the whole of the next Sunday's services. The boys' voices were, at the beginning of my connection, uncivilised, and at the end of it—fortunately the question of ways and means not allowing the interval to extend beyond a few months—were as barbarous as at the commencement. There was absolutely no chance of making a name through these youngsters; and as to voice culture! How could it be possible to attempt it after labouring through such a programme as Canticles, Hymns, Psalms, Kyrie, and Amens?
I determined never to take office again unless I could have my own way in fixing the time-table of work. My success in the other case was owing greatly to the fact that I had one night a week entirely devoted to musical training and voice culture. This did not preclude us from relieving the drudgery of work by the singing of songs and hymns, but it allowed me the use of an unfettered judgment in the choice of what should be attempted. A teacher is heavily handicapped if after getting his boys for the first time to sing in the upper thin register, he is to follow his delicate work by singing half-a-dozen verses to a tune which will in the very first verse undo all that he has done, simply because its melodic progression encourages forcing. Experienced teachers will appreciate what I say on this point. Take such a tune as:—
—a tune which inevitably causes a wrong use of the registers by inexperienced boys. The tunes selected should further the work of the exercises, not undo it, and with diligence the teacher can find suitable tunes and chants for this purpose. My advice to all teachers is that before commencing work they should insist upon conditions that do not preclude success, and that they should not spend their labour in wearying drudgery with the full consciousness that to attain it is impossible.
One suggestion I would make is that the choirmaster, if he be not, as is often the case in villages, also schoolmaster, would do well to enlist the services of the school teachers in the village. It is not often practicable to have more than one—or two at the most—meetings of a choir during the week, and the length of the lesson must be, in consequence, at least an hour. For voice training in the earlier stages six lessons a week of fifteen minutes each are preferable to one of an hour and a half, and therefore I would urge the necessity of getting hold of the sympathies of the school teacher, and putting him on right lines to work out the choirmaster's ideas, if the offices be not united.
Voice work should be begun in the infant school. At Swanley it was my practice to give, I believe, daily lessons in the Infant Department, and the remarks made by visitors will bear out what I am about to say as to the possibility of getting young children to sing, and sing like little angels. I was always as pleased to exhibit my infants' vocal powers as to show those of my more advanced boys, and success was, comparatively speaking, more easily gained with them than with older boys, for inasmuch as the difficulty of registers and breaks does not exist as such with these tiny ones, and unless our plans be artificial or formed of caprice, this is what should be expected.
In the infant school the teacher can take hold of the good that is innate, and mould it; in the higher school he has to spend hours and hours eradicating the bad habits which shouting and untamed license have allowed to grow. By all means begin with the infants, and let their songs and nursery rhymes be written so as to "give them a chance."
But I am asked to say something that may be helpful to the choirmaster having to train the vocal organs of boys who are beyond infantile methods. I will therefore suppose myself for the first time before an ordinary country group of lads with all the vocal faults that now appear indigenous to the locality. I should first get them to find the Upper Thin Register, and my plan is to confine the work to this region
