[6] Cf. Vol. I, chap. XI.
CHAPTER III
MODERN SCIENTIFIC METHODS OF VOICE CULTURE
The transition from the old to the modern system; historical review of scientific investigation; Manuel García; progress of the scientific idea; Helmholtz, Mandl, and Merkel—Diversity of practices in modern methods; the scientific system; breathing; laryngeal action; registers; resonance; emission of tone; the singer’s sensations; correction of faults; articulation—General view of modern voice culture.
I
Students of the history of voice culture usually consider that the invention of the laryngoscope (1855) marks the beginning of the modern scientific system of training the voice. It is of course convenient to have a precise date to which any important change in human beliefs can be referred. Yet in this matter it is hardly possible to fix upon any one event as the only influence which brought about the change. As a matter of fact, there was a gradual and for a time almost imperceptible transition from the so-called empirical methods of the old school to the modern methods.
Scientific investigation of the vocal mechanism began, so far as the record shows, with Hippocrates, 460 B. C. His work on anatomy contains references to the vocal organs, showing that he had some ideas, rather vague it is true, about their structure. Aristotle (384 B. C.) recognized the larynx as the point of production of the voice. Galen (130 A. D.) wrote a valuable treatise on the anatomy of the throat. He gave the name of glottis to the space between the vocal cords, and his work was the standard authority on the subject for more than fifteen hundred years. Fabricius of Aquapendente, 1537, published a work embodying the results of his own dissections of the throat. He added greatly to the materials of Galen, although his ideas of the operations of tone production were hardly so sound as those of his classic predecessor.
In 1741 a French physician, Ferrein, published a little treatise entitled De la Formation de la Voix de l’Homme. This marks the beginning of the modern interest in the subject of the vocal action, as it was the first work on vocal physiology to receive any attention from those interested in singing. Among other things Ferrein gave the name of vocal cords to the edges of the muscles inclosing the glottis.
Dutrochet in 1806 compared the action of the glottis to that of the lips in playing the horn. He asserted that the sonorous vibrations of vocal sounds are generated by the muscles whose edges are formed by the vocal cords, and not by the vocal cords alone. Liscovius, in 1814, and Savart, in 1825, also published treatises, but their work served rather to foster the growing interest in the subject than to add anything of value to the general fund of knowledge. Johannes Müller, in 1837, showed that a compass of two octaves can be obtained by forcing air through an exsected larynx and varying the tension of the vocal cords.
In the early years of the nineteenth century the results of scientific investigation of the voice began to attract the attention of the most enlightened vocal teachers. There was indeed no dissatisfaction with the methods of instruction then in vogue. Yet a general feeling can be noted by a student of the literature of the subject as setting in about that time, a feeling that systems of voice culture might be improved by applying to them the results of the most recent scientific discoveries. Two important works by vocal teachers may be cited in this connection, Die Kunst des Gesanges, by Adolph Bernhard Mark (1826), and Die grosse italienische Gesangschule, by Heinrich F. Mannstein (1834). In both of these books the point of view generally held at that time is clearly indicated. While the old Italian method was held to be thoroughly satisfactory in every respect, there is a desire to explain this method and to place it on an assured basis of demonstrated scientific principles. No thought of direct vocal management as a necessity, or even as a possibility, can be discovered in these two works.
Manuel García (1805-1906), the vocal teacher who contributed most to the promulgation of the scientific idea, had at the beginning of his career exactly the same plan as Mannstein and Mark. His father, Manuel del Popolo Viscenti, was one of the most eminent musicians of the time. Famous as singer, teacher, impresario, and composer, the older García was in possession of all the traditions of the Italian school. From his father García received the traditional method in its entirety. Retiring from the operatic stage in 1832, García took up actively the profession of voice culture. Even as early as this he had definitely formulated a plan for the improvement of vocal methods. Yet at that time he had in mind nothing of the nature of a sweeping change. In the preface to his first important work, École de García, 1847, he stated that his intention was ‘to reproduce my father’s method, attempting only to give it a more theoretical form, and to connect results with causes.’