The art of music, Vol. 05 (of 14)

by Unknown

Exercises designed to impart the correct manner of breathing are usually given first as toneless gymnastic drills. The student is instructed to fill the lungs in a prescribed fashion (generally that described in Chapter I), and to make sure that the expansion of abdomen and chest takes place exactly according to rule. Practice in the muscular control of the expiration is combined with these preliminary breathing exercises, so soon as they can be performed with fair facility. When the muscular movements of breathing have been mastered as a toneless exercise, the practice is extended to exercises combined with tones, on single notes and scale passages. In these attention is paid to the proper attack and emission of the tone, as well as to the correct management of the breath. A great variety of breathing exercises have been formulated, but as their basic principle is always the same they call for no extended description. Any one of an athletic turn who has himself mastered the correct manner of breathing would have no difficulty in devising exercises suitable for imparting this system to others.

To secure the proper action of the vocal cords and laryngeal muscles the entire throat must be held in a state of supple relaxation before attacking a tone or phrase. In order to start a tone correctly a full inspiration is to be taken, then the vocal cords are to be brought to the degree of tension necessary for the desired pitch at the precise instant the expiration starts. The tone must be attacked squarely on the correct pitch and no breath allowed to escape before it starts. The breath pressure is to be held evenly and correctly managed throughout the entire expiration.

To secure this proper action of the vocal cords the so-called ‘stroke of the glottis’ was advocated by García. The glottic stroke is an explosive sound, formed when the vocal cords are forced apart suddenly by a rather powerful breath pressure. Its most frequent natural occurrence is in the action of coughing, of which it is the most striking auditory characteristic. Although command of the glottic stroke can be acquired without difficulty, it is utterly out of place in finished singing. What García had in mind in advocating the glottic stroke is declared by many of his graduate students to have been something entirely different from a violent explosion of the tone. All he sought was the starting of the tone without any previous escape of the breath. The stroke of the glottis, strictly so called, has been almost entirely abandoned by vocal teachers. Later authorities modified this instruction somewhat by teaching the ‘slide of the glottis,’ which brings about the same action without the explosive sound of the glottic stroke. Of recent years, owing to the better understanding of the principles of breath control, it has been found that neither the stroke nor the slide of the glottis is necessary. The same result can be reached by bringing the vocal cords to the desired degree of tension at the instant the expiration starts.

Much attention has been paid to the subject of registers, more probably than to any other feature of the vocal action. For a long time it was considered that each register of the voice must be trained separately and controlled in a special way. Various statements have been made by laryngoscopic observers as to the number of the registers and the actions of the vocal cords in each one.

At present the leading authorities recognize three registers, chest, medium, and head, corresponding to the lower, middle, and higher parts of the range of the voice. Individual voices vary in their possession of registers. Tenors usually have only the medium and head, the falsetto (confined generally to this voice) being in most cases of too effeminate a quality for use in artistic singing. Baritones usually have all three registers, basses only chest and medium. Sopranos may possess all three, although the chest register is seldom well developed in this voice. Mezzos have the chest and medium, and in the majority of cases the head register also. Contraltos possess the chest and medium, but very rarely the head register.

Teachers have in most cases discarded the plan of giving precise limits to the registers and training them separately. It is considered the best practice to bring about the correct action of the medium part of the voice, including command of the crescendo and diminuendo on the single tone, before beginning to develop the higher and lower portions of the range. The compass is then gradually extended upward and downward, care being taken to avoid the breaks which almost always resulted from the older system of training the registers separately.

Assistance is found in developing the low notes by the cultivation of chest resonance. High notes are helped by the use of nasal resonance and also by practice in attacking tones with the liquid or sonant consonants. Both these topics will be considered later.

Three resonance cavities have to be brought under control, each of which acts independently of the others. These are the chest, the mouth-pharynx, and the nasal cavities. As a rule the influence of chest resonance is most marked in the lower part of the voice. The mouth-pharynx (in addition to its almost exclusive province of vowel and consonant formation) reinforces the entire range, and the nasal cavities contribute most to the high notes.

It must not be understood, however, that in artistic singing chest resonance is to be used only on low notes and nasal resonance on high notes. The special function of nasal resonance is believed to be the imparting of brilliancy, point, and carrying power to the tones. While its effect is more marked on the high notes, it must always be present in some degree throughout the entire compass of the voice. Breadth and sonority of tone are supposed to be contributed by chest resonance, and these must also be present on all loud tones, whether high, medium, or low.

Yet as brilliancy and point are more native to the high notes, nasal resonance is always more marked in this part of the voice. In the same way the qualities of tone due to chest resonance belong more properly to the lower and middle tones. On the practical side this is of great importance. It is vastly more easy to secure command of each form of resonance first in that part of the voice to which it is native. When this has been done it is a comparatively simple matter to extend this command higher or lower as the case may be.