First the hands. Clasp them loosely in front of you and then forget all about them! Make a point of practising it whenever you are fortunate enough to obtain an accompanist to play for you, or when you are having your singing lessons. Commit your song to memory so as to dispense with the music, stand away from the pianoforte, avoid propping yourself against the wall or leaning upon the furniture, stand easily, and let your hands clasp naturally and comfortably.
Now for the wriggling. Any of you who have had your photograph taken must remember the unpleasant little arrangement which the photographer sticks behind your head to keep it still; and some of you may have protested against the discomfort and unnaturalness of it and have appealed to be allowed to pose without it, only to get the answer that it is indispensable, as the head moves constantly, though not enough to be noticed, yet sufficiently to spoil any exposure longer than an instantaneous one. And yet the person being photographed is apparently motionless! Now watch someone who is telling some exciting news or some funny story, and you will see that the head moves with every word spoken—the more emphasis, the more movement!
I remind you of these things in order to show you how very necessary movement is to us and how, naturally, the head moves in speech rather than the body.
If you carefully watch a confirmed wriggler, you will notice that, though the body sways or the shoulders move, the head is very rigid and is usually held very high, and altogether the position looks constrained and awkward, and it has a disastrous effect upon the voice, for all these little awkwardnesses and uglinesses mean that there is a corresponding unnaturalness of production, and the memorable maxim in the Koran, that “there are many roads to Heaven, but only one gate,” applies forcibly to singing, in the respect that the only true singer is he who produces his voice with the most ease and simplicity (though that may have only been acquired by the hardest study) quite irrespective of the particular method by which he has been taught.
There is one great drawback which we must take into consideration from which all singers suffer more or less, and which is at the root of most of these faults of “deportment” and of this one in particular, and it is this.
A certain amount of nervousness is inseparable from singing, whether we sing to just one or two chosen friends or before a large concert audience, and even when we won’t confess to “feeling nervous,” we cannot escape from another form of it and a very trying one—self-consciousness. And the usual result of self-consciousness is to seize upon the muscles of the throat, to cramp and contract them till the head is held as if in a vice, so that the voice comes hard and strained; and as the natural movement of the head is prevented by this rigidity, Nature (who never stands still) asserts herself by giving the necessary movement to the body instead; hence the wriggling of the shoulders and the rocking from side to side.
In this case prevention is better than cure, and the best thing to do is to practise diligently moving the head from side to side whilst singing, especially when practising exercises. Do not raise it high, and avoid the inclination to raise it as the voice rises to the higher notes; but move it freely and constantly from side to side. At first you will find this very awkward, and it will seem terribly unnatural and ridiculous; but persevere, and you will find that not only your appearance will be improved, but your voice will come easily and your throat will not get that aching, tired feeling of which so many complain after singing for quite a few minutes, and which is due to the contraction of the throat and the constrained position of the head.
For the third point, facial expression, I commend you to your looking-glass. Indeed, the greater part of your study should be done with its assistance. First to be assured that your mouth is open, then to watch that no grimaces appear, no pucker between the brows, no opening the mouth crookedly, no blinking of the eyelids. Try to let your expression vary as freely as it does when you are talking.
Remember you have only your face to assist you. A reciter can call gesture to her aid; but a singer does not want to do anything that might bring down upon her the accusation of being “theatrical.” She wants to stand quietly and naturally, her hands folded, her head rather low, and tell her story, her face changing with the changes of her song.
But bear in mind that all these things which come naturally to us when we are not thinking about them or about ourselves become unnatural when we are struggling in the grasp of the demon self-consciousness, and it is for that reason that I conclude these hints with the paradoxical reminder that as the unstudied and natural usually looks constrained and unnatural, our aim must be to learn artificially and to practise incessantly to look natural.