Conclusions drawn from trained singers, alone, may be misleading. All classes of persons should be examined with the laryngoscope, if correct and far-reaching generalizations are to be safely made.
The precision and rigidity of physics and mathematics cannot be introduced with safety into a subject of this character; otherwise the division and limits of registers will be fixed with a narrowness of margin that does not comport with Nature's methods.
In all questions of register, the method of breathing—i.e., the nature of the application of the expiratory blast—must be duly considered.
With male voices, the subject is usually considered much simpler than in the case of female voices. Men sing mostly in the chest register; basses and barytones wholly so, with the rarest exceptions. Tenors are taught to do so. Whether there might not be a subdivision of this register made to advantage in training, the author leaves as an open question; but about straining, in the case of tenors and all others, and as to the importance of recognizing three registers for female voices, there is in his mind no question. The fact that some may not be able to produce head tones does not justify carrying up the chest register to any appreciable extent, even by altos.
Now, as in past times, the high falsetto for males, if good, the result of proper training, has the warrant of both art and sound physiology.
In the use of registers, sensations are infallible guides. Of these, the most important are those associated with the organs of hearing, but those arising in the vocal organs are also valuable.
Those only should expect to sing artistically, and to preserve their voices unimpaired for a long period, who wisely observe Nature's teachings in regard to registers.