As these methods of tone-production are of so much importance, it will be worth while to analyze them. It will be found that in each there is a characteristic use of the breathing mechanism. The larynx and the resonance-chambers are of course intermediate, as usual, between the breath-stream and the result, the tone; without them there could be no tones. But if the student have clearly in mind the memory of the tone he wishes to produce, including its various properties of pitch, volume, quality, etc., it will be found that the point requiring strict attention, in production, is the breathing, especially the manner of using the expiratory current.
1. The sustained tone requires an amount of breath proportional to its length, and the great aim in its production should be to convert, so to speak, all the breath into tone, as we explained in a previous chapter. This sustained tone, which may be practised with advantage on every one of the notes of a scale, is, in the nature of things, the very foundation of all good singing and speaking.
2. In the second and third exercises the differences in the method lie in the attack and the manner of using the breath. The smoothly linked tones are the more difficult for most people, since they require special control over the laryngeal mechanism and the breathing apparatus. Between the singing of a scale in this manner (legato), and as it is frequently done, there is the same difference as in walking up-stairs as does a perfectly trained ballet-dancer, and this act as carried out by a rough countryman, used only to ploughed fields, etc. For a perfect execution, the attack, while decisive enough, must be most carefully regulated, and the breathing, which is always to be considered in a good attack, must be of the most even character; the outflow requires the most perfectly controlled movements of the respiratory apparatus. In the other form of exercise (detached tones) there is often, at least, a little more emphasis on the attack, and the breathing is perhaps not always so even, but in some passages, in actual singing, the method employed for these less closely linked tones is in most respects the same as the last.
3. Very different from all the preceding is the mode of production usually designated by musicians staccato, marcato, etc. The tone is attacked suddenly, and as suddenly dropped, which, expressed physiologically, means that the entire vocal mechanism is rapidly adjusted, one part to another, and as suddenly relaxed; and the one seems to be about as difficult as the other. In this a certain sudden tension of the vocal apparatus is essential. The whole respiratory apparatus, after the breath is taken, is held more or less tense. In executing these abrupt (staccato) effects the diaphragm is the chief agent, and operates against the column of air in the lungs, the chest and abdominal walls being kept more or less tense.
Though this is the case, the voice-producer will succeed best if he gives attention to the resonance-chambers, after having put the breathing mechanism into the right condition. There should be as little movement of the chest walls, diaphragm, larynx, etc., as possible. The whole is a question of tension, but not rigidity, and the reason the staccato effect is so difficult for most persons is that they attempt to accomplish it by excessive movements of the breathing apparatus or larynx.
The mind must be relieved of any feeling of undue tension, and the result attained by the establishment of a close connection between the ear and the resonance-chambers. The first interrupted effects should be of very brief duration and as piano as possible, but the attempt to produce the real staccato may to great advantage be preceded by an exercise recommended in [Chapter VIII.],—viz., singing a tone of some duration, then suddenly interrupting it, and, with the same breath, beginning the tone again as suddenly as it was interrupted. In fact, till this can be done with ease the staccato proper should not be attempted, for though the principles involved are the same, the execution requires far more skill than the exercise recommended for an earlier stage, and which it is well to continue throughout.
Simple as these exercises seem from mere description, or as carried out with a certain degree of success, perfection in them is not to be attained short of years of the most diligent study. How many singers living can sing an ascending and a descending scale, in succession, with a perfect staccato, to mention no other effect? Yet among all the resources of dramatic singing and speaking none is more important than this one. What so eloquent as the silence after a perfect stop—a complete and satisfactory arrest of the tone? How many modern actors are capable of it? How many singers? Instead of the perfect arrest, the listener is conscious, not of the rounded and complete tone, but of an edge more or less ragged. There is some noise with the actual tone.
The above exercises, when carried out to a perfect result, give us bel canto singing, for which the old Italian school was so noted, and which is now largely a lost art, not so much because the methods are not known to teachers, as because students will not do the work necessary to attain to this bel canto. We seek for short cuts, and we get corresponding results.
The bel canto is, simply, beautiful singing, the result of perfect technique, and is opposed to effects which are not truly artistic, though no doubt often highly expressive to the unmusical and the inartistic. They may appeal to us as feats, but they are not artistic results, and, as we have before insisted, they are injurious in many cases to the vocal organs, while good voice-production strengthens them.
5. The swell is simply a modification of the sustained tone. When a tone is perfectly sustained, without any change in volume, etc., we have a most valuable effect, and one very difficult to achieve, because it implies such a steady application of the breath power and such nice adjustments of all the parts concerned. To produce a tone with variations in it is easy enough, and that is what is usually given us instead of the perfectly even tone, reminding us of a straight line.