Voice and Song.

Southern Cross, Volume 1, Issue 45, 3 February 1894, Page 12

Voice and Song.

Bv G. BARNES

of singing, Esk st., Invercargill.

[all eights eeseeved.]

THE MECHANISM op the VOICE

The term voice production is too often wrongly applied by teachers of singing. It is nonsense to talk about producing another person’s voice. Nature alone has provided the necessary material for voice production, and each possessor of the mate) ini alone has the power of using it. Properly speaking, I do not think a singing master can even be said to cultivate another person’s voice, for each individual must cultivate his own. All that teacher can do is to show a pupil how best to use his voice. Let me give an illustration •of what 1 mean. Suppose you have a garden in which are some rose trees, and that you know nothing about the cultivation of roses. If you desire that your rose trees shall have proper attention, you very sensibly apply to a gardener for information on the subject, and he, being a cultivator of roses, can, and will impart to you the knowledge he has himself ■acquired. Now, when your f trees are in full bloom, and the subject of admiration, who is the right person to be called their cultivator—you who have given the actual physical assistance, or the gardener, who, without seeing your garden, merely told you how to apply your energies ? As it is with the roses, so it is with your voice; oniy, if anything, much 4nore so ; for the gardener could, by {visiting your garden, catch hold of your rose trees, and cut, trim, and train them to bring about the result aimed at; but it is impossible for him to act in that way with your voice—you •only have the|physical control of that organ. And when one comes to look at it, there is a very great similarity in the perfection of a rose, and the perfection of a voice. In a wild condition, either has a certain amount of natural beauty, and is capable of creating sensations of a pleasurable kind; yet the absence of richness in colour effects, and the want of depth and solidity in outline of the ■one, may, on closer inspection, detract a great deal from the first impression of its appearance ; while the monotonous character or insufficient control of the other will make a lengthy experience of fcs other qualities positively disagreeable. Both can be rendered more permanently pleasing, when, guided by the experience of past successful experiments, their inherent but hidden possibilities are carefully made prominent; and to accomplish this, in the case of the voice, a little knowledge of the machinery employed by nature for the existence of its phenomena may be usefully sought for, and beneficially applied, though 1 am not one to advocate a study of anatomy as ■a sine qua non for the attainment of excellence as a vocalist The old Italian maestro was ■eminently successful in bringing out great singers without bothering his head about arytsenoid cartilages, or half suffocating his pupils with a laryngoscope. Now-a-days an aspirant to vocal fame, even if the fame is not to extend beyond his immediate family circle, talks learnedly about the larynx, and vaguely about “ the scale of two flats.” He has heard, or read about “ vocal cords,” and very often speaks of them as if they were -ordinary pieces of violin string, tuned to thu required pitch for the production of acute or grave sounds, according to whether the voice is to be a lovely tenor, or ponderous bass. Hr Armand Semple, in concluding an article -on the use of the laryngoscope, says —“ Personally, I should strongly recommend the professional vocalist to look at and think about his vocal cords as little as possible, and strenuously to avoid practising his voice with the laryngoscope in his throat,” but unfortunately most of the books on singing, published for the edification of those who want to -sing, are full of references to the cords, and the instrument for examining them with Hie consequent result that “ throaty tone ” isjevery day becoming more noticeable. At the risk, theretore, of being consideredinconsistent, I shall touch in this chapter upon the mechanism of the voice, but only for the purpose of correcting a wrong impression with regard to the •seat of sound, and to bear out my assertion of belief, as expressed in the chapter on ‘ 4 ‘ Singing as a nmans to health,” that Dr. ■Chiilmette has thoroughly proved the generally received oj iuion as to the object of the ‘ vocal cords,’ to be not only false, but injurious. “ Yoice,” he says, “ is breath made vocal or phonetic. In other words, voice is breath converted into sound." therefore, other things being equal, the more breath one has, the more voice, and the less breath, the less voice. The reservoirs in which the breath is contained are called the lungs, and are suspended within the right and left cavities of the thorax, or chest, by the -windpipe, which zib its lower end branches off into two parts, one branch to each lung, and these two ■branches arc named bronchi.

The substance of the lungs is very soft and ■elastic, and thus they are capable of great ■expansion and contraction. The air-cells of the lungs amount almost to the incredible number ci six hundred millons, the aggregate surface of which is equal to about twenty ■times the exterior surface of the human body. The number of the air-cells cannot be iu--creased, but their size may be, though in most persons a vast multitude remain undeveloped, itxercise in the open air is most assuredly •iicii'. liciai *.o the lungs, for it expands them ; -while on the other hand, the confinement of

a person to bed for three or four days will shrink them to half their volume. A person with a very small and contracted chest cannot have large lungs ; for while the chest remains thus, the lungs have not the room for their full development. It docs not follow, however, that every person with a large chest has necessarily large lungs, for an apartment may be large and its occupants small—the exterior of a nut may be large, and firm, and strong, while the kernel within is shrunk and withered. So with regard to the lungs. Those who rely exclusively on dumb-bells for the development of the lungs will find themselves miserably disappointed. They may by that means increase the circumference of the n spiratory chamber, but if they would develop the lungs to the utmost, they must breathe artistically and systematically. In a silting position, one loses from 10 to 15 cubic inches of lung capacity ; lying on one’s back will create a loss of 20 to 35 inches of capacity; and when the body is doubled up the capacity of the lungs is reduced to about one half. Erect position is therefore everything for obtaining the full healthy play of the lungs. The reception of pure atmospheric air into the lungs vitalizes the blood, and fits it to subserve various purposes in the animal economy. The vitality of the external tissues, however, is dependent not immediately and directly on the lungs, but on the air which is taken up by the capillaries. No matter how large a man’s lungs may be, if hie skin were varnished, he would suffer severely, and soon die. If we were constituted like the feathered songsters, who breathe through every plume, we should each have a voice equal to that of fifty stentors.

(To be continued.)