Abstract
I.—SINGING THE voice, essentially a musical instru nent, has only of late been scientifically considered. Even now singing is too much dealt with as an art, and its acquirement as an accomplishment. The professional mystery with which it is surrounded serves no good purpose, and favours empiricism. At ladies' schools the old fiction of what are quaintly termed "finishing lessons" still survives; they often succeed in finishing any prospects the pupil may have had of becoming a singer. Most of the current primers and tutors are, ludicrously vague and feeble, many methods are absolutely injurious to the voice; for the improvement of which one ingenious inventor has suggested the use of a false palate, and another the fitting of singers' mouths with a Sort of bell-shaped snout or proboscis to act as a resonator. A chorus of such proboscidians on the Handel orchestra would be an appalling sight. The real foundation of our knowledge rests on the researches of Helmholtz on the physical, and of Garcia on the physiological, side. The classical discoveries of the foimer as to the production of vowel-sounds by the superaddition of a varying harmonic in the mouth-cavity, and of the latter by the examination of the larynx in action by means of a mirror, brought before the Royal Society in May, 1855, have formed the substratum of much which has now become the common property of scientific men. Dr. Bristowe, in his Lumnleian lectures of 1879, has added some pathological data of considerable value, and Dr. Waishe, in his "Dramatic Singing, Physiologically Estimated," has touched on points connected with the sympathetic and emotional power which this most perfect of instruments can be made to exercise. It owes this in a great measure to the fact that it can combine musical sounds with significant words, and thus interest at once the ear and the intelligence. After a demonstration of the action of the larynx and fauces in phonation, illustrated by some excellent photographs taken from his own larynx by Mr. Emil Behnke, and thrown on the screen, vowel, sounds were shown to be thirteen in number in the English language, with six more in French and German, fifteen of these being oral in origin, anti four, all French sounds, nasaL Consonants were about sixteen in number, and had been called "noises" by Max Muller, owing to their comparatively unmusical character. They are chiefly caused by some check or obstruction to the laryngeal note. A diagram of Madame Seiler's was, however, shown which indicates that there is an oral resonance-note even for consonants, though it is much more obscure and uncertain than that of the vowels. Melville Bell's division of vocal sounds into vowels, consonants, and glides or semivowels was adverted to, and his ingenious device of visible speech briefly explained, but left for fuller consideration in the second lecture. The contrast was then pointed out between singing, in which the musical notes predominate and are separate or discrete; intoning, which is speech intentionally rendered monotonous for better transmission in large spaces like cathedrals; recitative, which is the converse of the former, being singing partially loosened from the trammels of time, rhythm, and melody, so as to approximate to speaking; speech itself, whiDh uses continuous inflection; declaiming, which is speech with the addition of a histrionic and emotional element; reading, which is a faint and as it were distant reproduction of speaking in a Tower key, quieter and less marked in accent than in speaking viva voce and whispering, which is purely oral, without a laryngeal ground note, and which may be termed voiceless speech.
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Singing, Speaking, and Stammering 1 . Nature 27, 509–510 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/027509c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/027509c0