Voice, song and speech : a practical guide for singers and speakers : from the combined view of vocal surgeon and voice trainer / by Lennox Browne and Emil Behnke.

  • Browne, Lennox, 1841-1902.
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Voice, song and speech : a practical guide for singers and speakers : from the combined view of vocal surgeon and voice trainer / by Lennox Browne and Emil Behnke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by University of Bristol Library. The original may be consulted at University of Bristol Library.

    248/376 (page 222)
    c. Let the tone come well forward in the mouth, and try to keep it there. If you have a feeling as though it went away from you, and you had to run after it to catch it, it will never be a telling tone. d. Sing softly but vigorously, and above all things sing beautifully; or in the words of Mr. Deacon, Work for quality, and power will take care of itself. (Op. cit., p. 504.) Dr. Stone says, in the syllabus of his Royal Institution lectures, the voice excels all instruments in the power of combining sounds with significant words. With this we thoroughly agree ; but what if the significant words are pronounced in so slovenly a way as to be quite unin- telligible ? We all know that singers whose articulation is so clear that every word they utter is perfectly understood are scarce, while those who leave us in doubt as to whether they sing English, or Italian, or any other language are plentiful, and the number of those who mispronounce their words in a deplorable manner is legion. It might therefore be expected that we should, in this chapter, say something about articulation. We can, within the limits of this manual, only call attention to it in a general way; and the best advice we can offer to singers as well as to speakers, is that they should make a daily practice of reading aloud some of the tables on p. 110 of Mr. Ellis's ' Pronunciation,' and that they should also carefully work through those on pp. 128 to 143. The reader is led by easy stages from simple words, as eel, ill; eat, it; peat, pit, &c, to such as incomprehensibility and inter communicability. It is needless to add that the tables are systematically arranged, and that nothing is omitted.