Voice, song, and speech : a practical guide for singers and speakers ... / by Lennox Browne and Emil Behnke.

  • Browne, Lennox, 1841-1902.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Voice, song, and speech : a practical guide for singers and speakers ... / by Lennox Browne and Emil Behnke. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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

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    are not analogous, inasmuch as the pianist obtains his instrument ready made for him, and if he wear it out or injure it he can purchase another, while the vocalist has to form his voice, and if he wrongly use it, it may be gone for ever. A pupil on going over an exercise or piece is told by the master, You are singing with nasal, or throaty, or muffled quality, as the case may be ; let the tone be a pure vocal one. The master imitates the fault with exagger- ation, then (presumably) patterns correctly; but although the pupil recognises the defect he is unable to remedy it, because singing cannot be learned exclusively by imitation, any more than painting by copying the works of masters, however great. The teacher's injunctions serve but to be- wilder the anxious student, who would be only too thank- ful to produce pure and beautiful tone did he understand the process, and were the master possessed of sufficient practical knowledge of vocal physiology to rightly instruct him in control of the individual or various muscles whose imperfect action causes the defects in question. Analogies must not, then, be sought for between the practice of a living and of a mechanical art, which latter might be applic- able to certain rules for the education of a pianist and a violinist. The true analogy is to be found in the two arts of singing and painting, whereas the likenesses and differ- ences of practice with two instruments might be illustrated by the kindred mechanical graphic arts of engraving and lithography. We wish to urge that the singing pupil should not be asked to make a copy of any master, but to produce an original with all the differences and individuali- ties thereof. But what would be said of an art student who attempted a figure subject without knowledge of anatomy so as to understand the action of the various