Seed Thoughts for Singers Part 2

Friends Can Help.

Advice of friends is a source of value or injury to the singing student.

Advice has its influence. Every word spoken about one's voice and singing helps or injures. If placed in a circle which condemns every effort we make we are held back by that very influence from doing our best. Every judicious word of praise helps us upward. A pupil who is struggling by himself, without a word of cheer in his own home circle has a hard fight of it. For that reason it is very necessary that pupils whose desires are similar, and whose aims are toward the highest, should be gathered together. They help by their words, and often by their looks, the anxious student. "Forsake not the a.s.sembling of yourselves together," applies. After a pupil's recital, a judicious teacher will tell his pupils the kind things which the others have said. If unkind things should be said (but a teacher who is himself kind will not hear unkind things) he will keep those to himself, guiding himself, however, by those comments in the future treatment of that criticized pupil. In this connection, a word to the members of the family of the student. A mother, who steps into the practice-room occasionally when she hears good singing and says, "That was good. I see you are improving," aids the student as much as a half-dozen lessons will aid. A brother who banters his sister about her singing when he really enjoys it, knows not, oftentimes, that his banter hurts and harms. To be sure, the partiality of the home circle may foster false hopes, but since nearly every one can learn to sing well if rightly trained, that will do less harm than cold indifference and cruel banter.

Renew Thought.

The teacher who does not live in high thought, and who does not attempt to attain a high ideal, does poorer work than he thinks he does. It is an easy matter to settle into a rut and to follow certain lines. These wear themselves out. New ways of imparting time-honored teaching, although they may not change the principles of teaching, must be constantly sought. They will only come to mind by keeping the thought in the highest realm of intellectual possibility to that teacher. One who contemplates with restful care, in that higher realm, the beautiful in music, the way of influencing mind, and the most direct way of causing students to attain that which they need, will ever renew his method of teaching. Such renewal will contain something better than he had before.

Unless constant renewal, or at least frequent renewal, takes place, the rut will be entered upon. The longer one follows it, the deeper he becomes settled in it, and the harder is it to get out from it.

Speaking and Singing.

The basis of good singing is good speaking. The speaking voice in common use during conversation covers a range of five or six notes. Frequently lower and higher notes are called into use, but the high and low notes of the singing voice are seldom used in conversation. The organs which produce voice, from their constant use respond involuntarily to the will. They also do correct work. It is seldom that a person, unless he has deformity, has trouble to p.r.o.nounce any word or syllable, while talking. Would this were true of singers. The student would greatly lessen the amount of his labor and also reduce the cost of his musical education if he were able to speak the words as correctly and as easily while singing as while speaking. It is toward this imitation of the speaking voice that one must constantly strive if he would make rapid progress in voice development. When he has reached the point where he can sing every vowel and consonant perfectly, and with as little effort as when speaking, on every tone of his singing voice, and then have that voice loud enough to be well heard in any hall, the voice is completely and well cultivated.

a.s.sociates.

Singers cannot afford to miss the chance to be among great men. As a cla.s.s, musicians are narrow and that arises from the necessity of giving so much time to technical study. When the chance to meet and a.s.sociate with men of broad minds comes, take advantage of it. Even if the contact be not close some of the light shining from the great mind will illumine us, and will make us brighter. The great mind is drawing from inspired source, maybe, and the light which comes from that mind drives out darkness from whatever it covers. Light and darkness cannot remain together. Let the mind be thrown open to receptivity when one is in the presence of the acknowledged leader and good clear light, it may be from heaven, will flood the mind and illumine it.

Purity of Method.

Purity of vocal method must not be departed from by teachers. The introduction of new ideas is at best a hazardous undertaking. In the routine of teaching week after week and month after month the teacher finds himself casting about for a new idea. He finds something which pleases him and tries it on his pupils. Most teachers can look back at experiments which have failed. Better decide on a few basic principles and cling to them. The desire to try something new is very liable to be the result of fatigue from overwork. Better take a holiday; go away from the cla.s.sroom and rest. Come back to first principles again and go to work. The result at the end of the year will be better. Every teacher as he grows older resolves his ways of cultivating the voice into something very simple but which, as it condenses, becomes more powerful. There is only one right way and deep thinkers settle on that alike in time.

Mental Recovery.

A teacher cannot do better for himself and his work than to occasionally close the office door and sit quietly by himself for a half-hour. At such time crowd out the thought of all work, all planning, all worries, and all demands. Bring the mind as nearly as can be into inactivity. One will find in the hour when work is resumed that more of value will flood into the mind, he knows not from whence, than he can catch and apply in a great many hours. How many of us have times of refreshing. It is work, work, hour after hour and the wonder is that we do so much and yet do so little. Leave out some of the work and call activity of mind to our aid and we will do more work with much less effort.

Profession or Trade.

An item recently seen reads, "we would rather be a music teacher in an obscure town than be a prosperous tradesman in a large city." That has the sound of enthusiasm, and is the feeling of one who has the good of his fellowmen at heart. Every man who enters a profession gives up his life to do good. But few men in any professional life ever make more than a good living. Some can, indeed, save enough to make occasional investments, and these (if judgment has been good) secure a moderate fortune. But no man ever became wealthy from his profession alone. A professional man, however, gratifies his better nature and satisfies cultivated tastes. A man in trade becomes so engrossed in business that his better nature (his refined taste) is dwarfed. That comfort of mind which the professional man has is more to him than the bags of gold of the merchant would be. Probably the writer who made the remark quoted, had in mind the opportunity which the music teacher has to do good. It is a grand field of work, and one who has been engaged in it for several years wants no other. To lead the public by teaching and by public performance into the knowledge of the highest art, is a privilege which should be prized. The music teacher, (even if not so placed by common opinion) stands with the minister and the physician in the good which he does the community.

Heart and Intellect.

Let not the heart be the ruling power all the time. If it is, art sinks into sentimentality. Allow the head to rule alternately with the heart.

Intellect must be applied if any satisfying musical result is to be obtained. Emotion is good, but it needs curbing, shaping and restraining. Emotion, long sustained and unbridled, becomes nauseating.

Emotion in itself is beautiful, but like fire and water, if it once becomes the master, wastes and destroys. Emotion, aroused by imagination and directed by intelligence, serves to give taste to all musical rendition. One without heart is non-satisfying as a singer. Be he ever so intellectual, his singing is cold. Intellect alone, unaided by heart, is like polished steel--cold, brilliant and dazzling. Intellect and heart combined are like the same surface engraved and enamelled in artistic design--chaste, delicate and finished.

Time Ends Not.

We may say with Emerson that "Time has his own work to do and we have ours," and with Wood, "Labor is normal; idleness, abnormal," but in music there must be times of cessation from labor. Call it change of work, if you choose rather than admit that labor has ceased, but experience shows that no musician can safely follow his calling year in and year out, with no regular period of rest, and save his mind and body. Sooner or later comes a collapse. The human machine breaks down.

Then we shall think of Emerson and Wood as unsafe leaders. Time has his work, but he works in such deliberation and in such ever-changing form that were he one who could feel fatigue, he need not feel it. Time is from eternity to eternity. Time does not occupy a human machine. The music teacher does. Many a teacher has toiled beyond his strength this year. Many will next year. Who will take thought for himself and break loose, if but for a few weeks, and postpone the time of breaking down?

One might say, that with Time, the human soul is from eternity to eternity and there is no breakdown. True, but the residence of that soul while it is in this period of existence, demands much of its attention.

That cannot properly be given when the exacting duties of the cla.s.s-room drag on week after week, till they number fifty-two, and then begin at once another weary round. Admit that there are limitations, and, in cordial co-operation with existing laws, select and use the days of idleness, even if one has said that idleness is abnormal.

Power of Thought.

The power of thought to exert influence is only in our day being understood. How to utilize it is not yet in such degree of comprehension that it can be told so that all are able to use the force which they contain. Thought is a tangible essence pa.s.sing from the human mind and lodging upon the object toward which it is sent. Definite thought is more powerful than is illy defined thought. Speech enables us to crystalize thought and to empower it with added force. The time given to framing sentences enables us to put thought into definite form. A step beyond speech is obtained in singing. When learning our songs we revolve the thought to be expressed in mind. The measure of the music gives time to concentrate the thought contained into its most powerful form. The rhythm and vibration which accompany music and singing, enhance the power of thought. Whenever we sing in the true spirit of the sentiment uttered we send out shafts, so to speak, of pure thought. Not one of those is lost. It lodges somewhere, and as all good can never do harm, our good thought, sent in song, must do good to those who come within our influence to receive our good shafts. A singer who uses music for vain display loses the opportunity for good. There is no good thought in such singing. If there is any thought at all it is of the lower order.

It lodges also, but it appeals to that which is vain and low in our hearers. What wonder is it, then, that ofttimes our hearers make unkind remarks about us and our singing! It is our fault that we have stirred up in them the spirit of vanity and criticism. Our thought has often challenged such spirit in them. Let our thought be changed, and only the good which is contained in poetic art sent out to them and their att.i.tude toward us will change. There is no unpleasant thing which comes to us but that we stimulated it and created it. We can make our musical surroundings by sending out powerful shafts of pure thought.

Nature Seldom Jumps.

Nature seldom moves by jumps, and a student who reaches the best use of his voice learns that he must do that through natural laws. In other words, that he must acquire all things through naturalness. What wrongs have been done to students under the shield of so-called naturalness!

Many teachers who claim that they are cultivating the voice by natural laws, know nothing of what it means to be natural. Naturalness means the expression of our own nature. If a teacher uses the natural method he but points out to his pupils their true natures and holds them to that correct use of such that they return to their normal condition. The necessities of our modern living have made most of us feel that we must put a side of ourselves outward which shows off well. In singing we develop abnormally something which we fancy will please our hearers and bring us applause. We try to hide our defects and admit that we do.

Aside from the question of honesty, is it policy to do so. Most firmly, should be the answer, No! It destroys the naturalness of the singer and subst.i.tutes artifice. Any spurious issue will be detected sooner or later. Besides, is it not much more comfortable to have the real than the counterfeit? Be natural, then. Many students are impulsive. It was to these that the remark that "Nature seldom jumps," was made. In natural action everything is deliberate and restful; controlled and sure. Nature makes but few angles, but moves in graceful curves. Good quality of tone on one note and poor quality on the next, is not natural. Nature does not jump from one voice into another. Nature demands symmetric cultivation of the whole voice, and not the display of a favored part.

Be Perfect.

Do not be content to merely make progress. (If one feels that he is at a standstill, or worse, going backward, he should stop all study till he can go forward). Merely making progress means that to reach great result, a long time must elapse. To make a great artist requires years of musical and intellectual training; to be able to sing as perfectly as the body is capable of acting, requires but a few weeks, or at most, a few months. Why will students take lessons year after year and not sing any better than they did soon after they began? It is not necessary if the student is willing to go rapidly. "Be ye perfect," applies to singing as well as to anything else in life. If the injunction to be perfect has any meaning at all, and no one has any right to doubt but that it meant, when it was spoken, just what the words contain, that applies very thoroughly to singing. The very essence of life itself is more fully operative in singing than it is in anything else. If so, to be perfect in singing is to be perfect also in the essence of life. The injunction was not to become perfect by a long course of training. The present tense was used and it meant just what was said. "Be ye perfect,"

_now_. By proper mental conception of the true principle which underlies voice culture and by demonstration with concentrated thought, the possibility of any individual body can be at once brought out. On this account, the long years of wasteful practice which people use in cultivating the voice is not only unnecessary, but foolish and wicked.

CHAPTER IV.

PERFECT VOICE METHOD.

"_Observe how all pa.s.sionate language does of itself become musical,--with a finer music than the mere accent; the speech of man even in jealous anger becomes a chant--a song. All deep things are song._" =Carlisle=.

IV.

PERFECT VOICE METHOD.

A teacher of voice and singing who does not believe his way is the best in the world is in one of two positions:--either he is a scamp, pa.s.sing off spurious goods for real worth, or he is doing the best he can in his knowledge and present situation, waiting for the time when he can obtain instruction in a better method. If a teacher believes he has the best way of teaching he has a perfect right to so express himself, and to use that method in his teaching. He may be wrong in his opinion but that does not effect his right to work on the lines of his opinion. Some day something may show him he is mistaken and such a man will be very liable to correct his error and, taking the newly found way, progress in that.

A teacher who knows he is far from right and still works on, is not worthy of consideration as a teacher. One who uses the profession of voice teaching merely for livelihood and who cares not whether he does good or harm is little better than criminal. Such there be and such there will be until a time arrives in which teachers will be granted authority to teach from some recognized inst.i.tution, without whose permission to teach, it would violate a law of the land to advertise as a teacher. Just such control as is kept over medical practice will some day be had, but not in our generation.

Hundreds of teachers of the voice in all parts of our land are teaching up to their light, hoping the time may come, and to most it does come sometime, when they may get away from the office and study still farther into voice and music, thus making better their ability. That cla.s.s has already done much for singing and music. It might be said that all that has been done has come from that cla.s.s, for no teacher feels that nothing remains for him to learn. Singing, too, is a subtle thing. A teacher feels every little while as if his good way were slipping from him, and if he cannot get out of his work and brush up with a master, he will lose all the ability he has. The best teachers do leave their work, go to some other teacher, may be not better than they are, and have their work inspected and made better. A salesman from a furniture house once put the matter tersely:--"When I go out from the house on a long trip, I start with a plan of what I will say and how I will make my sales. In a little while I get rusty, and saying the same things over and over again makes me hate them. Then my business falls off. I go into the warerooms again for a time, hear the firm talk up goods in a new way, meet other salesmen and hear how they talk, and off I go again on my trip fresh and bright."

No work gets into a groove more easily than teaching. When working in a rut the teacher produces small results. The successful teacher tries every expedient in his power to get all the result he can. Sometimes, it may be remarked incidentally, he is called by a pupil lacking in appreciation and discernment, an experimenter, because he changes his plan of working. But he can endure that provided he gets definite results from his teaching. The best way for the teacher who must plod on by himself through long years is that he should once in every few months sit quietly alone and think over what his voice method is, how he is applying it, and what the result is. Below is the thought of such an hour condensed into comparatively few words. The heading of this article indicates that this is the opinion of the writer at the present time.

The thinking which may come in the next ten years may show he could have thought better now, but this is to him now, a perfect voice method.

The voice is produced by the body; it was originally planned for speech and not for singing; attributes of the voice are range, power, quality, and flexibility; into the voice can be injected, language; the action of all physical portions are under the command of the mind.

There are four portions of the body which are brought actively into use for the production and management of the voice, and these permit voice culture to be divided into four departments. These must first be brought into correct action. Natural action is correct action. What the world has considered as correct action may be wrong, for on most matters the opinion of the world is incorrect. A few clear-headed men have again and again appeared in various affairs and shown the world the mistake into which it had fallen. May be this is true of voice culture. It is safe to follow nature. The first department of voice culture is, as most persons admit, the respiratory department. Breathing. That goes on from the time we are born till we die. Generally as children we breathe well and correctly. When manhood arrives most of us have interfered with nature's way of breathing and have interposed something quite different from that we used earlier. This has come largely from faulty civilized eating, so that the organs of digestion are constantly troubling us. The stomach, liver, etc., exert decided influence on the diaphragm which is the chief organ of respiration. We, also, have grown nervous as years have come, because of the demands of active life upon us. That nervousness keeps all the muscles of the body in a state of unnatural strain, and this strain has even caused us to breathe differently from what nature planned. The very first step toward good voice method is to bring the breathing apparatus back to working order. As said above, the chief organ of respiration is the diaphragm, and that is a large muscle which cuts across the body at the edge of the ribs. Its centre, right in the middle of the body is constantly moving downward and upward. When it goes down the breath enters the body; when it comes up the breath comes out. Stop that muscle and breath is held. Stripped of all confusion that is all the description needed of inhalation, exhalation and breathing-holding. If some who read this would not say that this is too simple, and that they knew more than this article says, the subject would be dropped there. At most, all that can directly be added is to prolong the lowering and raising the diaphragm so that it is done by long strokes. Some one says we have been taught about spreading the sides, expanding the abdomen, filling the back, keeping the chest still, and a dozen more things. Examine the above, and if opposing effort to the free movement of the diaphragm in its upward and downward journey is avoided it will be found that all which is of good in inspiration and expiration is contained in the above. A most useful exercise for the development of strength in this organ of respiration is to slowly perform the act of panting in the same way that a dog pants.