The Voice in Singing Part 4

By directing the attention of one's pupils to these different sensations, it is very easy to make them acquainted with the different registers of the voice--always a very necessary proceeding in the first training of a voice, although it seems to be so only in the case of such voices as have been previously misdirected.

The culture of the female voice is best begun with the two series of the falsetto register and the second of the chest register; the tones of these three middle registers must be pretty well cultivated before the lowest chest tones and the head voice are begun to be formed. The voice in this way best attains to an equal fulness. It is self-evident also that the teaching should be such that the transitions of the registers should be not at all or scarcely perceptible, consequently that all the tones should sound proportionally strong and full.

In the soprano voice the falsetto, and in the contralto voice the chest register, have more fulness and grace, and thus we may distinguish to which kind of voice a voice belongs, for the compa.s.s of the voice is not always confined within certain limits. There are contraltos that can sing the high head tones with ease, and sopranos that can sing the low chest tones with equal facility--a fact which has often given occasion to an incorrect treatment of a voice. So also with the male voice.

A ba.s.s voice sings the lower series of the chest register with more ease and sweetness and with more obscure timbre. A tenor voice sings the second series of the chest register in a clearer timbre.

The baritone and mezzo-soprano voices, so called--that is, such voices as have a limited compa.s.s, and cannot sing either the highest or the lowest tones--are by no means so numerous as they are thought to be. The best tenor voices, which cannot naturally reach the lowest ba.s.s tones, and whose organs do not allow of an unnatural forcing up beyond the higher limits of the chest register, are commonly p.r.o.nounced baritone voices, for no one now-a-days thinks of cultivating the falsetto register of the male voice.

Few teachers, likewise, understand how to teach correctly the tones of the head register. If a soprano voice cannot readily and agreeably sing the low contralto tones, and extend the falsetto scale far enough upwards beyond its limit, it is reckoned among the mezzo-soprano voices. The celebrated singing master _Thomaselli_, of _Padua_, maintained that baritone and mezzo-soprano voices "had no existence in nature, but were only the products of our false methods of instruction."

I have sometimes found mezzo-soprano and baritone voices, but not in so great number by far as the four chief kinds of voices--ba.s.s, tenor, contralto, and soprano.

Although an exact knowledge of the vocal organ and its various actions must be required of a teacher before the education of a voice can be committed to him, yet it would be unwise to undertake to teach singing by means of scientific explanations without sufficient previous knowledge; the pupil would, in this case, understand as little of what he was about and be as little helped as a child learning to read would be a.s.sisted by one who merely sought to make intelligible to him the mechanism by which sound is formed. The most natural and the simplest way in singing, as in all things else, is the best. Let the teacher sing correctly every tone to his pupil until the latter knows how to imitate it, and his ear has learned how to distinguish the different timbres.[5]

The discovery of the natural transitions of the registers has brought to light one of the greatest evils of our present mode of singing, and shown at the same time how wanting in durability are the voices of those of our artists whose aim and endeavor it is to force the registers upward beyond their natural limits.

Although the concert pitch is so very much higher now than it was in the most flourishing period of the singing art, yet no regard is paid to this fact in the education of a voice, and our tenorists try to reach the a with the chest register, just as they did one hundred and fifty years ago.

In the _ignorance existing concerning the natural transitions of the registers, and in the unnatural forcing of the voice, is found a chief cause of the decline of the art of singing. And the present inability to preserve the voice is the consequence of a method of teaching unnatural, and therefore imposing too great a strain upon the voice._[6]

No one who has not made the art of singing a special study, can form any idea of the obscure and conflicting views in regard to the transitions of the registers which prevail among singing teachers and artists. Almost every teacher has a peculiar theory of his own in regard to the formation of the voice; every one has his own views, sometimes extremely fanciful, of the formation of tones and of the registers--views to which he tenaciously adheres, summarily rejecting all others. Almost as at the building of the tower of Babel, one teacher scarcely understands any longer what another means, and instead of harmonious endeavors to improve the art, teachers of singing are commonly found disputing among themselves.

To bring light and order into such a chaos can only be accomplished by the most thorough scientific study, and even then it is an undertaking of the greatest difficulty. Custom stands in the way as an antagonist, and there must be a conflict with long-cherished and wide-spread errors and prejudices. It lies also in the nature of the case that teachers of singing are the most determined opponents to be encountered. It is very hard for this cla.s.s, and it demands of them no common self-denial to acknowledge and renounce as errors what they have taught for years and held to be truths.

Those teachers, however, who have made the necessary sacrifice, have been compensated with the richest success; and such, we trust, will in all cases be the result, and so the path be broken for the true and the natural.

It will be perhaps comparatively easy to advance the art of singing in America; for, as Humboldt says, not entirely without truth, the Germans require for every improvement two centuries--one to find out the need of it, and another to make it.

[2] It must be remarked that the diagrams here given are copies of _reflected_ images, and therefore the upper side of the representation shows the front of the larynx, and the lower the farther side of the larynx.

[3] In recent works on laryngoscopy they are often described as continuations or parts of one of the princ.i.p.al muscles of the larynx.

[4] In recent French and English works upon laryngoscopy, the cuneiform cartilages are frequently mentioned, and sometimes confounded with the cartilages Wrisbergi.

[5] On this account the male voice should be trained by men and the female voice by women. For, as it is impossible for a man to give to a female pupil a correct perception of the tones of the head register and of the second series of the falsetto, with its peculiar female timbre, so is it impossible for a woman to sing and teach correctly the deep, sonorous chest tones of the male voice. _Frederick Wiek_, that admirable teacher, who perceives intuitively what is natural and true in instruction, has an excellent expedient. In his hours of instruction he avails himself of the aid of young women with practised voices, who sing every exercise to his female pupils until the latter are able to imitate them correctly.

[6] Voices which by this overstrained and unnatural way of singing have become worn-out and useless may by correct, proper treatment recover, even at an advanced age, their former grace and power; and even those chronic inflammations of the larynx which are so difficult of treatment may be cured by a natural and moderate exercise of the voice in singing.

III

PHYSICAL VIEW

FORMATION OF SOUNDS BY THE VOCAL ORGAN

For the artistic culture of the singing voice the knowledge of the physiological processes during the formation of tones does not suffice. This knowledge brings us acquainted only with the instrument, the artistic treatment of which is to be learned.

Having, therefore, in the preceding pages stated the most important points in the formation of tones, physiologically considered, we are now to consider more nearly the physical laws relating to the same, especially as the physical view of the subject, through the latest investigations and discoveries of Prof. Helmholtz, in Heidelberg, has so much importance for music in general. In order, however, to present a clear view of this branch of our subject, in so far as the recent advances of science can be practically applied to the improvement of the art of singing, we must recur to those natural laws which are doubtless well known to most of our readers.

In order to bring the external world to our consciousness, we are provided with various organs of sense; and as the eye is sensible to the light, the ear is sensible to sound, which comes to our consciousness either as noise (_Gerausch_) or as tone (_Klang_).

The whistling of the wind, the plashing of water, the rattling of a wagon are noises, but musical instruments give us tones. When, however, many untuned instruments sound together, or when all the keys within an octave are struck on the same time, then it is a noise that we hear. Tones are therefore more simple and regular than noises. The ear perceives both by means of the agitation of the air that surrounds us. In the case of noise the agitation of the air is an irregularly changing motion. In musical sounds, on the other hand, there is a movement of the air in a continuously regular manner, which must be caused by a similar movement in the body which gives the sound. These so-called periodical movements of the sound in the body, rising, falling and repeated at equal intervals, are called vibrations. The length of the interval elapsing between one movement and the next succeeding repet.i.tion of the same movement is called the duration of vibration (_Schwingungsdauer_), or period of motion.

TONE, AND ITS LAWS OF VIBRATION

A _tone_ is produced by a periodical motion of the sounding body--a _noise_ by motions _not_ periodical. We can see and feel the sounding vibrations of stationary bodies. The eye can perceive the vibrations of a string, and a person playing on a clarionet, oboe, or any similar instrument, feels the vibration of the reed of the mouthpiece. How the movements of the air, agitated by the vibrations of the stationary body, are felt by the ear as tone (_Klang_), Helmholtz ill.u.s.trates by the motion of waves of water in the following way: Imagine a stone thrown into perfectly smooth water. Around the point of the surface struck by the stone there is instantly formed a little ring, which, moving outwards equally in all directions, spreads to an ever-enlarging circle. Corresponding to this ring, sound goes out in the air from an agitated point, and enlarges in all directions as far as the limits of the atmosphere permit. What goes on in the air is essentially the same that takes place on the surface of the water; the chief difference only is that sound spreads out in the s.p.a.cious sea of air like a sphere, while the waves on the surface of the water can extend only like a circle. At the surface the ma.s.s of the water is free to rise upward, where it is compressed and forms billows, or crests. In the interior of the aerial ocean the air must be condensed, because it cannot rise. For, "in fact, the condensation of the sound-wave corresponds to the crest, while the rarefaction of the sound-wave corresponds to the sinus of the water-wave."[7]

The water-waves press continually onwards into the distance, but the particles of the water move to and fro periodically within narrow limits. One may easily see these two movements by observing a small piece of wood floating on water; the wood moves just as the particles of water in contact with it move. It is not carried along with the rings of the wave, but is tossed up and down, and at last remains in the same place where it was at the first. In a similar way, as the particles of water around the wood are moved by the ring only in pa.s.sing, so the waves of sound spread onwards through new strata of air, while the particles of air, tossed to and fro by these waves as they pa.s.s, are never really moved by them from their first place. A drop falling upon the surface of the water creates in it only a single agitation; but when a regular series of drops falls upon it, every drop produces a ring on the water. Every ring pa.s.ses over the surface just like its predecessor, and is followed by other rings in the same way. In this way there is produced on the water a regular series of rings ever expanding. As many drops as fall into the water in a second, so many waves will in a second strike a floating piece of wood, which will be just so many times tossed up and down, and thus have a periodical motion, the period of which corresponds with the interval at which the drops fall. In like manner a sounding body, periodically moved, produces a similar periodic movement, first of the air, and then of the drum in the ear; the duration of the vibrations const.i.tuting the movement must be the same in the ear as in the sounding body.

THE PROPERTIES OF TONE (KLANG)

The sounds produced by such periodic agitations of the air have three peculiar properties: 1. STRENGTH, 2. PITCH, 3. TIMBRE.

The strength of the tone depends on the greater or less breadth of its vibrations, that is, of the waves of sound, the higher or lower pitch of the tones upon the number of the vibrations; that is, the tones are always higher the greater the number of the vibrations, or lower the less the number of the vibrations.

A second is used as the unit of time, and by number of vibrations is understood the number of vibrations which the sounding body gives forth in a second of time. The tones used in music lie between 40 and 4000 vibrations per second, in the extent of seven octaves. The tones which we can perceive lie between 16 and 38,000 vibrations to the second, within the compa.s.s of eleven octaves.

The later pianos usually go as low as C1 with 33, or even to A2 with 27 vibrations; mostly as high as a4 or c5, with 3520 and 4224 vibrations. The one lined a, from which all instruments are tuned, has now usually 440 to 450 vibrations to the second in England and America. The French Academy, however, has recently established for the same note 435 vibrations, and this lower tuning has already been universally introduced in Germany.[8]

The high octave of a tone has in the same time exactly double the number of vibrations of the tone itself. Suppose, therefore, that a tone has 50 vibrations in a second, its octave has 100 in the same time; i.e., twice as many. The octave above this has 200 vibrations, &c. The Pythagoreans knew this acoustic law of the ascending tones, and that the octave of a tone had twice as many vibrations in a second as the tone itself, and that the fifth above the first octave had three times as many; the second octave, four times; the major third above the second octave, five times as many; the fifth of the same octave, six times; the small seventh of the same octave, seven times. In notation it would be thus, if we take as the lowest note C, for example:

1:C 2:c 3:g 4:c 5:e 6:g 7:b? 8:c 9:d 16:c 32:c4

The figures below the lines denote how many times greater the number of vibrations is than that of the first tone. In the first octave we find only one tone; in the second, two; in the third, all the tones of the major chord with the minor seventh.

In the fourth octave we find sixteen tones (which, however, we divide in our system of music into twelve). Likewise, we find in the fifth octave thirty-two tones, which number is doubled in the sixth. Hence, the Greeks had quarter and eighth tones, which we in our equal-tempered tuning have done away with.[9]

The production of a higher pitch in a tone rests in all sounding bodies upon the uniform law which we may observe in the strings of musical instruments, whose tones ascend either by greater tension, by shortening, or through a diminution of the density of the strings.

THE TIMBRE (KLANGFARBE) OF TONES

Strength and pitch were the first two distinctions of different tones. The third is the timbre. When we hear one and the same tone sounded successively upon a violin, trumpet, clarionet, oboe, upon a piano, or by a human voice, &c., although it is of the same strength and of the same pitch, yet the tone of all these instruments is different, and we very easily distinguish the instrument from which it comes. The changes of the timbre seem to be infinitely manifold; for, not to mention the fact that we have a mult.i.tude of different musical instruments, all which can give the same tone, letting alone also that different instruments of the same kind as well as different voices show certain differences of timbre, the very same tone can be given upon one and the same instrument, or by one and the same voice, with manifold differences of timbre.[10]

As now the strength of the tone is determined by the breadth of the vibrations, and the pitch by their number, so the varieties of timbre are ascribed to the different forms of the waves of vibration. For as the surface of the water is stirred differently by the falling into it of a stone, by the blowing over it of the wind, or the pa.s.sing through it of a ship, &c., so the movements of the air take different shapes from sounding bodies. The movement proceeding from the string of a violin over which the bow is drawn, is different from those movements caused by the hammer of a piano or by a clarionet.

OVER-TONES (OBERToNE)

That timbre is dependent on the form of the vibrations is confirmed by Helmholtz, and acknowledged as so far correct that every different timbre requires a different vibratory form, but different forms sometimes correspond to nearly the same timbre.

But how far the different forms of vibration correspond with different timbres, Helmholtz shows by a fact which has. .h.i.therto escaped the notice of physicists, although it forms the foundation of all music. We have learned by the stereoscope that we have two different views of every object, and compose a third view from those two. _Just so the ear perceives different musical tones which come to our consciousness only as one tone._

It is in general, and especially in the case of the human voice, very difficult to distinguish these single parts of tone, because we are accustomed to take the impressions of the external world without a.n.a.lyzing them, and only with a view to their use.

But when we are once convinced of the existence of partial tones (_Partialtone_), if we concentrate our attention, we can also distinguish them. The ear hears, then, not only that tone, the pitch of which is determined, as we have shown, by the duration of its vibrations, but a whole series of tones besides, which Helmholtz names "_the harmonic over-tones_" of the tone, in opposition to that first tone (fundamental tone) which is the lowest among them all, generally the strongest also, and according to the pitch of which we decide the pitch of the tone. The series of these over-tones is for each musical tone precisely the same; they are, namely, the tones of the so-called acoustic series, arising, as already described, from the doubling of the vibrations.

First, the fundamental tone, then its octave with twice as many vibrations, then the fifth of this octave, &c.

The different timbre of tones thus depends upon the different forms of the vibrations, whence arise various relations of the fundamental tone to the over-tones as they vary in strength. The most thorough inquiries have led to the following results, of the first importance in every formation of tone: _that the appropriate form of the vibratory waves which is the most agreeable to the ear, as well as the fullest, softest and most beautiful timbre which corresponds to that form, is produced when the fundamental tone, and the over-tones following it, so sound that the fundamental tone and the over-tones sound together, the former most strongly, while the latter are heard fainter and fainter in the intervals of the major chord with the minor seventh, so that, with the fundamental tone, still further sound seven over-tones_. If the higher harmonic over-tones grow stronger, and even overpower the fundamental tone, the sound grows shriller, but when the discordant over-tones lying close together, higher than the tones just named, overpower the fundamental tone, the timbre becomes sharp and disagreeable.

But these over-tones are not to be confounded with the earlier known combination-tones (_Combinationstone_), which arise from the sounding together of two consonant intervals, and likewise have their own over-tones.