Vocal Expression Part 20

So with the voice: to become not only a free instrument, but a beautiful and powerful means of expression and communication it must learn to recognize and obey certain fundamental laws governing its modulations. A master of verbal expression is distinguished by his vast vocabulary of words, and his skill and discrimination in its use. A master of vocal expression must acquire what we may call a _vocal vocabulary_, consisting of changes of pitch, varieties of inflection and variations in tone color, and must know how to use these elements with skill and discrimination. Our need for such a vocabulary was discovered to us at every step of the work in interpretation. The suggestions and exercises of the following studies aim to supplement the work in interpretation by meeting that need. Before making a detailed study of each element of this vocal vocabulary let us make a quick study with the four elements in mind. Remember, in the last preliminary exercise, as in the final complete interpretative endeavor, the material we employ is to be chosen from real literature. It is to be worth interpreting whether it be a single line or phrase or a complete poetical drama. We have agreed to consider literature as real literature, and so worth our interpretative efforts, when it possesses one or combines all of the three qualities,--_beauty_, _truth_, and _power_.

This pa.s.sage from Emerson's _Friendship_ surely meets that requirement.

It is truth beautifully and powerfully expressed. It will serve.

Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart.

Having read this pa.s.sage cursorily (as is the custom in reading to one's self to-day), will you now study it for a moment very closely. Now, once more, please, read it silently, noting the action of your mind as you read. ("Watch its pulsations," Dr. Curry would say.) And now, aloud, although without an auditor, read it, this time noting the effect of the action of the mind upon your voice. Did its pitch change? Where and why?

How did you inflect the words "wine and dreams"? How did the inflection of these words differ from that of the last six words, "tough fiber of the human heart," with which they are contrasted in thought? Did your tone change color at any point? Why? Where? But now, once more, let us approach the pa.s.sage, this time with a different intention. Let us study it with the idea of interpreting it for another mind. Now the method of attack is very different. Not that it ought to be different. But it is.

Intense concentration ought to characterize all our reading, whether its object be to acquire knowledge or pleasure for one's self, or to impart either to another. But the day of reading which "_maketh a full man_"

seems to be long past, so far as the general public is concerned. The necessity of skimming the pages of a dozen fourth-rate books of the hour in order to be at least a lucid interlocutor, and so a desired dinner guest, is making our reading a swift gathering of colorless impressions which may remain a week or only a day, and which leave no lasting effect of beauty or truth upon the mind and heart of the reader. Should it not be rather an intense application of the mind to the thought of a master mind, until that thought, in all its power and beauty, has broadened the boundaries of the reader's mind and enlarged the meaning of all his thoughts? I wonder if a much smaller proportion of time spent in such reading might not result in a less _bromidic_ social atmosphere, even though its tendency were a bit serious. I think it might be both safe and interesting to try such an experiment.

But now we must return to Emerson on _Friendship_. In studying a pa.s.sage for the purpose of vocal interpretation you have learned that the concentration of attention upon the thought must be intense, you must make the thought absolutely your own before you can present it to your auditor, it must possess you before you can express it; that the thought must seem in the moment of its expression to be a creation of your own brain, it must belong to you as only the thing you have created can, and until you have so recreated the thought it is not yours to give. Having recalled these precepts, read the pa.s.sage silently again. Pour upon it the light of your experience, your philosophy, your ideals, your perception of truth. Comment upon it silently as you read. Now read it aloud and let your voice do this commenting. But wait a moment. Let me quote for you the paragraph following this statement.

The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the laws of nature and morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty benefit to suck a sudden sweetness. We s.n.a.t.c.h at the slowest fruit in the whole garden of G.o.d, which many summers and many winters must ripen.

This is Emerson's paraphrase of his original statement. How much of it did your mental commentary include? How did your silent paraphrase resemble this? Read the original pa.s.sage again to yourself in the light of this paraphrase. I shall ask you now to repeat the first sentence from memory, for you will find, after this concentrated contemplation of a thought, that its form is fixed fast in your mind. That is a delightful accompaniment of this kind of reading. The form of the thought, if it be apposite (which it must be to be literature, and we are considering only literature), the form of a thought so approached stays with us in all its beauty.

Let us then repeat the original statement, having read the pa.s.sage in which Emerson has elaborated it. Now, what you must demand of your voice is this: that it shall so handle the single introductory sentence as to suggest the rest of the paragraph. In other words, your voice must do the paraphrasing, by means of its changes in pitch, its inflections, and its variations in tone-color; by means, in short, of its _vocal vocabulary_.

I

STUDY IN PAUSE AND CHANGE OF PITCH

It is a.s.serted that, "the last word has not been said on any subject."

Mr. Hamilton Mabie seemed to me to achieve a _last word_ on the subject of _pause_ when he casually remarked: "Emerson was a master of pause; he would pause, and into the pool of expectancy created by that pause drop just the right word." There seems little to be added to complete the exposition of that single sentence. It surely leaves no doubt in our minds as to the effect to be desired from the use of this element of our vocabulary. How to use it to gain that effect is our problem. First of all, we must cease to be afraid to pause. We hurry on over splendid opportunities to elucidate our text through a just use of this form of emphasis, beset by two fears: fear that we shall seem to have forgotten the text; fear that we shall actually forget it if we stop to think.

Think of being afraid to stop to think lest we should stop thinking!

That is precisely what the fear indicates. It arises, of course, from a confusion as to the real nature of pause. We confuse pause with its ghost, hesitation. Dr. Curry makes the difference clear for us in his definition of hesitation as an "empty pause." "Empty of what?" you ask.

Empty of thought! Of course, an empty pause is a ghastly as well as a ghostly thing to experience. If you have ever faced an audience in one of those "awful" moments when your voice has ceased because your thought has stopped, and when you are painfully aware of a pool of embarra.s.sed sympathy into which you know there is no word to drop, then you have learned the meaning of an _empty pause_.

On the other hand, if you shall ever face an audience in one of those _fateful_ moments when your voice pauses because your thought is so vital, that you realize both your audience and you must be given time to fully grasp it, and when you are serenely conscious of that "pool of expectancy" into which you know you have just the right word to drop, then you will learn the meaning of a _true pause_.

Some one has called inflection a running commentary of the emotions upon the thought. Emphasis might well be defined in the same way. The definition would need to be a bit more inclusive, since emphasis includes inflection. Emphasis then may be defined as a running commentary of the thought and emotion of the reader upon the thought of the text he interprets. The words reveal the thought; your valuation of that thought, as you interpret it, is revealed through your vocal vocabulary in voicing it. We, your auditors, can only gather from your emphasis your valuation of the truth or importance of what you are uttering. You may use one or all of the elements of your vocal vocabulary to bring out the thought of a single phrase. The elements of the vocal vocabulary are all forms of emphasis.

Since pause is a cessation of speech it can hardly be called an element of a vocal vocabulary; but it may rightly be called the basis of our vocabulary because it determines our use of the other elements. It behooves us then to make a study of pause before testing our vocabulary as to its other elements.

Here are two texts to be valued by our use of the pause.

EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A BOARDING-SCHOOL GIRL

At midnight, the magic hour as every girl knows for affairs of a purely private and personal nature, when far away at the end of a corridor you can almost hear Miss ----'s peaceful snore, when as the poet aptly put it in this morning's English stunt, "darkness clears our vision which by day is sun-blind"--(I thought Jane and I would die laughing and give it all away when we came to that line in Mr. Lanier's stupid poem),--well, as I say, exactly at that hour my heart began to beat so hard I thought it would wake Madge without the "punch" I had promised to give her when it was time to begin preparations for our grand spread.

From Sidney Lanier's _Crystal_.

At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time.

When far within the spirit's hearing rolls The great soft rumble of the course of things-- A bulk of silence in a mask of sound,-- When darkness clears our vision that by day Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl For truth and flitteth here and there about Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft Is minded for to sit upon a bough, Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree And muse in that gaunt place,--'twas then my heart, Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: ...

The same hour, _midnight_, is designated by both girl and poet; the same two words, "at midnight," open the confession and the poem. A pause must follow these words in the reading of either text, and another pause must be made after the qualifying phrase which immediately follows the opening words of either text. But what a difference in the comparative length of the pauses demanded by the two readings! A very different atmosphere attends an hour when it is the time chosen for a school-girl's escapade or set apart for a _poet's meditation_. And the voice by its use of _pause_ can preserve or destroy either atmosphere.

Try it. Make your pauses in reading the school-girl's text of equal length with the pauses the reading of Lanier's poem demands. You will find the result is that _overemphasis_ which has brought such discredit upon the name of "elocution." I once heard a much-advertised reader strain all the elements of her vocal vocabulary in announcing a simple change in her programme. I have heard more than one reader give the stage directions, indicate the scene setting, and introduce the characters in exactly the same voice and with the same use of emphasis which were afterward employed in the most dramatic pa.s.sages. Of course all the ammunition had been used up before the real battle began, and no one was in the least affected by the firing during the rest of the engagement.

We have said that the use of pause determines the use of all other elements of the vocabulary. This is particularly true of the _change of pitch_ which immediately follows pause. We pause before a new idea to get possession of it; in that pause we measure the idea, and the pitch of the voice changes to accord with that measure. Every change of thought causes a change of pitch, but the degree and direction of change in pitch of the voice depends upon the degree and direction of change in thought values. In the pause the mind takes time to value the new thought, and tells the voice what change it must make. Robert Browning affords the best material for a study in change of pitch, because of his sudden and long parentheses, which can be handled lucidly by a voice only after it has mastered this element of the vocal vocabulary. _Abt Vogler_ offers the voice an excellent opportunity for exercise in change of pitch. I print the first stanza and first line of the second stanza of this poem for your use.

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build, Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work, Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk, Man, brute, reptile, fly--alien of end and of aim, Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, h.e.l.l-deep removed, Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name, And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine--

Remember, you are to confine your consideration to the one point, _change of pitch_, not the change of pitch within a word, which is inflection and belongs to another chapter, but to the broad changes of pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, following the intricate changes of the thought.

I leave you to blaze a trail through this forest of ideas. You must find the main road, and then trace the by-paths which lead away from that main road, and in this case, fortunately, come back to it again--which does not always happen in Mr. Browning's "woody tracts of thought." To employ a better figure for vocal purposes, you must cut off the stream, the voice, and trace the bed of this river of thought, following the main channel, and then its branches. You will find the main channel cut by the first and last lines:

Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine--

All between, beginning with the second line, "Bidding my organ obey,"

and including the last words of the eighth line, "the princess he loved," is a branch channel, leading away from and coming back to the main river's bed. But this branch channel is interrupted in turn by its own branch leading away from it and returning with it to join the main bed with the last line we quote. This second branch begins in the middle of the third line with the words, "As when Solomon willed," wanders in this course for five lines, and, rejoining the first offshoot, returns to the main channel with the last line. Now turn on the stream, the _Voice_, and watch it flow into the course as traced. a.n.a.lyze the reading as to the use of pause and change of pitch.

II

STUDY IN INFLECTION

To me, the most notable among the many notable elements in Madame Alla n.a.z.imova's acting is her illumination of the text of her impersonations through _inflection_. To an ear unaccustomed to the "broken music" of her speech, a word may now and then be lost because of her still faulty English, but of her att.i.tude toward the thought she is uttering, or the person she is addressing, or the situation she is meeting, there can never be a moment's doubt--so illuminating is the inflectional play of her voice. The tone she uses is not to me pleasing in quality. It does not fall in liquid alluring cadences upon the ear as does Miss Marlowe's, for instance. It is always keyed high, whether the child-wife Nora, or Hedda, omnivorous of experience, is speaking. But this high-pitched tone is endlessly volatile. It is restless. It never lets your attention wander. It is never monotonous. It is a master of _inflection_. Madame n.a.z.imova's emotion is always primarily intellectual. It always proceeds from a mind keenly alive to the instant's incident. This intensely intellectual temperament reveals itself through her voice in a rare degree of inflectional agility.

Recall the revelation of Nora's soul in her cry: "It is not possible! It is not possible!" Madame n.a.z.imova's conception of the mistress of _The Doll's House_ is concentrated in these four words--in her inflection of the last word, I may almost say. When I close my eyes and think of Madame n.a.z.imova's voice I see a grove of soft maples in early October with the sun playing upon them, while Miss Marlowe's tone carries me at once into the pine woods, where a white birch now and then shimmers its yellow leaves. Again, the voice of the Russian actress suggests a handful of diamonds, and the American instrument a set of turquoise in the matrix. The difference in these two agents of two compelling personalities is, of course, the result of a difference in the two temperaments; but undoubtedly it also arises from a difference in methods of training. Whatever the temperament, light and shade can be developed in the voice through practice of inflection; and whatever the temperament, a pure tone can be secured through a mastery of support of breath and freedom of vocal conditions. The voices of these two actresses vividly ill.u.s.trate these two points. We shall study how to secure Miss Marlowe's tone. We are now to work for Madame n.a.z.imova's light and shade, so far as a mastery of inflection will secure it. How shall we proceed?

"All my life," writes Ellen Terry, in her entrancing memoirs, "the thing which has struck me as wanting on the stage is variety. Some people are tone-deaf, and they find it physically impossible to observe the law of contrasts. But even a physical deficiency can be overcome by that faculty of taking infinite pains." That is the secret of successful acquisition in any direction, is it not--the _faculty of taking infinite pains_? With Ellen Terry it resulted in a voice which in its prime estate suggested, it is said, all the riotous colors of all the autumns, or Henry Ward Beecher's most varied collection of precious stones. We can secure an approximate result by employing the same method. Let us proceed with infinite pains to practise, practise, practise inflection.

Let us first examine this _change of pitch within a word_ which we call inflection. How does the pitch change, and why, and what does the change indicate? We have discovered that a change of thought results in a broad change of pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence, and we shall discover that a change in emotion results in a change in the color of the tone we are using; but this element of our vocal vocabulary, inflection, is subtler than either of the other two.

While change of pitch is an intellectual modulation, and variation in tone-color is an emotional modulation, _inflection_, in a degree, combines both. It is a change in both color and key within the word. It is primarily of intellectual significance, but it also reveals certain temperamental characteristics which cannot be disa.s.sociated with emotion. For instance, the staccato utterance of Mrs. Fiske is technically the result of her use of straight, swift-falling inflections, but it is temperamentally the result of thinking and feeling in terms of Becky Sharp.

Let us see how inflections vary. They rise and fall swiftly or slowly.

They move in a straight line from point to point, or make a curve. (The latter we call circ.u.mflex inflection.) They make various angles with the original level of pitch, rising or falling abruptly or gradually.

These are some of the variations, each indicating an att.i.tude of the mind and heart of the speaker toward the thought, or toward the one spoken to, or toward the circ.u.mstances out of which the speech arises.

All must be mastered for use at will if light and shade are to be developed in the voice.

Now let us take a phrase or sentence, and voice it under a certain condition, noting the inflection of the word or words which hold the thought of the phrase or sentence in solution. Then let us change the condition and again voice the thought, noting the change in inflection.

Let me propound a profound question,--"Do you like growing old?" The answers will all be "yes" or "no." But what of the inflection of those monosyllabic words? _Sweet Sixteen_ will employ a straight, swift-falling inflection on the affirmative (unless some untoward influence, such as "_Love_ the _Destroyer_," has embittered her life, when she may give us one of _May Iverson's_ adorable replies, masked in indifference and circ.u.mlocution). _Twenty_ will employ the straight-falling inflection without the swiftness of Sweet Sixteen's slide. With _twenty-five_ we detect a faint sign of a curve in the more gradual fall. _Twenty-eight_ to _thirty-five_ employs various degrees of circ.u.mflex, according to the desire--or possibility--of concealing the real facts. _Forty_ to _forty-five_, if in defiant mood, employs the abrupt-falling inflection, or, if quite honest, changes to the negative with as swift and straight a fall. This lasts through sixty-five, and at _seventy_ we hear a new and gentle circ.u.mflex of the "no," until the pride of extreme old age sets in at _eighty-five_ with the swift fall of sixteen's affirmative. Were it not expedient to maintain friendly relations with one's printer, I should venture to diagram these changes of tone within a word. As it is, I shall content myself with advising you to do so.

It is my privilege to have had acquaintance with a woman who was a personal friend of Emerson. Among the incidents of his delightful talk with her, retold to me, I recall one which bears upon our present problem. They were discussing mutual "Friends on the Shelf." "Have you ever read _t.i.tan_?" asked the gentle seer. "Yes," replied the lady.

"Read it again!" said he. Query to the cla.s.s: How did the lady inflect the word _Yes_ to call forth the injunction, _Read it again_? What did her inflection reveal?

However inclined we may be to quarrel with Bernhardt's conception of the Duke of Reichstadt, we can never forget her disclosure of the Eaglet's frail soul through _inflection_ as she crushes letter after letter in her hand and tosses them aside, uttering the simple words, _Je dechire_, and the final revelation in the quick, thrilling curve of her wonderful voice on the same words as the little cousin leaves the room at the close of this episode of the letters.

No better material can be chosen for a study of inflection than the paragraph from Emerson's _Friendship_, quoted in a preceding chapter.