Vocal Expression Part 22

Remember your _key_ is set for you,--the color of the tone is plainly chosen for you by Mr. Lanier. Not red nor yellow, but a blending of the two. _Orange_, is it not? Will not an orange tone give us the feel of heartsome confidence behind and through the mellow scorn of the knight's message? Try it! Let the two primary colors, red and yellow, enter in varying degrees according to, or following, the emotional variation in the thought, as the knight or the lover dominates in the message. In the first seven lines the tone glows with the love radiance and the orange deepens toward red. With the next five lines the lover yields to the knight, and the tone flashes forth a golden, keen-edged sword. With the thirteenth line the tone begins in the orange on "Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed," flashes into yellow in "to fight like a man," softens and deepens toward red in "and love like a maid,"

and returns to the orange to finish the horn _motif_.

Next in this poem which affords such a wonderful study for tone-color we have the hautboy's message. The color is mixed and laid on the palette ready for use as before, with the introductory lines:

And then the hautboy played and smiled, And sang like any large-eyed Child, Cool-hearted and all undefiled.

Don't let the words _large-eyed Child_ mislead you. Don't, I beseech you, make the mistake of adopting the "Little Orphan Annie" tone with which the "elocutionist" too often insults the pure treble of a child's "undefiled" instrument. That is the keynote to us for our choice of color--"cool-hearted and all undefiled." Almost a white tone, is it not?

With a little of the blue of the June sky? Try it. Let the blue be visibly present in the first three lines:

"Huge Trade!" he said, "Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head And run where'er my finger led!"

turning to pure white in the next three lines:

Once said a Man--and wise was He-- Never shalt thou the heavens see Save as a little child thou be.

The last voice comes from the "ancient wise ba.s.soons." Again there is danger. Do not, oh! do not fall afoul of the conventional old man's quavering tone. There is nothing conventional about these "weird, gray-beard old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes," chanting runes.

The last words of these introductory lines safeguard us--"chanted runes." There is only one color of tone in which to _chant runes_. Gray, is it not? Yes, but a silver gray, not the steel gray of the clarionet when she became for the moment a commercial lover. Then in the silver-gray tone of the philosopher, voice this last _motif_:

Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss, The sea of all doth lash and toss, One wave forward and one across: But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest, And worst doth foam and flash to best, And curst to blest.

The importance of a right use of tone-color in vocal interpretation was impressed upon a Browning cla.s.s last winter. We were reading the _Dramatic Lyrics_. The poem for the hour was _Meeting at Night_. The tone with which the first student attacked this exquisite love-lyric was so businesslike, so matter of fact, so utterly out of key, that we who listened saw not the lover hastening to his beloved, but a real-estate agent "out to buy" a farm. The "gray sea, the long black land, the yellow half-moon large and low, the startled little waves that creep in fiery ringlets from their sleep, the pushing prow of the boat quenched in the slushy sand, the warm, sea-scented beach, and the three fields"

all a.s.sumed a merely commercial value. They were interesting exactly as would be a catalogue of properties in a deed of real estate. If you are not a very _intense_ member of a Browning society you will, I think, enjoy the test of tone-color involved in reading this poem from the contrasted standpoints of the business man and the lover. Of course, in the first instance you must stop where I, in desperation, stopped the student on the words, "a farm appears." For I defy any one to read the last two lines in a gray, matter-of-fact tone.

As was the case in our consideration of inflection, so in this study of tone-color there is an embarra.s.sment of rich material for the exercise of this element. Lanier's _Sunrise_ and _Corn_; Browning's prologue to _The Two Poets of Croisic_, with a vivid contrast of color in each verse; Swinburne's almost every line; Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson--but why enumerate? All the colorists among the poets will reward your search of a text for the development of _timbre_.

For a final brief study of the three elements we aim to acquire, with especial emphasis in thought upon the last one, let us take this prologue to _The Two Poets of Croisic_, with its color-contrast in each verse:

Such a starved bank of moss Till that May morn, Blue ran the flash across: Violets were born!

Sky--what a scowl of cloud Till, near and far, Ray on ray split the shroud: Splendid, a star!

World--how it walled about Life with disgrace Till G.o.d's own smile came out: That was thy face

The vocal treatment of the first two verses will be very much alike. The voice starts in minor key, a gray monotone, in harmony with the absence of color in the bare bank of dull moss. The inflection of the word "starved" must emphasize the grayness. It must be a dull push of the tone on the first syllable, with little, if any, lift above the level of the low pitch on which the whole line is spoken. With a swift, salient, rising inflection on the opening word of the second line, an inflection which creates expectancy of change, the voice lifts the thought out of the minor into the major key. I must call your attention to the vital significance of the use of pause at this point by simply asking you to indulge in it. Stop after uttering the word _till_ and study the effect of the pause. It is the pause quite as much as the inflection, you see, which induces the expectant att.i.tude you desire to create in the mind of your auditor. With the next three words, "that May morn," the tone takes on a bit of the warmth of early summer. A lingering cadence on the word "May" will help the suggestion. With the third line the voice begins to shine. I know no other way to express it. The inflections are swift and straight, but not staccato, because they must suggest a growth, not a burst of color. The tone on which the words are borne must be continuous. It must not be broken off definitely with each word, as is to prove most effective, we shall find, in handling the third line of the second verse. The fourth line brings the full, glowing, radiant tone on the first word, "violets." This tone must be held in full volume on the last two words. The law for beautiful speech must be observed here.

(But where should it not be observed?) Let us recall the law, "_Beautiful speech depends upon openness of vowels and definiteness of consonants._" The vowels give volume to a word, the consonants form.

Slur your consonants and squeeze your vowels in the three words of this line, "Violets were born," and what becomes of this miracle of spring?

The voicing of the second verse is very like that of the first. The opening line demands the same gray monotone. But the three words, "sky," "scowl," and "cloud," if clear-cut in utterance, as they should be, will break the level of the line more than the single word "starved"

in the first line of the first verse can do, or was meant to do. There is the same swift lift of the voice in the opening word of the second line, the same change to the major key, the same growing glow in the tone on the third line, and the same radiant outburst of color sustained through the last line. The only difference lies in the suffusion of radiance in the tone to suggest the coming of color to the bank, in the first verse, and the outburst of radiance to suggest the sudden splitting of the clouds and the star's swift birth, in the second verse.

With the emotional change of thought in the last verse, from a travail and birth in nature to a human soul's struggle and rebirth, the deepening color which creeps into the tone indicates the entrance of personal pa.s.sion. The key does not change. The inflections are still and straight. The tone simply deepens and glows in the last two lines, as a prayerful ecstasy possesses the one who reads.

PART III

STUDIES IN VOCAL TECHNIQUE

STUDIES IN VOCAL TECHNIQUE

THE UNINTERRUPTED TONE

When a rich, dramatic temperament seeks for its instrument of expression the control of faultless technique the result ought to be art of the highest order. Such is the art of Gracia Ricardo. She has translated her English name into musical Italian, but does her country the honor to announce her beautiful voice as an American soprano.

Every tone of Gracia Ricardo's singing voice is as absolutely free from effort as the repeated note of the hermit thrush's song, and her tone as pure tone has the effect of that liquid call. But could you freight the thrush note with knowledge of human pa.s.sion,--with throb of joy or pulse of pain, you would get from it the effect of Gracia Ricardo's singing of a Heine-Schubert song, a Schumann, Brahms, or Franz _lied_, or one of our English ballads. It must always be a song, for Gracia Ricardo does not exploit her voice in astonishing vocal feats. She simply _sings her song_. It was her wish to interpret the _lieder_ of all countries that sent her in search of a method which would free her voice to that high use. She found that method, not in her own country, alas, but in Germany, where for twelve years she has used it in the guidance of her own voice and that of many others. She finds the American pupil "difficult," because "You are so impatient of a long, quiet preparation.

You wish to try your skill at every step of the way--and not in the privacy of your study, but in a public's hearing." Poor American public!

How it has suffered from this _impatience_. It is true, is it not, we are not willing to take time to establish a right condition for tone before using the tone in what should be final efforts of the perfected instrument. _Blessed be drudgery_ has not become a beat.i.tude in the gospel of the American artist. When it is so recognized by the student of vocal expression perhaps we can reclaim this great singer and teacher, Madame Ricardo. This book would further that end.

It has been my good fortune while making this book for you to do some brief but intensive studying under Madame Ricardo. It is by her gracious consent that I shall leave with you as an incentive toward the ideal for which we are striving the two _watchwords_ of her teaching which were most potently suggestive to me. The exercises which const.i.tute her method require personal supervision, but the active principle of those exercises for both tone production and breath control is clearly indicated by the two phrases "the uninterrupted tone" and "the constant mouth-breath." These two ideas fully sensed by a voice will work swift wonders in its use.

Like Mr. Mabie's pool of expectancy, these watchwords of the Ricardo method suggest their own application; but let us consider them somewhat more closely. Think then with me of an _uninterrupted tone_--a tone which is not interfered with at any point in its production. Think of a breath that flows freely on and on, constantly reinforced, but never interrupted--a breath that is allowed to enter the vocal box, pa.s.s between the vocal chords, where it is converted into tone; yield itself to the organs of speech and controlled by the speech process, issue from the mouth in beautiful speech forms, in the words which const.i.tute a language!

Tracing the process of tone production in this way, we find that three distinct steps are involved. Even as I write the words distinct and steps I realize their inharmony with the idea of flowing tone. Rather then let us say three phases in the evolution of speech: _breath_, _tone_, _speech_. In using the word speech to designate the final phase in this evolution I am thinking of it in its broadest sense--really in a sense identical with language. With this final phase beyond its mere initiation this book cannot deeply concern itself. For work along this line I must refer you to Prof. T. R. Lounsbury's _Standard of p.r.o.nunciation in English_; to the article on _The Acquiring of Clear Speech_ by John D. Barry, published in _Harper's Bazaar_ for August, September, and October, 1907; to _The Technique of Speech_, by Dora Duty Jones.

Not technique of speech, but _technique_ of _tone_ is our study. Not how to make beautiful speech forms, but how to make beautiful speech-tones; not how to distinguish one speech from another in a language, or the speech forms of one language from those of another, but how to distinguish interrupted speech-tone from _uninterrupted_ speech-tone--such is our problem.

But tone is breath before it becomes speech, so our first concern is with the initial stage. The process of breath control in the Ricardo method of tone production (as in my own) is a.n.a.logous to the process of pumping water. Let your chest with its lungs represent the reservoir, your diaphragm, the great muscle at the base of the lungs, becomes the piston and your mouth the mouth of the pump. If the mouth of the pump runs dry the pump itself runs down and has to be primed. Priming a pump is precisely a.n.a.logous to "catching your breath" in speech.

The active principle of breath control in the Ricardo method is the idea of a _constant mouth-breath_. A sense of uninterrupted breath is as essential to a knowledge of correct tone as a sense of uninterrupted tone is to a knowledge of correct speech and song.

In breathing to speak or sing there must be such perfect diaphragmatic control that the mouth shall never be out of breath. You must learn in speaking and reading to take easily and quietly breath enough and _often enough_ to supply the tone which is to be made into a single word, a phrase, a sentence, or a series of sentences, and leave the mouth-breath unexhausted, even unaffected. You must never catch your breath; the breath must pa.s.s continuously, the _mouth-breath_ remaining a _constant_ quant.i.ty.

It was gratifying in my work with this master of tone production to find that my own method in the training of the speaking voice was in accord at almost every point with her method in the training of the singing voice. In reprinting for you the exposition of my own method, as set down in _The Speaking Voice_, I have found it necessary to make but few changes. I have altered entirely the method of handling the tongue. I have added a word as to the part the lips play in the production of speech. In the few exercises it is safe to offer under the reinforcing of tone I have used the _[=e]_ instead of the _a_, convinced that it is the more effective vowel sound through which to work for uninterrupted tone.

It was also a pleasure to find my own instrument, through its training for speech, adequately prepared for the work in song. The studies which const.i.tute _Part Three_ of this book, if faithfully attended, will fit your voices for higher work in either art.

LEARNING TO SUPPORT THE TONE

Before attempting the exercises involved in the first step, let us examine a tone in the making, or, rather, let us feel how it is made--for the process of tone production, so far as it concerns us, is not of physiological, but rather psychological, significance. The huge tomes on the physiology of the voice which are of vital interest to the student of anatomy are not only of no use, but are apt to be a positive hindrance to the student of vocal training. A vivid picture of the larynx or vocal cords, a cross-section of the trachea, or a highly illuminated image of any of the cavities concerned in the production of that most wonderful thing in the world, a pure tone of the human voice, is a source of delight to the physiologist, but will only interfere with that _feel_ for the free, full volume of sound which the student of voice as an instrument of thought and emotion is to make, as a first step in vocal training. Then, not as anatomists or physiologists, but as makers of music, let us look at, let us feel for, a tone.

I am "stung by the splendor of a sudden thought"; I desire to share it with you; the desire causes me to take a deep breath, a column of air rises, is converted into tone, pa.s.ses into the mouth, and is moulded into the words which symbolize my thought. Let us, without further a.n.a.lysis, try this. Close your eyes, think of some line of prose or poetry which has moved you profoundly; let it take possession of you until you are seized by the desire to voice it. Still with closed eyes, feel yourself take the breath which is to be made into tone, and then into the words which stand for the thought. Hold that sensation, and study it with me for a moment. "But," you say, "the desire to voice the thought does not seize me." Very well, let me ask you a question. "Do you believe in examinations?" Now your thought was converted so swiftly into speech that you had no time to study the conversion. Once more, whether your answer be Yes or No, close your eyes and feel for the tone you are to use in making the single word.

Now, a little more in detail, let us see what happens. A thought full of emotion meets the question, the desire to answer is born; the need of breath to meet the desire contracts the diaphragm (the pump); the chest (the reservoir) fills; a column of air, pumped and controlled by the diaphragm, and reinforced in the chest, rises, strikes the vocal cords (the "strings" of the instrument), the strings vibrate, converting the air into sound, into tone; the tone, reinforced in all the chambers of the head, pa.s.ses into the mouth, and is there moulded by the juxtaposition of the organs of speech (lips, teeth, tongue) into the word, the single, monosyllabic word, Yes or No, which frames the thought. Now, once more, with closed eyes, sense the process and hold the sensation, but do not speak the word. Now, still once more, and this time, speak. Alas! did we say we were "makers of music"? Is this harmony,--this harsh, hard, breathy, strident note? What is the trouble?

First of all, fundamental to all, and beyond a doubt the secret of the dissonance, you did not breathe before you spoke or as you spoke. I mean, really breathe. And that is the first point to be attacked.

Breathe, breathe, breathe! you must learn how to breathe; you must get your pump, your diaphragm, into working order, you must master it, you must control it, you must not fetter it, you must give it a free chance to do its work. If you are a man, you have probably at least been fair in not tying down your pump; you have not incased yourself in steel bands and drawn them so tight that your diaphragm could not descend and perform its office. Yes, and if you are the athletic girl of to-day, you have probably learned the delight and benefit of free muscular action.

But you may still be suffering from the effect of your mother's crime in this direction. It may have sent you into the world with weakened muscles in control of the great pumping-station upon which must depend the beauty of your voice.

But whatever the condition or the cause, it must, if wrong, be made right. We must learn to breathe properly, freely, naturally. (Do not confuse _naturally_ and "habitually." In this connection these terms are opposites rather than synonyms.) To breathe naturally we must do away with all constriction. We must choose between the alleged beauty of a disproportionately small waist and the charm of a beautiful and alluring voice. We cannot have both. Then, off with tight corsets! Thank Heaven! they are the exception and not the rule to-day. Please note that I distinctly do not say, "Off with corsets," but only "Off with _ill-fitting_ corsets," for which tight is but another name. I believe, to digress a moment, with our present method of dress, a properly fitted corset is an absolute necessity, except in the rare instances where a perfectly proportioned and slender figure is also under the control of firm, well-trained muscles. In a first flush of rapture over the vision of the gentle ladies of Mr. Howell's Altruria, seen _Through the Eye of the Needle_, we feel that we can take a step toward that paradise by discarding the strait-laced tailored torture the present-day costume prescribes, for the corsetless grace of the Altrurian garment; but our enthusiasm is short-lived, as we realize that we are in modern America and must make as inconspicuously gracious an appearance as possible without violating the conventions. So, as I say, do not discard the corset, which is, for the majority of women, the saving grace of the present fashion in dress; only see that your corset brings out what is best in the figure G.o.d gave you, instead of disfiguring it, as undue constriction of any part of your body will inevitably do. Incidentally, by this precaution, save your voice as well.

But until we can be refitted, or readjust the corsets we already wear, and the gowns made over them, we must avoid the discouraging effect of trying to work against the odds of a costume which interferes with our breathing, by making a practice of taking the breathing exercises involved in the first step, at night and in the morning. Five minutes of deep, free breathing from the diaphragm, lying flat on your back in bed at night and before you rise in the morning, will accomplish the desired result. The point in lying flat on your back is that in that position alone you can be sure you are breathing naturally, which is diaphragmatically. Indeed, you cannot, without great effort, and sometimes not even then, breathe any other way than naturally. I cannot tell you why. I can only say, try it and see.

Our first exercise, then, is to lie flat on the back at night and in the morning, when you are perfectly free, and, with closed eyes, take deep, long breaths, letting them go slowly, and studying the accompanying sensation until it is fixed fast and you feel you cannot lose it, but can reproduce, under any condition, the action which resulted in that sensation. The incidental effect of this exercise is to make one very sleepy. Indeed, nothing will so quickly and effectually put to flight that foe of the society woman and business man of to-day, insomnia, as the practice of deep, regular natural breathing. Add counting each respiration, and it is an almost unfailing remedy. The only trouble for our purpose is that it is sometimes so swiftly soporific that we are asleep before the sensation is fixed fast and noted in consciousness: which is one object of the exercise. However, should we find the prescribed five minutes at night interfered with by coming drowsiness, we may yield in sleepy content, "sustained and soothed" by the thought that we shall be in splendid shape for the morning practice, with which nothing must interfere, "not headache, or sciatica, or leprosy, or thunder-stroke."