Scan 9
Musical Courier 1898-06-15: Vol 36 Iss 954, 1898
76 lines. Read by computer on 21 September 2026. Printed page 10. See the scan on archive.org.
1danger attendant upon a practice of the vagaries advanced in their misconception of the process demanded for correct voice training.
3The liberal policy of The Courier toward all correspondents has been the means of furnishing these scientific claimants with rope sufficient to hang themselves, and the execution has often been a pretty thorough one.
5If these scientists are as prolific in progeny as they are in the material they furnish for publication a host of offspring must yet be mortified at the ignorance displayed by their respected progenitors, for the results of the latter's scientific struggles in the columns of the public press and in issued volumes concerning the vocal art have been marked only by its degradation and decay.
7Thousands of victims will yet rise up to curse the misleading theories and destructive fallacies for which these same scientists are accountable.
9The logic of events has finally drawn the line on their ridiculous and false notions concerning voice training, and their scientific theories must give place to a psychical consideration of the subject, the method of two centuries ago, the only process through which the vocal art has ever received benefit, and the only means through which its healthful perpetuation can be assured.
11Voice training and violin making reached the highest pinnacle toward perfection in those remote and unscientific days when art was paramount, and all efforts to improve upon the methods of those days by calling in the aid of science has totally failed of their purpose.
13Gentlemen of the laryngoscope, stroboscope, disk, sphere, camera and the scalpel and pill-box, please give the much abused vocal art a rest and turn your attention instead to the mechanical arts—the shoemaker, carpenter and the toilers in other honest occupations—if you still must air your scientific theories.
15Try to impress these artisans, if you can, with the importance of gaining a knowledge of the "science that is back of every movement" of the hand and arm.
17Try your best to induce these unscientific workmen to believe that a knowledge of the sciences of anatomy and physiology will enable them to handle with more skill the tools of their respective trades.
19Come, come, gentlemen; you have not done your duty by these artisans. You have been partial and have unfairly devoted your entire time and energies toward a perversion and degradation of the vocal art. Of course no one doubts your sincerity of purpose in applying your scientific efforts in this perversion and degradation.
21You should make reparation at once by giving these poor, ignorant workmen the benefit of your scientific knowledge. Poor, pitiable objects! To think that all these years they have been skillfully pursuing their various avocations and have not known a thing about the flexor profundis digitorum, the flexor longus pollicis and the pronator quadratus.
23You will discover very soon, however, that you cannot bedevil these hard-handed sons of toil with your scientific nonsense as you have the softer and more gullible followers of the vocal art. These artisans and their fathers and grandfathers for generations have succeeded in their respective occupations, reflecting credit upon themselves and benefiting materially the communities where their unscientific efforts have been exerted. You will not have as much success fooling with these sensible mechanics as you have had with your vocal dupes.
25You medical scientists had better drop monkeying with the vocal art and pay more attention to the acquisition of knowledge and skill in your own profession. There is need of it.
27You have done your utmost in an effort to improve the vocal art, and you have signally failed. Besides, you have been instrumental in inducing the none too intelligent members of the vocal profession to resort to processes that in the medical profession would come within the limit of malpractice, and make the instigator amenable to the law with the penalty of a quiet but monotonous existence that Sing Sing grants (no joke intended).
29If you scientists could be made to take your own medicine and not be allowed to force it down the throats of the vocal community generally there would be no cause for complaint. We grant you the privilege of suicide, but not of homicide.
31No, my dear student, ignore these scientists and their delusions and devote your time and efforts toward an acquisition of the vocal art upon the basis of psychical effort, the only means whereby you can properly build and preserve the voice.
33Scientific effort and premature decay are synonymous. You must remember, my readers, that the most eminent of these scientists who have devoted attention to the vocal art, the late Sir Morell Mackenzie, did not agree with the majority of his fellows. What was the result of Sir Morell's investigations?
35"We find," he says, "the teaching of singing by anatomy is an absurdity."
37Again, "Anatomical researches into the production of the voice by certain organs is utterly useless for the teacher of singing and the pupil, however interesting it may be for the physician and physiologist."
39He recommends these scientists to "learn what good singing, as the grand old masters taught, really is," and advises them not to "profane the naked majesty of a noble art with useless shreds and patches of misapplied science."
41He tells them that "the use of the laryngoscope in voice training is not only useless but pernicious."
43That "the old Italian masters knew little and cared less about the science, but were profoundly skilled in the art of singing."
45If this eminent scientist scoffs at the idea of anatomical, physiological and acoustical knowledge being necessary for a proper understanding of the art of voice production why bother yourself with a consideration of the conclusions of the smaller fry of the profession?
47If one presents the subject of voice training in a logical, reasonable manner, based upon verification through an extended practical experience in teaching the art, with many living and working models as evidence of the value of the principles employed in the fundamental training and in the finishing processes of a vocal education, up jumps one of these deluded scientists and demands what "scientific reasons" you can give for the statements you have made.
49If you cannot produce the scientific porcupine with the quills of anatomy, physiology and acoustics sticking out of the hide in every direction, then you are set down for a dreamer, an ignoramus or some other sort of an unscientific cuss, and in a voluminous contribution your ignorance is exposed, in their own estimation, before the public, and you are wafted off the face of the vocal question.
51Of course you ought to hang your head in mortification at the thought that you ever had conceit and temerity sufficient to cause you to take a pen and make such a public exposition of your ignorance; or, in the brief but pungent contemporaneous vernacular, "you should go kill yourself" as the only atonement to be made to the sciences for such unheard of presumption upon your part.
53If you only had stopped to contemplate for a moment that Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner made a thorough scientific study of the brain before attempting composition; that Liszt, Rubinstein and Von Bülow devoted days, months and years at the dissecting table in order to thoroughly understand all about the muscles of the fingers, hands and arms and their action, so that they might better employ those members in the acquisition of a technic—if you remember these scientific facts and then realize that you have had no scientific experience whatever, and yet have dared to have an unscientific opinion concerning the voice, and what is worse have dared to expose it in the public prints, it is a wonder, if you are at all sensitive, that you don't drop dead on the spot. In the estimation of these scientists you certainly ought.
55The fact that all the renowned teachers of a century or more ago knew nothing about the sciences is no argument on your behalf, not even if they did cultivate voices in a manner that enabled the singer to encompass the entire art and preserve his voice in its pristine quality and power far into his declining years.
57No, that is all wrong; you should operate upon the scientific basis, and then a long, honorable and famous career can be avoided, and, like the poor devils who work in the lead factories, you can look forward to an early and unavoidable (vocal) demise.
59One of the most reprehensible of the many misleading efforts of these scientific medicine-men who monkey with the vocal art is the attempt to aid their medical treatment of the butchered condition of the patient by giving a set of vocal exercises for daily practice by the latter.
61For instance, the patient has been studying with one of these abdominal-pressure or diaphragmatic-expanding voice butchers, and necessarily through this abnormal, volitional process has distorted the apparatus until through methodical abuse the whole membrane has become diseased.
63Of course the habit acquired in such a case is the forcing of the breath into the pharynx entirely behind the focal point. The consequent over-sizing of the tone has brought about the difficulty of distention or constriction of the tissue. Upon consulting the throat specialist (scientist, of course) the patient is given exercises to practice whereby he must close the mouth and sing through the nose.
65This process causes him to drop the distended or constricted condition of his apparatus and thereby he feels relief, the interval of rest from the violent abuse previously sustained apparently mollifies this condition, and the patient looks forward to the restoration of his vocal powers.
67The sound-producing part of the apparatus being relieved from its previous abnormal employment, nature tries to restore normal conditions, but unfortunately it is intercepted in its effort through the prostrating effect of a relaxed soft palate, the result of this nasal effort through the advice of the doctor, the patient thus merely exchanging one form of abuse for another. Such maltreatment is nothing short of malpractice upon the part of the scientist.
69It has been my experience that the more skillful the physician the less he will have to do with vocal experiments.
71Take a man born with genius for his profession, like Dr. Edgar M. Holmes, of Boston, whose comprehensive medical knowledge, scientific attainments and unrivaled surgical skill have made him eminent among his fellows as a specialist in diseases of the organs of sight, hearing, sound-producing or respiration—do you suppose for a moment he would resort to the vocal art as an accessory in his treatment of an abused vocal apparatus?
73No; he would examine your condition and probably inform you that the appearance would indicate an abuse of your vocal apparatus, possibly the result of voice-butcher ing upon the part of some vocal instructor, and would advise you to discontinue your abusive practices. His treatment of your case would rest wholly upon his professional knowledge and skill, as would that of any competent specialist.
75If the physician you consult combines vocal exercises
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