Chapter VI · SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR A RADICAL REFORM IN VOICE CULTURE

To reinforce the foregoing principles, the author advances the following suggestions which can bring about a radical reform in the culture of the voice, directing the art of singing toward more definite rules, scientific, and better suited to the modern conditions:

1. Voice culture must be natural in its basis, and scientific in its principles—not empiric and arbitrary. There must be only one method of singing, founded on physiological laws, presented in practical form.

2. The education of the voice must begin in the elementary schools, and must first be taught to children in the form of correct use of the speaking voice.

We believe this to be the most important feature in the reform of voice culture, being directed to the very origin of what is responsible for the initial defects and deterioration in the natural voices of children. A school should be founded for this purpose, where school teachers could get adequate instruction in the natural and correct phonetic rules, molded on classic languages, for teaching this form of voice education.

533. Singing teachers must be new professionals, combining scientific with artistic knowledge; a class of voice specialists, differentiated from coaches, accompanists, vocal musicians, etc.

4. Voice specialists must undergo a regular course of training in scientific and musical matters related to voice, and must be subject to examination by a special Board of Scientific and Musical Experts, elected or recognized by the Government. They must get their practicing licenses from this Board, as in the case of other professions. That alone can protect the singing field from all kinds of intruders, charlatans and impostors.

A survey of these principles and suggestions discloses the extent of the author’s task. In his endeavor to demonstrate how certain ideas about the mechanism of voice production have been entirely neglected or misinterpreted, and for strict adherence to the principles laid down, which differ considerably from the methods now taught, he must advocate and suggest an almost opposite form of vocal education from that which is now in vogue.

That has no relation of any sort with the completion of the culture of the voice, as far as musicianship, technic and style of singing are concerned. This is a task which belongs to a class of professional people, who represent the musicians of the voice. These professionals—coaches, accompanists, interpreters, etc., have the function of finishing the artistic education of the pupil for the stage or any other career. But the preliminary voice education of the singing students is quite another matter, to 54which more serious and solid care should be devoted, and in which the untaught should take no part whatsoever.

For this purpose the author proposes a new form of voice education which he calls the “Scientific Culture of Voice,” based, as above stated, upon the fundamental laws of acoustics and physiology of the voice, and molded on the method of singing of Enrico Caruso, who has been the living model of the natural mechanism of voice production. This culture must be intrusted to the specialists of the voice who, being well equipped with the necessary scientific and musical knowledge, fill the requirements for competent and correct teaching.

The contents of this book, therefore, will treat first of the voice purely as a physiological phenomenon, from the standpoint of its natural production, in accordance with the principles already announced, and then of the most effective means for accomplishing a radical reform in voice culture. This will be carried out by an entirely original method, based on phonetic rules molded on the Italian language, which places and develops the singing voice through the speaking voice.

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