The effects on the vocal cords of improper methods of voice production and their remedy / by H. Holbrook Curtis.

  • Curtis, H. Holbrook (Henry Holbrook), 1856-1920.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The effects on the vocal cords of improper methods of voice production and their remedy / by H. Holbrook Curtis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

    12/22 (page 8)
    cords appear narrower, tenser, lower anteriorly, ecpiidistant from each other, more liomogeneous and whiter in color. These two pictures should be well considered, as they become the basis of criticism in distinguishing the correct and eliminating incorrect methods on the one hand in singers' voices, and of the greatest assist- tance to the laryngologist in correcting i)atiu)logiral conditions, the result of bad training. Tlie ])n)i)er appreciation of these oi)i)oslte condi- tions and their effect on the (luality of tone immediately calls our atten tion to the subject of respiration. Within the past three years the entire theory of musical education has changed in France; the explanation of this change being that there is at present a better appreciation of the influences bearing upon the production of tone and a better understanding of the physiology of the larynx by reason of the advances made in laryngoscopy. Modern t«iching tends to cultivate tone harmonies and sympathy in the voice at the expense of brilliancy of execution. The same judg- ment sliould be exercised in the training of an individual who proposes to make singing his or her art, as .should be employed in advising the painter that his sijecial forte lies in landscapes, rich in color, to which he may give expression to his imaginative genius, rather than to the sterner fac simile of portraiture. How many singers we hear whose technique and brilliant staccato in the Bell Song of Lakme calls forth our admiration and amazement, but who are as absolutely unable to put any sympathy whatsoever into the simplest ballad. We should study color harmonies in music in the same way that they must be studied in painting. There is no rule for the palpitating sunlight effects and prismatic play of colors in the school of Claude Monet; it is certainly a subtile feeling which is given by an ingenious mingling of pure spectrum colors. In the human voice, that added coloring of tone, which appeals to the heart as well as to the ear of the listener, must be brought about by the employment of those har- monics, which are added to the original tone by intervibrations within the accessor^' cavities of the nasal passages. To sing dans le viasque, as the French say, is to give this added richness to the initial tone; but to sing in this manner requires the soft-palate and uvula to be lowered in the production of tone. Likewise to make the purest initial tone from the cords, we must get the utmost possible tension, which may only be arrived at when the thyroid, or Adam's apple, is depressed, for in pro- portion as the thyroid is elevated, the cords tend to assume the base of a right angle triangle instead of its hypotenuse. Several elements beside this enter into the question of the gi'eatest possible tension, one of the most important of which is, that the trachea be drawn down to assume the position that it takes when the apices of the lungs are filled to their greatest extent with air. One of the greatest singers that the world has ever known told me, that the reason he adopted a fixed high chest was,