Resonance in Singing and Speaking | Page 7

stage or the speaker on the platform, without
facial expression begotten of muscular activity, may lessen by half his
power over an audience. To train the facial muscles is a complicated
task. To do this, stand before a mirror and make all the faces ever
thought of by a schoolboy to amuse his schoolmates. Raise each corner
of the lip, wrinkle the nose, quilt the forehead, grin, laugh. The
grimaces will not enter into a performance, but their effect upon it will
be markedly beneficial.
CHAPTER II
THE SPEAKING VOICE AND PRONUNCIATION
A generation ago the speaking voice was even less understood than the
singing voice. That the two were intimately connected was but half
surmised. Only an occasional person recognized what is now generally
conceded, that a good way to improve the speaking voice is to cultivate

the singing voice.
In 1887 I published a paper in the Independent Practitioner defining
the singing voice and the speaking voice as identical, and contending
that the training for each should be the same so far as tone formation is
involved, a conclusion at which I had arrived several years before.
Subsequent experience has only served to confirm this opinion.
The past has produced many good speakers, among them Henry Clay,
Daniel Webster, Edwin Booth, Wm. Charles Macready, and Edward
Everett. Of the last Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: "It is with delight
that one who remembers Edward Everett in his robes of rhetorical
splendor, recalls his full blown, high colored, double flowered periods;
the rich, resonant, grave, far-reaching music of his speech, with just
enough of the nasal vibration to give the vocal sounding-board its
proper value in the harmonies of utterance." These examples of correct
vocalization, however, were exceptions to the general rule; they
happened to speak well, but the physiologic action of the vocal organs
which produced such results in those individual cases was not
understood, and hence the pupil ambitious to imitate them and develop
the best of which his voice was capable had no rule by which to
proceed. Few could speak with ease, still fewer could be heard by a
large assembly, and sore throats seemed to be the rule.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SINGING AND SPEAKING
In singing the flow of tone is unbroken between the words, but in
speaking it is interrupted. In singing tone is sustained and changed from
one pitch to another by definite intervals over a wide compass that
includes notes not attempted in speech. In speaking tone is unsustained,
not defined in pitch, is limited to a narrow compass, and the length of
the tones is not governed by the measure of music.
Notwithstanding these differences, singing and speaking tones are
produced by the vocal organs in the same way, are focused precisely
alike, have the same resonance, and are delivered in the same manner.
It has been said that speech differs from song as walking from dancing.
Speech may be called the prose, and song the poetry of vocalization.

During the past decade the knowledge of the speaking voice has been
greatly broadened, and the art of cultivating tone has made progress.
The identity of the singing and speaking voice is becoming more fully
recognized, and methods are being used to develop the latter similar to
those in use for the training of the former. As Dr. Morell Mackenzie
says: "Singing is a help to good speaking, as the greater includes the
less."
The recognition of this truth cannot fail to be a great aid to the progress
of singing in the public schools, since every enlargement of exercises
common to both speaking and singing helps to solidarity and esprit de
corps in teaching and in learning.
An accurate sense of pitch, melody, harmony, and rhythm is necessary
to the singer, but the orator may, by cultivation, develop a speaking
voice of musical quality without being able to distinguish Old Hundred
from The Last Rose of Summer.
PRONUNCIATION
It is a matter of common observation that American singers, although
they may be painstaking in their French and German, are indifferent,
even to carelessness, in the clear and finished enunciation of their
native tongue. Mr. W.J. Henderson, in his recent work, The Art of the
Singer, says: "The typical American singer cannot sing his own
language so that an audience can understand him; nine-tenths of the
songs we hear are songs without words." Happily this condition is
gradually yielding to a better one, stimulated in part by the examples of
visiting singers and actors. In story-telling songs and in oratorio,
slovenly delivery is reprehensible, but when the words of a song are the
lyric flight of a true poet, a careless utterance becomes intolerable.
Beauty of tone is not everything; the singing of mere sounds, however
lovely, is but a tickling of the ear. The