The Child-Voice in Singing | Page 9

the quality will be as good as the voice is capable of.
Everyone who has observed has also noticed the contrast in the lower tones of children and women. The chest-voice of the woman, which she uses in singing her lower register, is normally very beautiful in its quality. Its tones are the product of a perfectly developed, full-grown organ. The chest-voice of the child is an abnormal product of a weak, growing, undeveloped organ. It possesses, even when used carefully, little of the tone tints of the adult voice. The chest-voice belongs to adult life, not to childhood. The so-called chest-voice of children is only embryonic. It cannot be musical, for the larynx has not reached that stage of growth and development where it can produce these tones musically. The constant use of this hybrid register with children is injurious in many ways. Its use is justified in schools merely through custom, and it can not be doubted that as soon as the attention of teachers is called to its evils, they will no longer tolerate its use.
The usual analogies then which are drawn between the adult female voice and the child-voice, in so far as they imply a similar physiological condition of the vocal organ and similar vocal training, are not only useless, but misleading. He who tries to train the average child-voice on the theory of two, three or five clearly-defined breaks, or natural changes in the forms for vocal vibration assumed by the vocal bands will get very little help from nature.
With due consideration it is said that it is a harder task to train children's voices properly than to train the voices of adults. Where nature is so shifty in her ways, it requires keen penetration to discover her ends.
The child-voice is a delicate instrument. It ought not to be played upon by every blacksmith.
CHAPTER III.
HOW TO SECURE GOOD TONE.
The practical application of the teaching of the two preceding chapters may at first thought seem to be difficult. On the contrary, it is quite easy. We have favorable conditions in schools; graded courses in music, regular attendance, discipline, and women and men in charge who are accustomed to teach. No more favorable conditions for teaching vocal music exist than are to be found in a well-organized and well-disciplined school. The environments of both pupils and teachers are exactly adapted to the ready reception of ideas, on the one hand, and the skilful imparting of them, on the other.
The abilities of the trained teachers of to-day are not half appreciated. They often possess professional skill of the highest order, and the supervisor of music in the public schools may count himself exceedingly fortunate in the means he has at hand for carrying on his work. But knowledge of voice is no more evolved from one's inner consciousness than is knowledge of musical notation, or of the Greek alphabet; therefore, if regular teachers in the school permit singing which is unmusical and hurtful, it is chiefly because they are following the usual customs, and their ears have thereby become dulled, or it may be that even if the singing is unpleasant to them, that they do not know how to make it better. As before said, all energies have so far been directed to the teaching of music reading. Tone has been neglected, forgotten, or at most its improvement has been sought spasmodically. The carelessness regarding tone, which is so prevalent, is due to an almost entire absence of good teaching on the subject of the child-voice-- to ignorance, let us say-- not altogether inexcusable.
Now and then, when listening to the soprani of some well-trained boy-choir, sounding soft and mellow on the lower notes and ringing clear and flutey on the higher, it may have dimly occurred to the teacher of public school music that there might be things as yet unheard of in his musical philosophy, a vague wonder and dissatisfaction, which has slowly disappeared under the pressure of routine work.
When one reflects upon the results which the patience and skill of our regular teachers have accomplished in teaching pupils to read music; it can never be reasonably doubted that the same patience and skill, if rightly directed, will be equally successful in teaching a correct use of the voice.
Two principles form the basis of good tone-production as applied to children's voices.
1st. They must sing softly.
2d. They must be restricted in compass of voice.
If these two rules are correctly applied in each grade, if pupils sing softly enough, and carry their tones neither too high nor too low, always taking into account the grade or average age of the class, then the voice will be used only in the thin or head-register, and the tones of the thick or chest-register will never be heard. But the two