The Psychology of Singing | Page 5

melody, as
distinguished from ordinary speech, is also purely instinctive. Singing
was one of the most zealously cultivated arts in early Egypt, in ancient
Israel, and in classic Greece and Rome. Throughout all the centuries of
European history singing has always had its recognized place, both in
the services of the various churches and in the daily life of the people.
But solo singing, as we know it to-day, is a comparatively modern art.
Not until the closing decades of the sixteenth century did the art of solo
singing receive much attention, and it is to that period we must look for
the beginnings of Voice Culture. It is true that the voice was cultivated,
both for speech and song, among the Greeks and Romans. Gordon
Holmes, in his Treatise on Vocal Physiology and Hygiene (London,
1879), gives an interesting account of these ancient systems of Voice
Culture. But practically nothing has come down to us about the means
then used for training the voice. Even if any defined methods were
developed, it is absolutely certain that these had no influence on the
modern art of Voice Culture.
With the birth of Italian opera, in 1600, a new art of singing also came
into existence. The two arts, opera and singing, developed side by side,
each dependent on the other. And most important to the present inquiry,
the art or science of training voices also came into being. In Le
Revoluzioni del Teatro Musicale Italiano (Venice, 1785), Arteaga says

of the development of opera: "But nothing contributed so much to
clarify Italian music at that time as the excellence and the abundance of
the singers." A race of singing masters seems almost to have sprung up
in Italy. These illustrious masters taught the singers to produce effects
with their voices such as had never been heard of before. From 1600 to
1750 the progress of the art of singing was uninterrupted. Each great
teacher carried the art a little further, discovering new beauties and
powers in the voice, and finding means to impart his new knowledge to
his pupils.
This race of teachers is known to-day as the Old Italian School, and
their system of instruction is called the Old Italian Method. Just what
this method consisted of is a much-discussed question. Whatever its
system of instruction, the old Italian school seems to have suffered a
gradual decline. In 1800 it was distinctly on the wane; it was entirely
superseded, during the years from 1840 to 1865, by the modern
scientific methods.
Considered as a practical system of Voice Culture, the old Italian
method is a highly mysterious subject. Little is now known about the
means used for training students of singing in the correct use of the
voice. This much is fairly certain: the old masters paid little or no
attention to what are now considered scientific principles. They taught
in what modern vocal theorists consider a rather haphazard fashion.
The term "empirical" is often applied to their method, and to the
knowledge of the voice on which it was based.[1] But as to what the
old masters actually knew about the voice, and just how they taught
their pupils to sing, on these points the modern world is in almost
complete ignorance. Many attempts have been made in recent years to
reconstruct the old Italian method in the light of modern scientific
knowledge of the voice. But no such analysis of the empirical system
has ever been convincing.
[Note 1: "The old Italian method of instruction, to which vocal music
owed its high condition, was purely empirical." (Emma Seiler, The
Voice in Singing. Phila., 1886.)]
How the practical method of the old masters came to be forgotten is

perhaps the most mysterious feature of this puzzling system. There has
been a lineal succession of teachers of singing, from the earlier decades
of the eighteenth century down to the present. Even to-day it is almost
unheard of that any one should presume to call himself a teacher of
singing without having studied with at least one recognized master.
Each master of the old school imparted his knowledge and his practical
method to his pupils. Those of his pupils who in their turn became
teachers passed the method on to their students, and so on, in many
unbroken successions. Yet, for some mysterious reason, the substance
of the old method was lost in transmission.
What little is now known about the old method is derived from two
sources, the written record and tradition. To write books in explanation
of their system of instruction does not seem to have occurred to the
earliest exponents of the art of Voice Culture. The first published work
on the subject was that of Pietro Francesco Tosi, Osservazione sopra il
Canto figurato, brought out in Bologna in