|
CONCEPTS OF VOCAL PEDAGOGY 45
mation besides the music of song, and all difficulties in pronunciation are overcome by the study of the acquired faculty of speech." [Ibid. 33; Shep-pard 546] Friedich Schorr, leading operatic baritone, warmly endorses the principle promulgated by Richard Wagner; that "there exists no difference [in opera]" between so-called 'declaimed1 and 'sung' phrases/* In all his operas, the composer claims that declamation is equivalent to song and vice versa. Therefore the singer is always required to recite (declaim) his lines before he sings them. [497] Samuels even goes so far as to say that singing may be considered as "beautiful shouting." He claims that this attitude has a marked effect on the singing of nervous vocalists, "for the combative faculty is called upon to assert itself, at once banishing nervousness." [487, p. 52] For best results in vocal training, then, "the approach to a beautiful singing voice should be made through the early cultivation of a beautiful speaking voice." [Seashore 503]
Group II. Opposed to this argument are those opinions that express doubt as to the efficacy of a speech approach in training the singing voice because of the basic differences existing between the singing and speaking functions. According to Webster, "Speech and song are chiefly distinguished by the wider [and more disjunct] variations of pitch in singing." Aikin infers that "language [speech] is a purely artificial acquisition of mankind," while the singing voice is native to the individual. [4] **We are born with the instinctive ability to use the voice easily and freely and with good expression, without any instruction." [Harvard Dictionary of Music 704] "Sing just as you speak ... is very misleading advice," says Douty. "It may even prove harmful." [143] In a symposium on singing, conducted by Bairstow, Dent and others, the negative argument is advanced that to sing as you speak is not very useful to the vocalist because speech is usually carried on at a relatively low pitch and "we are apt to forget that speech at a high pitch [as in singing] is a vastly different thing from speech at a low." [32] Henderson maintains that the 'sing as you speak* approach is unscientific because the tones of speaking are entirely different from those used in singing. [243, p. 49] Armstrong derides the attempts to induce the extraordinary vocal controls of singing from the relatively ordinary controls of speaking. "Singing, compared to speaking is a supernormal effort," he says. Therefore, from the very beginning, extraordinary devices are required. [25]
The reports of several experimental observations tend to confirm the viewpoint that speech and singing are not reciprocally transferable skills. Bartholomew reports, in a paper read at a meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, that the singing voice appears to be considerably different from the normal speaking voice. This conclusion is a result of a three |
||