Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ... on the equalisation of the voice, etc. in my second lecture, which I gave to the Social-Science Congress in October 1880, I promised to state on some future occasion my views on the equalisation of the voice. To-day I propose to redeem that long-standing promise, and would ask you to accept this as a continuation of my second lecture. The most important task in the formation of the voice will ever be to equalise the registers, or, more correctly, to obtain equality in all the notes of the voice, so that they appear all of one mould from the lowest to the highest; and this is indeed the first demand we have to make on the vocal artist. By register of notes one generally understands a succession of notes produced by the employment of one and the same vibrating mechanism. Whenever, in aiming at the production of a certain scale, we produce a so-called involuntary leap or break--i.e., whenever, between two notes of this scale, a perceptible alteration of the breathing, of the pronunciation, and of the timbre occurs, these two notes belong to different registers. In the organ, the access of wind to the different sets of pipes is permitted by stops, which are called "registers," and only those sets of pipes, the stops corresponding to which are pulled, can, on pressing the keys, be made to sound. I think the term "register" not well applied to the human voice, this term being borrowed from the mechanism of the organ, which has no resemblance to that of the human voice, and which certainly came into existence at a considerably later period. While an organ requires many sets of pipes for the production of sounds of different pitch and of different timbres, the human vocal apparatus has but a single pipe, which, however, can produce a greater...
