University of Virginia Library

Here beginneth—chapter the first of a series,
To be followed by manifold notes and queries;
So novel the queries, so trying the notes,
I think I must have the queerest of throats,
And most notable dulness, or else long ago
The Signor had given up teaching, I trow.
I wonder if ever before he has taught
A pupil who can't do a thing as she ought!

The voice has machinery—(now to be serious),
Invisible, delicate, strange, and mysterious.
A wonderful organ-pipe firstly we trace,
Which is small in a tenor and wide in a bass;
Below an Æolian harp is provided,
Through whose fairy-like fibres the air will be guided.
Above is an orifice, larger or small
As the singer desires to rise or to fall;
Expand and depress it to deepen your roar,
But raise and contract it when high you would soar.
Alas for the player, the pipes, and the keys,
If the bellows give out an inadequate breeze!
So this is the method of getting up steam,
The one motive power for song or for scream:
Slowly and deeply, and just like a sigh,
Fill the whole chest with a mighty supply;
Through the mouth only, and not through the nose,
And the lungs must condense it ere farther it goes
(How to condense it, I really don't know,
And very much hope the next lesson will show).
Then, forced from each side, through the larynx it comes,
And reaches the region of molars and gums,
And half of the sound will be ruined or lost
If by any impediment here it is crossed.
On the soft of the palate beware lest it strike,
The effect would be such as your ear would not like.
And arch not the tongue, or the terrified note
Will straightway be driven back into the throat.
Look well to your trigger, nor hasten to pull it:
Once hear the report and you've done with your bullet.
In the feminine voice there are registers three,
Which upper, and middle, and lower must be;
And each has a sounding-board all of its own,
The chest, lips, and head, to reverberate tone.
But in cavities nasal it never must ring,
Or no one is likely to wish you to sing.
And if on this subject you waver in doubt,
By listening and feeling the truth will come out.
The lips, by the bye, will have plenty to do
In forming the vowels Italian and true;
Eschewing the English, uncertain and hideous,
With an O and a U that are simply amphibious
In flexible freedom let both work together,
And the under one must not be stiffened like leather.

Here endeth the substance of what I remember,
Indited this twenty-sixth day of November.