Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

QUALITY.

Quality is the word used to designate the modifications that the voice undergoes in volume and resonance, by various adjustments of the breathing action, and of the throat and re-enforcing cavities. Timbre and tone-color are used as equivalent terms.

Quality is the distinctively emotional element of voice: not that it does not aid Time, Force, and Pitch, in the expression of judgment, energy, and motive; nor that they, in turn, do not aid in the expression of feeling; but its own especial function is emotional.

The Qualities of voice recognized and named, are: Natural, Oral, Orotund, Nasal, Aspirate, Guttural, Pectoral, and Falsetto; but their modifications toward each other and their interfusions and blends produce varieties and shades of tonecolor practically innumerable. Each vowel has its inherent quality; but cultivation teaches them to borrow and lend; so that any one vowel may on occasion become the color note for all the rest. Thus either unity or contrast is at command. The statement that the office of Quality is emotional suggests the need of a workaday character of voice that is unemotional; as we have movement that is neutral, a pitch interval and a melodic progression that are inexpressive of feeling, and a syllabic form that is simply the vehicle of easy, distinct, unemphatic communication. This want Mother Nature has supplied; and to this impartial, colorless kind of voice Doctor Rush gave the name, Natural Quality.

NATURAL QUALITY.

Natural Quality-also called Normal Quality, and sometimes, by liberal license, Pure Tone-is, properly, the cul

(265)

tivated voice of unimpassioned, matter-of-fact, or moderately animated speech. The uncultivated habitual voice is not necessarily, perhaps not usually, the real natural voice. Many a man lives a long lifetime, and dies, without ever having heard his own natural voice, after his boyhood. In the absence of right cultivation, wrong habits of tone production, re-enforcement, enunciation, and melody, so establish themselves that the sensitive ear is constantly assailed by strident, hoarse, thin, hollow, shrill, nasal, flat, weak, and blatant tones, until it almost questions the blessedness of speech, and longs for silence, 'like a poultice, to heal the blows of sound'; while the poor possessor of the afflicting organ consoles himself with the consideration that, if it is a poor thing, it is his own. It is not his, and he has no right to keep it.

Well-directed and persevering practice of the exercises so far given, will surprisingly improve even a bad voice, and perfect a good one; that is, it will free, develop, and ripen the latent powers and possibilities of the true Natural Voice, and gradually correct faults of quality, force, pitch, and enunciation.

In the light utterance of conversation, the resonance of the Natural Quality is principally in the front part of the mouth, and gains its ring and brilliancy by nasal re-enforcement. Not that breath and voice go into and through the nose; that would produce nasal twang; but, with the nares closed by the raising of the soft palate, a vowel utterance aimed against the front of the hard palate causes the quiet air in the nasal chambers to vibrate harmonically; and the nasal vibrations blend with and become part of the tone issuing from the lips. The dull, muffled resonance of the voice when the head is stopped up with a severe cold, is chiefly due to the absence of nasal re-enforcement: it is a contradiction of fact to call such a quality a nasal tone.

In public address, uncultivated speakers usually seek to secure audibility by mere loudness, without regard to the

necessary breath support. Because the ear tells them that the voice is formed in the throat, they lay upon the throat the whole effort of voice production. They grip the slim, inadequate breath-stream, by narrowing and tensely holding the throat walls; which raises the pitch and renders the quality harsh and shrill. The muscles of palate, tongue, and lips soon feel the unnatural strain, and become partially paralyzed, so that the utterance of syllables is blurred, cluttered, and jumbled. Such speaking is distressing to a civilized audience, and ruinous to the speaker's throat and voice. On the other hand, the well-trained speaker, by arching freely the soft palate, adds somewhat of pharyngeal resonance to that of mouth and nose; so that his tones are rounder, fuller, and deeper than in conversation, without losing their oral and nasal ring. The actual labor of speaking he transfers from the throat to the breathing organs; and, after hours of such exertion, his voice is as fresh as at first-fresher, mellower, richer than at first.

EXAMPLE OF NATURAL QUALITY.

It was a maxim of Raffaello's that the artist's object was to make things, not as Nature makes them, but as she would make them; as she ever tries to make them, but never succeeds, though her aim may be deduced from a comparison of her effects; just as, if a number of archers had aimed unsuccessfully at a mark upon a wall, and this mark were removed, we could by the examination of their arrow-marks point out the probable position of the spot aimed at, with a certainty of being nearer to it than any of their shots.

We have most of us heard of original sin, and may, perhaps, in our modest moments, conjecture that we are not quite what God, or Nature, would have us to be. Rafaello had something to mend in humanity: I should like to have seen him mending a daisy, or a peaseblossom, or a moth, or any other of God's slightest work! If he had accomplished that, one might have found for him more respectable employment: to set the stars in better order, perhaps (they seem grievously scattered, as they are, and to be of all manner of shapes and

sizes, except the ideal shape, and the proper size); or, to give us a corrected view of the ocean, that at least seems a very irregular and improvable thing: the very fishermen do not know this day how far it will reach, driven before the west wind. Perhaps some one else does, but that is not our busi

ness.

Let us go down and stand on the beach by the sea-the great irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is not out of time. One-two:-here comes a well-formed wave at last, trembling a little at the top, but, on the whole, orderly. So! Crash among the shingle, and up as far as this gray pebble. Now, stand by, and watch. Another:-ah, careless wave! why couldn't you have kept your crest on? It is all gone into spray, striking up against the cliffs there-I thought as much-missed the mark by a couple of feet! Another: how now, impatient one! couldn't you have waited till your friend's reflex was done with, instead of rolling yourself up in it, in that unseemly manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, and a goodly one at last! What think you of yonder slow rise, and crystalline hollow, without a flaw? Steady, good wave! not so fast, not so fast! Where are you coming to? This is too bad; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you in our face, besides; and a wave that we had some hope of, behind there, broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great white tablecloth of foam all the way to the shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off it! Alas, for these unhappy 'arrow-shots' of Nature! She will never hit her mark, with these unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them into the ideal shape, if we wait for a thousand years.

THE CALL.

-Ruskin.

The practice of the Call, in high and in middle pitch, is calculated to give resonance, reach, amplitude, and ease to the Natural Vocality.

In calling, the syllabic note of the accented syllables is like that prescribed in Exercise 2 of 'A Scheme of Daily Practice', page 85,-except that the note, while always longer than in ordinary speech, is variously extended, to indicate the relative importance of the word containing it,-the more

important the word, the more the accent is prolonged; that the delivery is expulsive, instead of effusive, the breath pressure being governed by the emphatic intention; and that the vanish of the syllable rises or falls, to express continuation or completeness. To this note Doctor Rush gave the name, Protracted Radical, from the fact that the radical and body of the vowel are held and enforced on a level pitch; and the rising or falling vanish fulfills, so far as it can, the office of the normal rising or falling concrete. The note of song is sometimes the Protracted Radical, and sometimes the Protracted Vanish; in which latter the concrete rise or fall opens the syllable, while the body and vanish of the impulse receive the level prolongation. The prolonged syllables of the Call, then, are singing notes; and the Call, in sum-total, is a blend and compromise of song and speech.

The singing note travels much farther than the speaking note, with its simple rise and fall and its usual abruptness and brief quantity; so that, when we wish our words to reach distant ears, we instinctively adopt or approach the singing intonation.

In practicing the examples, sing the words of groups, especially the emphatic words. Attenuate the vanish of terminal words, with rise or fall, in accordance with motive and emphasis. Keep the tone clear and musical.

1.

2.

EXAMPLES OF THE CALL.

Boat ahoy! boat ahoy!

Spanish ships of war at sea! We have sighted fifty-three!

3.

Attention, battalion! To the rear,-open order,-march!

4.

Rejoice, you men of Angiers! ring your bells!
King John, your king and England's, doth approach:
Open your gates, and give the victors way!

-Shakespeare-King John.

« AnteriorContinuar »