The Voice in Singing. Emma Seiler
Science itself admits that it can neither create artistic talent, nor supply the place of it, but only furnish it with aids. Besides, with the whole inner nature of music, no forms of thought (reflection) have anything to do. It has “a reason above reason.” This art transmits to us in sound the expression of emotions as they rise in the human soul and connect themselves one with another. It is the revelation of our inmost life in its tenderest and finest processes, and is therefore the most ideal of the arts. It appeals directly to our consciousness. As a sense of the divine dwells in every nation, in every human being, and is impelled to form for itself a religious cultus, so we find among all nations the need of music dwelling as deeply in human nature. The most uncivilized tribes celebrate their festivals with songs as the expression of their devotion or joy, and the cultivated nations of ancient times, like the Greeks, cherished music as the ethereal vehicle of their poetry, and regarded it as the chief aid in the culture of the soul.
But together with its purely internal character, music has yet another and formal side, for if our art consisted only in the æsthetic feeling, and in representing this feeling, every person of culture, possessing the right feeling, would be able to sing, just as he understands how to read intelligibly.
Everything spiritual, everything ideal, as soon as it is to be made present to the perceptions of others, requires a form which, in its material as well as in its structure, may be more or less perfect, but it can never otherwise than submit to those eternal laws to which all that lives, all that comes within the sphere of our perceptions, is subject. To discover and establish the natural laws which lie at the basis of all our forms of art is the office of science; to fashion and control these forms and animate them with a soul is the task of art. In singing, the art consists in tones beautiful and sonorous, and fitted for the expression of every variation of feeling. To set forth the natural laws by which these tones are produced is the business of physiology and physics.
Thus is there not only an æsthetical side to the art of singing, but a physiological and a physical side also, without an exact knowledge, appreciation, observance, and study of which, what is hurtful cannot be discerned and avoided; and no true culture of art, and consequently no progress in singing, is possible.
In the physiological view of vocal art, we have to do with the quality and strength of the organ of singing in the act of uttering sound, and under the variations of sound that take place in certain tones (the register being transcended).
By the physical side is to be understood the correct use and skilful management of the air flowing from the lungs through the windpipe, and brought into vibration by the vocal chords in the larynx.
But the æsthetics of vocal art, and the spiritual inspiration of the form (of the sound), comprise the whole domain of music and poetic beauty.
1 Those who are interested in the history of music are referred to the historical works already mentioned for a fuller account of what is only alluded to above.
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