No matter how great the artist, daily practice, if even not more than
forty minutes a day, is absolutely necessary. There is a deep
philosophical and physiological principle underlying this and it applies
particularly to the vocal student. Each minute spent in intelligent
practice makes the voice better and the task easier. The power to do
comes with doing. Part of each day's practice should be devoted to
singing the scale softly and slowly with perfect intonation. Every tone
should be heard with the greatest possible acuteness. The ears should
analyze the tone quality with the same scrutiny with which a botanist
would examine the petals of a newly discovered specimen. As the singer
does this he will notice that his sense of tone color will develop; and
this is a very vital part of every successful singer's equipment. He
will become aware of beauties as well as defects in his voice which may
never have been even suspected if he will only listen "microscopically"
enough.
Much of the singer's progress depends upon the mental model he keeps
before him. The singer who constantly hears the best of singing
naturally progresses faster than one surrounded by inferior singing.
This does not recommend that the student should imitate blindly but that
he should hear as much fine singing as possible. Those who have not the
means to attend concerts and the opera may gain immensely from hearing
fine records. Little Adelina Patti, playing as a child on the stage of
the old Academy of Music in New York, was really attending the finest
kind of a conservatory unawares.
The old Italian teachers and writers upon voice, knowing the florid
style in which their pupils would be expected to sing, did not have much
to do with fanciful exercises. They gave their lives to the quest of the
"bel canto"; and many of them had difficulty in convincing their pupils
that the simplest exercises were often the hardest. Take for instance
this invaluable scale exercise sung with the marks of expression
carefully observed.
This exercise is one of the most difficult to sing properly.
Nevertheless, some student will rush on to florid exercises before he
can master this exercise. To sing it right it must be regarded with
almost devotional reverence. Indeed, it may well be practiced
diligently for years. Every tone is a problem, a problem which must be
solved in the brain and in the body of the singer and not in the mind of
any teacher. The student must hold up every tone for comparison with his
ideal tone. Every note must ring sweet and clear, pure and free. Every
tone must be even more susceptible to the emotions than the expression
upon the most mobile face. Every tone must be made the means of
conveying some human emotion. Some singers practice their exercises in
such a perfunctory manner that they get as a result voices so stiff and
hard that they sound as though they came from metallic instruments which
could only be altered in a factory instead of from throats lined with a
velvet-like membrane.
[Illustration: musical notation: Sing with great attention to
intonation.]
Flexibility, mobility and susceptibility to expression are quite as
important as mere sweetness. After the above exercise has been mastered
the pupil may pass to the chromatic scale (scala semitonata sostenuto);
and this scale should be sung in the same slow sustained manner as the
foregoing illustration.