STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION
STUDIES IN VOCAL EXPRESSION
THE VOCAL VOCABULARY
There is a theory that it is dangerous to go beyond the mere freeing of
the instrument in either vocal or physical training. In accordance with
this theory I was advised by a well-known actress to confine my study
for the stage, so far as the vocal and pantomimic preparation was
concerned, to singing, dancing, and fencing. "Get your voice and body
under control," she said. "Make them free, but don't connect shades of
thought and emotion with definite tones of the voice or movements of the
body; don't meddle with Delsarte or elocution." This advice seemed good
at the time. It still seems to me that it ought to be the right method.
But I have grown to distrust it. One of the chief sources of my distrust
has been the effect of the theory upon the art of the actress who gave
the advice. She is perhaps the most graceful woman on the stage to-day,
and her voice is pure music. But her gestures and tones fail in
lucidity; they fail to illumine the text of the part she essays to
interpret. One grows suddenly impatient of the meaningless grace of her
movements, the meaningless music of her voice. One longs for a swift--if
studied--stride across the stage in anger instead of the unstudied grace
of her glide in swirling-robed protest. One longs to hear a staccato
declaration of intention instead of the cadenced music of a voice
guiltless of intention. No! After the body has been made a free and
responsive agent, a mastery of certain fundamental laws, a mastery of
certain principles of gesture in accordance with the dictates of thought
and emotion, is necessary to its further perfecting as a vivid,
powerful, and true agent of personality. The action must be suited to
the word, the word to the action, through a study of the laws governing
expression in action.
So with the voice: to become not only a free instrument, but a
beautiful and powerful means of expression and communication it must
learn to recognize and obey certain fundamental laws governing its
modulations. A master of verbal expression is distinguished by his vast
vocabulary of words, and his skill and discrimination in its use. A
master of vocal expression must acquire what we may call a _vocal
vocabulary_, consisting of changes of pitch, varieties of inflection and
variations in tone color, and must know how to use these elements with
skill and discrimination. Our need for such a vocabulary was discovered
to us at every step of the work in interpretation. The suggestions and
exercises of the following studies aim to supplement the work in
interpretation by meeting that need. Before making a detailed study of
each element of this vocal vocabulary let us make a quick study with the
four elements in mind. Remember, in the last preliminary exercise, as in
the final complete interpretative endeavor, the material we employ is to
be chosen from real literature. It is to be worth interpreting whether
it be a single line or phrase or a complete poetical drama. We have
agreed to consider literature as real literature, and so worth our
interpretative efforts, when it possesses one or combines all of the
three qualities,--_beauty_, _truth_, and _power_.
This passage from Emerson's _Friendship_ surely meets that requirement.
It is truth beautifully and powerfully expressed. It will serve.
Our friendships hurry to short and poor conclusions because we have
made them a texture of wine and dreams instead of the tough fiber
of the human heart.
Having read this passage cursorily (as is the custom in reading to one's
self to-day), will you now study it for a moment very closely. Now, once
more, please, read it silently, noting the action of your mind as you
read. ("Watch its pulsations," Dr. Curry would say.) And now, aloud,
although without an auditor, read it, this time noting the effect of the
action of the mind upon your voice. Did its pitch change? Where and why?
How did you inflect the words "wine and dreams"? How did the inflection
of these words differ from that of the last six words, "tough fiber of
the human heart," with which they are contrasted in thought? Did your
tone change color at any point? Why? Where? But now, once more, let us
approach the passage, this time with a different intention. Let us study
it with the idea of interpreting it for another mind. Now the method of
attack is very different. Not that it ought to be different. But it is.
Intense concentration ought to characterize all our reading, whether its
object be to acquire knowledge or pleasure for one's self, or to impart
either to another. But the day of reading which "_maketh a full man_"
seems to be long past, so far as the general public is concerned. The
necessity of skimming the pages of a dozen fourth-rate books of the hour
in order to be at least a lucid interlocutor, and so a desired dinner
guest, is making our reading a swift gathering of colorless impressions
which may remain a week or only a day, and which leave no lasting effect
of beauty or truth upon the mind and heart of the reader. Should it not
be rather an intense application of the mind to the thought of a master
mind, until that thought, in all its power and beauty, has broadened the
boundaries of the reader's mind and enlarged the meaning of all his
thoughts? I wonder if a much smaller proportion of time spent in such
reading might not result in a less _bromidic_ social atmosphere, even
though its tendency were a bit serious. I think it might be both safe
and interesting to try such an experiment.
But now we must return to Emerson on _Friendship_. In studying a passage
for the purpose of vocal interpretation you have learned that the
concentration of attention upon the thought must be intense, you must
make the thought absolutely your own before you can present it to your
auditor, it must possess you before you can express it; that the thought
must seem in the moment of its expression to be a creation of your own
brain, it must belong to you as only the thing you have created can, and
until you have so recreated the thought it is not yours to give. Having
recalled these precepts, read the passage silently again. Pour upon it
the light of your experience, your philosophy, your ideals, your
perception of truth. Comment upon it silently as you read. Now read it
aloud and let your voice do this commenting. But wait a moment. Let me
quote for you the paragraph following this statement.
The laws of friendship are austere and eternal, of one web with the
laws of nature and morals. But we have aimed at a swift and petty
benefit to suck a sudden sweetness. We snatch at the slowest fruit
in the whole garden of God, which many summers and many winters
must ripen.
This is Emerson's paraphrase of his original statement. How much of it
did your mental commentary include? How did your silent paraphrase
resemble this? Read the original passage again to yourself in the light
of this paraphrase. I shall ask you now to repeat the first sentence
from memory, for you will find, after this concentrated contemplation of
a thought, that its form is fixed fast in your mind. That is a
delightful accompaniment of this kind of reading. The form of the
thought, if it be apposite (which it must be to be literature, and we
are considering only literature), the form of a thought so approached
stays with us in all its beauty.
Let us then repeat the original statement, having read the passage in
which Emerson has elaborated it. Now, what you must demand of your voice
is this: that it shall so handle the single introductory sentence as to
suggest the rest of the paragraph. In other words, your voice must do
the paraphrasing, by means of its changes in pitch, its inflections, and
its variations in tone-color; by means, in short, of its _vocal
vocabulary_.
I
STUDY IN PAUSE AND CHANGE OF PITCH
It is asserted that, "the last word has not been said on any subject."
Mr. Hamilton Mabie seemed to me to achieve a _last word_ on the subject
of _pause_ when he casually remarked: "Emerson was a master of pause; he
would pause, and into the pool of expectancy created by that pause drop
just the right word." There seems little to be added to complete the
exposition of that single sentence. It surely leaves no doubt in our
minds as to the effect to be desired from the use of this element of our
vocabulary. How to use it to gain that effect is our problem. First of
all, we must cease to be afraid to pause. We hurry on over splendid
opportunities to elucidate our text through a just use of this form of
emphasis, beset by two fears: fear that we shall seem to have forgotten
the text; fear that we shall actually forget it if we stop to think.
Think of being afraid to stop to think lest we should stop thinking!
That is precisely what the fear indicates. It arises, of course, from a
confusion as to the real nature of pause. We confuse pause with its
ghost, hesitation. Dr. Curry makes the difference clear for us in his
definition of hesitation as an "empty pause." "Empty of what?" you ask.
Empty of thought! Of course, an empty pause is a ghastly as well as a
ghostly thing to experience. If you have ever faced an audience in one
of those "awful" moments when your voice has ceased because your thought
has stopped, and when you are painfully aware of a pool of embarrassed
sympathy into which you know there is no word to drop, then you have
learned the meaning of an _empty pause_.
On the other hand, if you shall ever face an audience in one of those
_fateful_ moments when your voice pauses because your thought is so
vital, that you realize both your audience and you must be given time to
fully grasp it, and when you are serenely conscious of that "pool of
expectancy" into which you know you have just the right word to drop,
then you will learn the meaning of a _true pause_.
Some one has called inflection a running commentary of the emotions upon
the thought. Emphasis might well be defined in the same way. The
definition would need to be a bit more inclusive, since emphasis
includes inflection. Emphasis then may be defined as a running
commentary of the thought and emotion of the reader upon the thought of
the text he interprets. The words reveal the thought; your valuation of
that thought, as you interpret it, is revealed through your vocal
vocabulary in voicing it. We, your auditors, can only gather from your
emphasis your valuation of the truth or importance of what you are
uttering. You may use one or all of the elements of your vocal
vocabulary to bring out the thought of a single phrase. The elements of
the vocal vocabulary are all forms of emphasis.
Since pause is a cessation of speech it can hardly be called an element
of a vocal vocabulary; but it may rightly be called the basis of our
vocabulary because it determines our use of the other elements. It
behooves us then to make a study of pause before testing our vocabulary
as to its other elements.
Here are two texts to be valued by our use of the pause.
EXTRACT FROM THE DIARY OF A BOARDING-SCHOOL GIRL
At midnight, the magic hour as every girl knows for affairs of a
purely private and personal nature, when far away at the end of a
corridor you can almost hear Miss ----'s peaceful snore, when as
the poet aptly put it in this morning's English stunt, "darkness
clears our vision which by day is sun-blind"--(I thought Jane and I
would die laughing and give it all away when we came to that line
in Mr. Lanier's stupid poem),--well, as I say, exactly at that hour
my heart began to beat so hard I thought it would wake Madge
without the "punch" I had promised to give her when it was time to
begin preparations for our grand spread.
From Sidney Lanier's _Crystal_.
At midnight, death's and truth's unlocking time.
When far within the spirit's hearing rolls
The great soft rumble of the course of things--
A bulk of silence in a mask of sound,--
When darkness clears our vision that by day
Is sun-blind, and the soul's a ravening owl
For truth and flitteth here and there about
Low-lying woody tracts of time and oft
Is minded for to sit upon a bough,
Dry-dead and sharp, of some long-stricken tree
And muse in that gaunt place,--'twas then my heart,
Deep in the meditative dark, cried out: ...
The same hour, _midnight_, is designated by both girl and poet; the same
two words, "at midnight," open the confession and the poem. A pause
must follow these words in the reading of either text, and another pause
must be made after the qualifying phrase which immediately follows the
opening words of either text. But what a difference in the comparative
length of the pauses demanded by the two readings! A very different
atmosphere attends an hour when it is the time chosen for a
school-girl's escapade or set apart for a _poet's meditation_. And the
voice by its use of _pause_ can preserve or destroy either atmosphere.
Try it. Make your pauses in reading the school-girl's text of equal
length with the pauses the reading of Lanier's poem demands. You will
find the result is that _overemphasis_ which has brought such discredit
upon the name of "elocution." I once heard a much-advertised reader
strain all the elements of her vocal vocabulary in announcing a simple
change in her programme. I have heard more than one reader give the
stage directions, indicate the scene setting, and introduce the
characters in exactly the same voice and with the same use of emphasis
which were afterward employed in the most dramatic passages. Of course
all the ammunition had been used up before the real battle began, and no
one was in the least affected by the firing during the rest of the
engagement.
We have said that the use of pause determines the use of all other
elements of the vocabulary. This is particularly true of the _change of
pitch_ which immediately follows pause. We pause before a new idea to
get possession of it; in that pause we measure the idea, and the pitch
of the voice changes to accord with that measure. Every change of
thought causes a change of pitch, but the degree and direction of change
in pitch of the voice depends upon the degree and direction of change in
thought values. In the pause the mind takes time to value the new
thought, and tells the voice what change it must make. Robert Browning
affords the best material for a study in change of pitch, because of his
sudden and long parentheses, which can be handled lucidly by a voice
only after it has mastered this element of the vocal vocabulary. _Abt
Vogler_ offers the voice an excellent opportunity for exercise in change
of pitch. I print the first stanza and first line of the second stanza
of this poem for your use.
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys to their work,
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, as when Solomon willed
Armies of angels that soar, legions of demons that lurk,
Man, brute, reptile, fly--alien of end and of aim,
Adverse, each from the other heaven-high, hell-deep removed,
Should rush into sight at once as he named the ineffable Name,
And pile him a palace straight, to pleasure the princess he loved!
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine--
Remember, you are to confine your consideration to the one point,
_change of pitch_, not the change of pitch within a word, which is
inflection and belongs to another chapter, but to the broad changes of
pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to sentence,
following the intricate changes of the thought.
I leave you to blaze a trail through this forest of ideas. You must find
the main road, and then trace the by-paths which lead away from that
main road, and in this case, fortunately, come back to it again--which
does not always happen in Mr. Browning's "woody tracts of thought." To
employ a better figure for vocal purposes, you must cut off the stream,
the voice, and trace the bed of this river of thought, following the
main channel, and then its branches. You will find the main channel cut
by the first and last lines:
Would that the structure brave, the manifold music I build,
* * * * *
Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful building of mine--
All between, beginning with the second line, "Bidding my organ obey,"
and including the last words of the eighth line, "the princess he
loved," is a branch channel, leading away from and coming back to the
main river's bed. But this branch channel is interrupted in turn by its
own branch leading away from it and returning with it to join the main
bed with the last line we quote. This second branch begins in the middle
of the third line with the words, "As when Solomon willed," wanders in
this course for five lines, and, rejoining the first offshoot, returns
to the main channel with the last line. Now turn on the stream, the
_Voice_, and watch it flow into the course as traced. Analyze the
reading as to the use of pause and change of pitch.
II
STUDY IN INFLECTION
To me, the most notable among the many notable elements in Madame Alla
Nazimova's acting is her illumination of the text of her impersonations
through _inflection_. To an ear unaccustomed to the "broken music" of
her speech, a word may now and then be lost because of her still faulty
English, but of her attitude toward the thought she is uttering, or the
person she is addressing, or the situation she is meeting, there can
never be a moment's doubt--so illuminating is the inflectional play of
her voice. The tone she uses is not to me pleasing in quality. It does
not fall in liquid alluring cadences upon the ear as does Miss
Marlowe's, for instance. It is always keyed high, whether the child-wife
Nora, or Hedda, omnivorous of experience, is speaking. But this
high-pitched tone is endlessly volatile. It is restless. It never lets
your attention wander. It is never monotonous. It is a master of
_inflection_. Madame Nazimova's emotion is always primarily
intellectual. It always proceeds from a mind keenly alive to the
instant's incident. This intensely intellectual temperament reveals
itself through her voice in a rare degree of inflectional agility.
Recall the revelation of Nora's soul in her cry: "It is not possible! It
is not possible!" Madame Nazimova's conception of the mistress of _The
Doll's House_ is concentrated in these four words--in her inflection of
the last word, I may almost say. When I close my eyes and think of
Madame Nazimova's voice I see a grove of soft maples in early October
with the sun playing upon them, while Miss Marlowe's tone carries me at
once into the pine woods, where a white birch now and then shimmers its
yellow leaves. Again, the voice of the Russian actress suggests a
handful of diamonds, and the American instrument a set of turquoise in
the matrix. The difference in these two agents of two compelling
personalities is, of course, the result of a difference in the two
temperaments; but undoubtedly it also arises from a difference in
methods of training. Whatever the temperament, light and shade can be
developed in the voice through practice of inflection; and whatever the
temperament, a pure tone can be secured through a mastery of support of
breath and freedom of vocal conditions. The voices of these two
actresses vividly illustrate these two points. We shall study how to
secure Miss Marlowe's tone. We are now to work for Madame Nazimova's
light and shade, so far as a mastery of inflection will secure it. How
shall we proceed?
"All my life," writes Ellen Terry, in her entrancing memoirs, "the thing
which has struck me as wanting on the stage is variety. Some people are
tone-deaf, and they find it physically impossible to observe the law of
contrasts. But even a physical deficiency can be overcome by that
faculty of taking infinite pains." That is the secret of successful
acquisition in any direction, is it not--the _faculty of taking infinite
pains_? With Ellen Terry it resulted in a voice which in its prime
estate suggested, it is said, all the riotous colors of all the autumns,
or Henry Ward Beecher's most varied collection of precious stones. We
can secure an approximate result by employing the same method. Let us
proceed with infinite pains to practise, practise, practise inflection.
Let us first examine this _change of pitch within a word_ which we call
inflection. How does the pitch change, and why, and what does the change
indicate? We have discovered that a change of thought results in a
broad change of pitch from word to word, phrase to phrase, sentence to
sentence, and we shall discover that a change in emotion results in a
change in the color of the tone we are using; but this element of our
vocal vocabulary, inflection, is subtler than either of the other two.
While change of pitch is an intellectual modulation, and variation in
tone-color is an emotional modulation, _inflection_, in a degree,
combines both. It is a change in both color and key within the word. It
is primarily of intellectual significance, but it also reveals certain
temperamental characteristics which cannot be disassociated with
emotion. For instance, the staccato utterance of Mrs. Fiske is
technically the result of her use of straight, swift-falling
inflections, but it is temperamentally the result of thinking and
feeling in terms of Becky Sharp.
Let us see how inflections vary. They rise and fall swiftly or slowly.
They move in a straight line from point to point, or make a curve. (The
latter we call circumflex inflection.) They make various angles with
the original level of pitch, rising or falling abruptly or gradually.
These are some of the variations, each indicating an attitude of the
mind and heart of the speaker toward the thought, or toward the one
spoken to, or toward the circumstances out of which the speech arises.
All must be mastered for use at will if light and shade are to be
developed in the voice.
Now let us take a phrase or sentence, and voice it under a certain
condition, noting the inflection of the word or words which hold the
thought of the phrase or sentence in solution. Then let us change the
condition and again voice the thought, noting the change in inflection.
Let me propound a profound question,--"Do you like growing old?" The
answers will all be "yes" or "no." But what of the inflection of those
monosyllabic words? _Sweet Sixteen_ will employ a straight,
swift-falling inflection on the affirmative (unless some untoward
influence, such as "_Love_ the _Destroyer_," has embittered her life,
when she may give us one of _May Iverson's_ adorable replies, masked in
indifference and circumlocution). _Twenty_ will employ the
straight-falling inflection without the swiftness of Sweet Sixteen's
slide. With _twenty-five_ we detect a faint sign of a curve in the more
gradual fall. _Twenty-eight_ to _thirty-five_ employs various degrees of
circumflex, according to the desire--or possibility--of concealing the
real facts. _Forty_ to _forty-five_, if in defiant mood, employs the
abrupt-falling inflection, or, if quite honest, changes to the negative
with as swift and straight a fall. This lasts through sixty-five, and at
_seventy_ we hear a new and gentle circumflex of the "no," until the
pride of extreme old age sets in at _eighty-five_ with the swift fall of
sixteen's affirmative. Were it not expedient to maintain friendly
relations with one's printer, I should venture to diagram these changes
of tone within a word. As it is, I shall content myself with advising
you to do so.
It is my privilege to have had acquaintance with a woman who was a
personal friend of Emerson. Among the incidents of his delightful talk
with her, retold to me, I recall one which bears upon our present
problem. They were discussing mutual "Friends on the Shelf." "Have you
ever read _Titan_?" asked the gentle seer. "Yes," replied the lady.
"Read it again!" said he. Query to the class: How did the lady inflect
the word _Yes_ to call forth the injunction, _Read it again_? What did
her inflection reveal?
However inclined we may be to quarrel with Bernhardt's conception of the
Duke of Reichstadt, we can never forget her disclosure of the Eaglet's
frail soul through _inflection_ as she crushes letter after letter in
her hand and tosses them aside, uttering the simple words, _Je dechire_,
and the final revelation in the quick, thrilling curve of her wonderful
voice on the same words as the little cousin leaves the room at the
close of this episode of the letters.
No better material can be chosen for a study of inflection than the
paragraph from Emerson's _Friendship_, quoted in a preceding chapter.
Let us repeat the first sentence again. "Our friendships hurry to short
and poor conclusions because we have made them a texture of wine and
dreams instead of the tough fiber of the human heart." Study, in voicing
this, how to illumine the thought by your contrastive inflection of the
words "wine and dreams" and "tough fiber of the human heart." A
lingering circumflex cadence in uttering the first two words will
suggest the unstable nature of a friendship woven out of so frail a
fabric as wine and dreams, while a swift, strong, straight-falling
inflection on each of the last six words indicates the vigorous growth
of a love rooted in the tough fiber of the human heart.
In _Monna Vanna_ Maurice Maeterlinck gives the actress a superb
opportunity to show her mastery of inflection. Let us turn to the scene
in Prinzivalle's tent:[12]
[12] From _Monna Vanna_. By Maurice Maeterlinck. Published by Harper &
Brothers.
PRINZIVALLE. Are you in pain?
VANNA. No!
PRINZIVALLE. Will you let me have it [her wound] dressed?
VANNA. No! (Pause.)
PRINZIVALLE. You are decided?
VANNA. Yes.
PRINZIVALLE. Need I recall the terms of the--?
VANNA. It is useless--I know them.
PRINZIVALLE. Your lord consents.
VANNA. Yes.
PRINZIVALLE. It is my mind to leave you free....
There is yet time should you desire to renounce....
VANNA. No!
And so the seeming inquisition proceeds. To each relentlessly searching
interrogation from Gianello comes Vanna's unfaltering reply, in a
single, swift monosyllable, "Yes" or "No." The same word, but, oh, the
revelation which may lie in the inflection of that word! Let us try it.
Let us read the scene aloud, first giving as nearly as possible the same
inflection to each of Vanna's answers, then let us voice it again,
putting into the curve of the tone within the narrow space of the two or
three lettered monosyllables all the concentrated mental passion of
Vanna's soul in its attitude toward the terrible situation and toward
the man whom she believes to be her enemy. This is a most difficult
exercise, but if "a man's reach should exceed his grasp," it will not
retard our progress toward the goal of a vocal vocabulary to attempt it
now. Apart from all aim in its pursuit, there is no more fascinating
study than this study of inflection. In this day of artistic photography
there is an endless interest for the artist of the camera in playing
with a subject's expression by varying the light and shade thrown upon
the face. So for the student of vocal expression there is endless
interest in this play with the thought behind a group of words by
varying the inflection of those words. Lady Macbeth's, "We fail!" or
Macbeth's, "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were
done quickly," occurs to us, of course, as rich material for this
exercise.
In her analysis of the character of Lady Macbeth Mrs. Jameson gives us
an interesting study in inflection, based on Mrs. Siddons's
interpretation of the words "We fail." A foot-note reads: "In her
impersonation of the part of Lady Macbeth Mrs. Siddons adopted
successively three different intonations in giving the words 'we fail.'
At first a quick, contemptuous interrogation--'we fail?' Afterward with
the note of admiration--'we fail!' and an accent of indignant
astonishment laying the principal emphasis on the word we--'_we_ fail!'
Lastly, she fixed on what I am convinced is the true reading--'_we
fail_'--with the simple period, modulating the voice to a deep, low,
resolute tone which settled the issue at once, as though she had said:
'If we fail, why then we fail, and all is over.'"
Think how vitally the total impersonation is affected by your choice of
inflections at this point. Compare the effects of the three, Mrs.
Siddons tested. Are there other possible intonations of the words? What
are they? Do you realize the vital effect upon the voice of such vocal
analysis and experimentation? Devote ten minutes of the time you take
for reading each day to this phase of vocal interpretation, and at the
end of a week note its effect upon your silent reading and upon your
voice.
Remember, with inflection, as with every other phase of the training,
the greatest immediate benefit will come from holding the question of
its peculiar significance constantly in mind. Study the temperament of
the people about you by noting this element in their speech. Study the
attitude of every interlocutor you face, by studying the inflection of
his replies to the questions of life and death you propound. But, above
all, study your own use of this element. Do not let your own attitude go
undetected. It may help you to alter an unfortunate attitude to realize
its effect upon your own voice.
III
STUDY IN TONE-COLOR
And now we must turn to our last point of discussion, tone-color. What
is the nature of this element of our vocabulary--this _Klangfarbe_, this
_Timbre_? Upon what does it depend? You will say, "It is a property of
the voice depending upon the form of the vibrations which produce the
tone." True! And physiologically the form of the vibrations depends
upon the condition of the entire vocal apparatus. _Tone-color_, then, is
a modulation of resonance. But what concerns us is the fact that it is
an _emotional_ modulation of resonance. What concerns us is the fact
that, as a change of thought instantly registers itself in a change of
pitch, so a change of emotion instantly produces a change in the color
of the tone--if the voice is a free instrument. And so, as before, I
want you not to think of the physiological aspect, but to yield to the
emotion, noting the character of the resultant tone, regardless of what
has happened in the larynx to produce that result.
As Browning affords us the best material for our study in change of
pitch, so the poems of Sidney Lanier offer to the voice the richest
field for exercise in tone-color. Musician and poet in one, Lanier's
peculiar charm lies in his unerring choice of words, which suggest in
their sound, when rightly voiced, the atmosphere of the scene he is
painting. Lanier uses words as Corot uses colors. This gives the voice
its opportunity to bring out by subtle variations in _timbre_ the
variations in light and shade of an atmosphere. To read aloud,
sympathetically, once a day, Lanier's _The Symphony_ is the best
possible way to develop simultaneously all the elements of a vocal
vocabulary. We shall use this poem to-day as a text for our study in
tone-color. Let us omit the message of the violins and heavier strings,
and take the passage beginning with the interlude upon which the
flute-voice breaks:
But presently
A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly
Upon the bosom of that harmony,
And sailed and sailed incessantly,
As if a petal from a wild rose blown
Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone
And boatwise dropped o' the convex side
And floated down the glassy tide
And clarified and glorified
The solemn spaces where the shadows bide.
From the warm concave of that fluted note
Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float,
As if a rose might somehow be a throat; ...
What an ideal for tone-color! Dare we think to make it ours? We must. We
must adopt it with confidence of attainment. Let me quote a little
further:
When Nature from her far-off glen
Flutes her soft messages to men,
The flute can say them o'er again;
Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone,
Breathes through life's strident polyphone
The flute-voice in the world of tone.
Read this passage aloud as a mere statement of fact, employing a
matter-of-fact tone. Gray in color, is it not? Now let your voice take
the color Lanier has blended for you. Let your tone, like a thing "half
song, half odor," float forth on these words and linger as only a
perfume can about the thought. Now let the tone change in color to
clarify and glorify the following message from the flute:[13]
[13] The extracts on pp. 279-287 are from Mr. Sidney Lanier's volume of
"Poems," published by Charles Scribner's Sons.
Sweet friends,
Man's love ascends
To finer and diviner ends
Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends.
I cannot, for lack of space, reprint the whole flute message, but you
will get the poem, if you have it not, and voice every word of it, I am
sure. Here are some of the most telling lines for our present purpose:
I speak for each no-tongued tree
That, spring by spring, doth nobler be,
And dumbly and most wistfully
His mighty prayerful arms outspreads
Above men's oft-unheeding heads,
And his big blessing downward sheds.
I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,
Lichens on stones and moss on eaves,
Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;
Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,
And briery mazes bounding lanes,
And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains,
And milky stems and sugary veins;
For every long-armed woman-vine
That round a piteous tree doth twine;
For passionate odors, and divine
Pistils, and petals crystalline;
* * * * *
All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones,
Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans,
And night's unearthly undertones;
All placid lakes and waveless deeps,
All cool reposing mountain-steeps,
Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps;--
Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights,
And warmths, and mysteries, and mights,
Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,
--These doth my timid tongue present,
Their mouthpiece and leal instrument
And servant, all love-eloquent.
You see, to voice this message a mood born of all the "warmths and
mysteries and mights of Nature's utmost depths and heights" must take
possession of you, and you must yield your instrument to the expression
of that mood. Then watch, watch, watch the color of the tone change as
the voice, starting with the clear flute-note, follows sympathetically
the varying phases of Nature's face which the poet has so
sympathetically painted. And now, after a "thrilling calm," the flute
yields its place to a sister instrument, and the tone must change its
_timbre_ to the reed note of the clarionet. In the "melting" message of
that instrument we find two passages which afford the voice chance for a
most vivid contrast in color. Beginning with the line, "Now comes a
suitor with sharp, prying eye," read the two descriptions which follow,
lending your voice to the atmosphere of each:
_ ... Here, you Lady, if you'll sell I'll buy:
Come, heart for heart--a trade? What! weeping? why?_
Shame on such wooer's dapper mercery!
I would my lover kneeling at my feet
In humble manliness should cry, _O sweet!
I know not if thy heart my heart will greet:
I ask not if thy love my love can meet:
Whate'er thy worshipful soft tongue shall say,
I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay:
I do but know I love thee, and I pray
To be thy knight until my dying day._
The first two lines, which set forth a suit in terms of trade, demand a
hard, calculating tone, suggestive of large silver dollars. Call this
color dull steel gray. This tone flashes out for a moment in the white
indignation of the third line, softens and warms with the next two
lines, then grows and glows until it reaches a crimson radiance in the
last two lines. Try it!
And now, with "heartsome voice of mellow scorn," let us sound the
message of the "bold straightforward horn."
"Now comfort thee," said he,
"Fair Lady.
For God shall right thy grievous wrong,
And man shall sing thee a true-love song,
Voiced in act his whole life long,
Yea, all thy sweet life long,
Fair Lady.
Where's he that craftily hath said.
The day of chivalry is dead?
I'll prove that lie upon his head,
Or I will die instead,
Fair Lady.
* * * * *
Now by each knight that e'er hath prayed
To fight like a man and love like a maid,
Since Pembroke's life as Pembroke's blade,
I' the scabbard, death was laid,
I dare avouch my faith is bright
That God doth right and God hath might.
Nor time hath changed His hair to white,
Nor His dear love to spite,
Fair Lady.
I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay,
And fight my fight in the patient modern way
For true love and for thee--ah me! and pray
To be thy knight until my dying day,
Fair Lady."
Made end that knightly horn, and spurred away,
Into the thick of the melodious fray.
Remember your _key_ is set for you,--the color of the tone is plainly
chosen for you by Mr. Lanier. Not red nor yellow, but a blending of the
two. _Orange_, is it not? Will not an orange tone give us the feel of
heartsome confidence behind and through the mellow scorn of the
knight's message? Try it! Let the two primary colors, red and yellow,
enter in varying degrees according to, or following, the emotional
variation in the thought, as the knight or the lover dominates in the
message. In the first seven lines the tone glows with the love radiance
and the orange deepens toward red. With the next five lines the lover
yields to the knight, and the tone flashes forth a golden, keen-edged
sword. With the thirteenth line the tone begins in the orange on "Now by
each knight that e'er hath prayed," flashes into yellow in "to fight
like a man," softens and deepens toward red in "and love like a maid,"
and returns to the orange to finish the horn _motif_.
Next in this poem which affords such a wonderful study for tone-color we
have the hautboy's message. The color is mixed and laid on the palette
ready for use as before, with the introductory lines:
And then the hautboy played and smiled,
And sang like any large-eyed Child,
Cool-hearted and all undefiled.
Don't let the words _large-eyed Child_ mislead you. Don't, I beseech
you, make the mistake of adopting the "Little Orphan Annie" tone with
which the "elocutionist" too often insults the pure treble of a child's
"undefiled" instrument. That is the keynote to us for our choice of
color--"cool-hearted and all undefiled." Almost a white tone, is it not?
With a little of the blue of the June sky? Try it. Let the blue be
visibly present in the first three lines:
"Huge Trade!" he said,
"Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head
And run where'er my finger led!"
turning to pure white in the next three lines:
Once said a Man--and wise was He--
Never shalt thou the heavens see
Save as a little child thou be.
The last voice comes from the "ancient wise bassoons." Again there is
danger. Do not, oh! do not fall afoul of the conventional old man's
quavering tone. There is nothing conventional about these "weird,
gray-beard old harpers sitting on the high sea-dunes," chanting runes.
The last words of these introductory lines safeguard us--"chanted
runes." There is only one color of tone in which to _chant runes_. Gray,
is it not? Yes, but a silver gray, not the steel gray of the clarionet
when she became for the moment a commercial lover. Then in the
silver-gray tone of the philosopher, voice this last _motif_:
Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss,
The sea of all doth lash and toss,
One wave forward and one across:
But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest,
And worst doth foam and flash to best,
And curst to blest.
The importance of a right use of tone-color in vocal interpretation was
impressed upon a Browning class last winter. We were reading the
_Dramatic Lyrics_. The poem for the hour was _Meeting at Night_. The
tone with which the first student attacked this exquisite love-lyric was
so businesslike, so matter of fact, so utterly out of key, that we who
listened saw not the lover hastening to his beloved, but a real-estate
agent "out to buy" a farm. The "gray sea, the long black land, the
yellow half-moon large and low, the startled little waves that creep in
fiery ringlets from their sleep, the pushing prow of the boat quenched
in the slushy sand, the warm, sea-scented beach, and the three fields"
all assumed a merely commercial value. They were interesting exactly as
would be a catalogue of properties in a deed of real estate. If you are
not a very _intense_ member of a Browning society you will, I think,
enjoy the test of tone-color involved in reading this poem from the
contrasted standpoints of the business man and the lover. Of course, in
the first instance you must stop where I, in desperation, stopped the
student on the words, "a farm appears." For I defy any one to read the
last two lines in a gray, matter-of-fact tone.
As was the case in our consideration of inflection, so in this study of
tone-color there is an embarrassment of rich material for the exercise
of this element. Lanier's _Sunrise_ and _Corn_; Browning's prologue to
_The Two Poets of Croisic_, with a vivid contrast of color in each
verse; Swinburne's almost every line; Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
Wordsworth, Keats, Tennyson--but why enumerate? All the colorists among
the poets will reward your search of a text for the development of
_timbre_.
For a final brief study of the three elements we aim to acquire, with
especial emphasis in thought upon the last one, let us take this
prologue to _The Two Poets of Croisic_, with its color-contrast in each
verse:
Such a starved bank of moss
Till that May morn,
Blue ran the flash across:
Violets were born!
Sky--what a scowl of cloud
Till, near and far,
Ray on ray split the shroud:
Splendid, a star!
World--how it walled about
Life with disgrace
Till God's own smile came out:
That was thy face
The vocal treatment of the first two verses will be very much alike. The
voice starts in minor key, a gray monotone, in harmony with the absence
of color in the bare bank of dull moss. The inflection of the word
"starved" must emphasize the grayness. It must be a dull push of the
tone on the first syllable, with little, if any, lift above the level of
the low pitch on which the whole line is spoken. With a swift, salient,
rising inflection on the opening word of the second line, an inflection
which creates expectancy of change, the voice lifts the thought out of
the minor into the major key. I must call your attention to the vital
significance of the use of pause at this point by simply asking you to
indulge in it. Stop after uttering the word _till_ and study the effect
of the pause. It is the pause quite as much as the inflection, you see,
which induces the expectant attitude you desire to create in the mind of
your auditor. With the next three words, "that May morn," the tone takes
on a bit of the warmth of early summer. A lingering cadence on the word
"May" will help the suggestion. With the third line the voice begins to
shine. I know no other way to express it. The inflections are swift and
straight, but not staccato, because they must suggest a growth, not a
burst of color. The tone on which the words are borne must be
continuous. It must not be broken off definitely with each word, as is
to prove most effective, we shall find, in handling the third line of
the second verse. The fourth line brings the full, glowing, radiant tone
on the first word, "violets." This tone must be held in full volume on
the last two words. The law for beautiful speech must be observed here.
(But where should it not be observed?) Let us recall the law,
"_Beautiful speech depends upon openness of vowels and definiteness of
consonants._" The vowels give volume to a word, the consonants form.
Slur your consonants and squeeze your vowels in the three words of this
line, "Violets were born," and what becomes of this miracle of spring?
The voicing of the second verse is very like that of the first. The
opening line demands the same gray monotone. But the three words,
"sky," "scowl," and "cloud," if clear-cut in utterance, as they should
be, will break the level of the line more than the single word "starved"
in the first line of the first verse can do, or was meant to do. There
is the same swift lift of the voice in the opening word of the second
line, the same change to the major key, the same growing glow in the
tone on the third line, and the same radiant outburst of color sustained
through the last line. The only difference lies in the suffusion of
radiance in the tone to suggest the coming of color to the bank, in the
first verse, and the outburst of radiance to suggest the sudden
splitting of the clouds and the star's swift birth, in the second verse.
With the emotional change of thought in the last verse, from a travail
and birth in nature to a human soul's struggle and rebirth, the
deepening color which creeps into the tone indicates the entrance of
personal passion. The key does not change. The inflections are still and
straight. The tone simply deepens and glows in the last two lines, as a
prayerful ecstasy possesses the one who reads.