SPEECH AND SONG. 2 55 



only died with him. Matteucci, when past his eightieth year, used 

 to sing in church every Sunday per mera devozione, and such was 

 the freshness and flexibility of his voice that those who could not 

 see him took it to be that of a young man in the flower of his age. 

 Indeed, this was not very uncommon in singers trained according 

 to the best traditions of the old Italian school, which seems to have 

 possessed the secret of perpetual youth as far as the voice was con- 

 cerned. 



Now, to what can our poverty in voices of the highest class be 

 due ? I believe to a combination of three different causes : First, 

 inadequacy of training ; secondly, the want of good teachers ; and, 

 thirdly, the gradual rise of the concert pitch which has taken 

 place in recent years. Insufficient training arises from the breath- 

 less haste to " succeed " which is a characteristic of this feverish 

 age. Voices are quickly run up by contract, and as swiftly fall 

 into decay. The preference for supposed " royal roads " over the 

 hard-beaten path that has led former singers to fame is another 

 error which has worked almost as much mischief in song as it has 

 in scholarship. A vocalist nowadays thinks that a year in Eng- 

 land and a second year in Italy is all that is needed to equip him 

 for a brilliant artistic career. In " the brave days of old " singers 

 never deemed their vocal education complete until they had given 

 six or seven years to the ceaseless study of their art. 



The want of good teachers is closely connected with the inade- 

 quacy of modern training, for it is evident that a man who has 

 not himself had the patience or the industry to master his art can 

 not be a satisfactory guide to others. Show and superficial brill- 

 iancy of execution are aimed at rather than solidity and thor- 

 oughness ; more attention is paid to vocal tours de force than to 

 artistic ornament. The firm basis of experience has been aban- 

 doned for fantastic methods of teaching which are useless when 

 they are not positively harmful. I would earnestly advise all 

 those who profess to impart the divine art of song, like Prospero, 

 to " drown their books," and study the production of the voice as 

 an art, and not as a branch of Chinese metaphysics. 



That the high concert pitch now generally used, especially in 

 this country, throws an unnatural strain on even the finest voices, 

 is a fact as to which most authorities are agreed. In the classical 

 period of music, A (second space, treble clef) represented from four 

 hundred and fifteen to four hundred and twenty-nine vibrations ; 

 this pitch suited the human voice admirably. The desire to get 

 increasingly brilliant effects from the orchestra forced the pitch 

 higher and higher, till so much confusion prevailed that, in 1859, 

 a French commission fixed the standard pitch at four hundred and 

 thirty-five vibrations. This is called the normal diapason, and is 

 now generally used on the Continent ; but England, with her cus- 



