1891. J on the Culture of the Singing Voice, 321 



intimate and a very necessary one. Nothing could be more fallacious 

 than the often heard comparison between the teaching of the voice 

 and that of the hand, as in violin or in piano playing. The mechanism 

 which governs the muscles of our fingers, though by no means capable 

 of producing finer variations and differentiations than that of the 

 larynx, yet is infinitely more under the influence of the will than that 

 of the last-named part. We can, by a process of perfectly conscious 

 cerebration, teach not only the muscles of one hand, whilst those of 

 the other remain absolutely quiet, to perform certain movements 

 according to will, but this difierentiation goes to such refinement that 

 we can actually educate individual muscles of individual fingers to a 

 degree of independence which does not exist at all in the child or in 

 the uneducated adult. All this is done, I repeat, by a process of 

 conscious cerebration. 



Very different, however, from this is the action of the vocal 

 cords in speaking and in singing. Not only is it impossible to the 

 greatest singer to move one vocal cord without the other at the same 

 time executing the same movements (in this respect, nlso, the vocal 

 cords differ from even the movements of the eyes), but nobody can by 

 a process of conscious cerebration move one laryngeal muscle without 

 the other. This is rendered an absolute fact both by observation of 

 the human being with the laryngoscope and by experiments upon 

 animals. 



All the comparisons, therefore, of the development of the laryngeal 

 muscles with those of the hand fall to the ground, and all the elaborate 

 anatomico-physiological directions met with in more than one book of 

 instruction for the student of singing must be referred to the realm of 

 bewildering phantasmagoria. The rational training of the singing 

 voice can only as yet proceed upon the basis of empirical experience, 

 not uj)on that of theoretical deductions as to the action of the 

 individual adductor muscles and upon equally theoretical directions 

 as to their individual use. 



The means by which the movements of the vocal cords and indeed 

 the larynx can be observed during the act of singing is the laryngo- 

 scope, first introduced for physiological purposes by Signer Manuel 

 Garcia, and afterwards brought into use for the study of laryngeal 

 disease by Czermak and Tiirck. This instrument consists of a little 

 round mirror, which, after having been properly warmed, is introduced 

 into the throat of the person under observation in such a manner that 

 it forms an angle of 45° with the horizon, its upper margin resting 

 against the base of the uvula. If now from a powerful source of 

 light horizontal rays are thrown on to the mirror, which is held in 

 the open mouth of the person in the position just described, according 

 to the principles of physiological optics these rays are directed in a 

 vertical direction downwards, and illuminate the larynx, which is just 

 below the point where the mirror is held. The rays are in turn 

 reflected upwards into the mirror and thence into the eye of the 

 observer, which is situated at an equal height and close to the source 



