1891.] on the Culture of the Singing Voice. 325 



lost years of labour, gain the conviction that they would have 

 done much better to devote themselves from the very commencement 

 to a different career. Would that every student of music, or those 

 responsible for the selection of a career, might keep before their 

 minds that in singing there are but few, very few indeed, who ever 

 reach the top of the ladder, and that those who lag behind often 

 enough carry the conviction of the futility of their endeavours 

 throughout their lives ! 



I trust that the foregoing thoughts will not be interpreted in the 

 sense as if I wished to encourage only those who are endowed with 

 very large and beautiful material to devote themselves to the noble 

 art of singing. In many cases even in originally weak vocal organs 

 by rational training really astounding improvement can be produced ; 

 others even with small material may, if husbanding their resources, 

 and if intelligent enough not to aspire to impossibilities, achieve very 

 fair success with limited means. Thus, it is a curious thing to find 

 that often very small voices, i. e. small both in compass and in 

 strength, yet are endowed with that all-important quality of the 

 singing voice, viz. a sympathetic timbre, which is utterly denied to 

 much larger or more flexible voices. Indeed this sympathetic timbre 

 of the voice often goes hand in hand with conditions of an otherwise 

 disqualifying character, such as a certain veil over the notes, a very 

 small compass, a very deficient strength of tone ; yet if such people 

 understand the great secret, that it is better, as was said of Henrietta 

 Sonntag, to have a small genre, but to be great in that genre, than to 

 a' tempt impossibilities, they may on the concert platform be very 

 successful. 



Thus I know myself of several singers, both ladies and gentlemen, 

 whose voices aie very small indeed, but who, being endowed with the 

 sympathetic quality of timbre, having cultivated their voices in the 

 most rational manner, and limiting their work to the interpretation 

 of a high class of musical lyrics, to such a degree enchant their 

 public that the smallness of the means by which their successes are 

 achieved is comj^letely forgotten in the intellectual delight whiclt 

 they give to their hearers. But the warning note I tried to sound 

 before was merely direct(d against_^the loss of valuable time in cases 

 of utter absence of any of those qualities of the voice which could 

 endear its owner to a musical public. 



The next indispensable factor for cultivating the singing voice is 

 the possession of a good musical ear. Now, with regard to the 

 musical ear there are almost as many different senses in which that 

 expression may be taken, as there are with regard* to the expression 

 ** musical" in general. Thus it is perfectly well known that, whilst 

 in some persons the musical ear is by a generous gift of nature, even 

 if entirely untutored, yet endowed with the keenest qualities of 

 perception and of action based upon that perception, other people 

 equally intelligent are entirely deprived of any natural endowment 

 in this particular direction, and have, as the saying goes, absolutely 



