RELATIONS TO OTHER SCIENCES 465 



- what, alas, he could hear no longer the applause with which 

 the public of Vienna greeted this probably the greatest musical 

 composition of all times. But even in this exceptional case the 

 close relationship of the art of music with the physical faculties 

 of sound and hearing is characteristically illustrated. If the mus- 

 ical ear had come to the great composer's help in the final chorus, 

 I cannot imagine that he would have written the soprano parts 

 as he has done too high to be reached without great effort by 

 the voice and not pleasing in its effect to the tympanum of the 

 ordinary listener. 



As to the connection of laryngology with singing, no more 

 significant testimony could surely be adduced than the fact that 

 the laryngoscope, upon which modern laryngology is based, has 

 been the invention, not of a medical man but of a singer, the ven- 

 erable Senor Manuel Garcia, who has been spared by a merciful 

 Providence to live in undimmed possession of all his mental and 

 physical powers to the patriarchal age of 100, and whose 100th 

 birthday we hope (D. V.) to celebrate in March of next year. The 

 auspicious event will coincide, I may remark, with the jubilee of 

 laryngology, his epoch-making paper, entitled Physiological Obser- 

 vations on the Human Voice, which he submitted to the Royal 

 Society of London in 1854, having been published in the Proceed- 

 ings of that Society (vol. xii, no. 13) in 1855. Garcia was led to 

 his discovery by the natural desire of an intelligent singer to study 

 the physiological properties of that most wonderful of all instru- 

 ments, the human voice, by direct inspection of its constituent 

 parts during the act of singing. Ever since manifold endeavors 

 have been made to let the art of singing profit by the revelations 

 given by the laryngoscope. Candor, however, compels me to 

 say that these efforts have hitherto been less successful than one 

 might naturally have expected. Pretensions have been, and are 

 being made as to the claim of the laryngoscope to lay down the 

 law concerning most intricate questions arising in the production 

 of the singing voice; but as I have stated on a previous occasion, 

 there exists no "superior wisdom" based upon laryngoscopic ob- 

 servations with regard to the teaching of singing. Now, as in by- 

 gone days, the teacher who founds his instruction upon the class- 

 ical traditions of the art of singing and who individualizes in every 

 case intrusted to his care will certainly be more successful than 

 the theorist who, starting from preconceived notions the correct- 

 ness of which is anything but proven, forces the natural mechan- 

 ism of his pupils' voices into his unbending formula and thereby 

 in not a few instances ruins them. 



This warning is of course not intended in any way to deter both 

 laryngologists and singing-masters from joining forces in deter- 



