•^728 The Voice in Singing. [April, 



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ciodid, prompted alike by love of beauty and of truth, and carried 

 through in quiet earnest. And here is the simple story of results, in 

 which much that is new is reported without egotism, and more anx- 

 iety is shown that the new knowledge may not be misused than to win 

 credit fo¥, discovery. It is not a manual of singing, and does /not pro- 

 fess to teJU;h the art. It is a memoir embodying results of scientific 

 observation' while yet fresh, and pointing out their practical value; 

 abounding, for the rest, in pregnant hints of what has bpfen lost in the 

 once noble art of song, and how it may be won backj and what good 

 singing is. Beyond that, too, it has another charm, in that it is the rec- 

 ord of a life's devotion, wherein all is set down so simply and so 

 clearly, with such single wish that all may learn, as to give it uncon- 

 sciously a beauty ancL a value as a literary production. The unpre- 

 tending little book is really in its way a work of art, and, if only in 

 that sense, was worthy to^find a translator in the accomplished " Mem 

 ber of the American Philosophical Society " who has done so excellen; 

 a service in introducing it to the Americao reader. 



Madame Seiler is a Germaq lady, who to a musical character a? 

 such unites rare scientific attaihments.- After studying with the best 

 masters, German and Italian, and sioging with favor in concerts, she 

 thought herself qualified to teach ; but, more conscientious than most 

 teachers, she was unwilling to proceed in the special culture of indi- 

 vidual voices in the dark. Seeking l^ght in schools, she found con- 

 tradiction and confusion ; doctors disagreed ; each had a system of 

 his own, with plentiful lack of reasons ; no two used terms alike ; in 

 the jargon about registers, &c., all was bewjlderingly vague, as every 

 one who goes from method to method, from master to master, seeking 

 to learn to sing, is pretty sure to find. Losing her voice at last (under 

 an eminent teacher), slie turned her attention to tlie piano, but without 

 ceasing to pursue the knowledge of the human voice, as she indeed 

 showed by choosing for her piano-teacher old Wieck, of Dresden, 

 Clara Schumann's father, who is at the same time One of the wisest 

 singing-masters of the day. There, too, she learned what she could by 

 hearing Jenny Lind, in whom almost alone the great tradition lived. 

 In Italy, the land of song, and in the schools of France, she also tarried, 

 only to find no sure and radical knowledge." Finally, the scientific 

 instinct hinted of a surer way, and she sought the counsel of Professor 

 Helraholfz, at Heidelberg, the great explorer of the natural laws of 

 musical' sound, from whom Tyndall draws so much which he has popu- 

 larized in his delightful " Lectures upon Sound." Under his guidance 

 she devoted herself to a long and patient observation, by means of the 

 laryngoscope, of the physiological processes that go on in the larynx 



