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The Mastery of the Tongue
The tongue is a veritable stumbling block in the path of the singer. The tongue is an enormous muscle compared with the other parts of the throat and mouth, and its roots particularly can by a slight movement block the passage of the throat pressing against the larynx. This accounts for much of the pinched singing we hear.
When the tongue forms a mountain in the back part of the mouth the singer produces what you call in English slang "a hot potato tone"—that is to say, a tone that sounds as if it were having much difficulty to get through the mouth. In very fact, it is having this difficulty, for it has to pass over the back of the tongue.
The would-be singer has to learn to control the tongue muscles and, above all things, to learn to relax the tongue and to govern it at will, so that it never stiffens and forms that hard lump which can be plainly felt immediately beneath the chin under the jaw.
It requires a great deal of practice to gain control of the tongue, and there are many different exercises which purport to be beneficial in gaining complete mastery over it. One, for instance, is to throw the tongue out as far forward as possible without stiffening it and then draw it back slowly. This can be done in front of a mirror by trying to throw the tongue not only from the tip, but from the root, keeping the sides of the tongue broad. Another way is to catch hold of the two sides of the tongue with the fingers and pull it out gently.
For my part, I scarcely approve of these mechanical ways of gaining control of the tongue except in cases where the singer is phlegmatic of temperament and cannot be made to feel the various sensations of stiff tongue or tongue drawn far back in other ways. Ordinarily I think they make the singer conscious, nervous and more likely to stiffen the tongue in a wild desire to relax it and keep it flat.
These exercises, however, combined with exercises in diction, help to make the tongue elastic, and the more elastic and quick this muscle becomes the clearer will be the singer's diction and the more flexible will be her voice.
The correct position of the tongue is raised from the back, lying flat in the mouth, the flattened tip beneath the front teeth, with the sides slightly raised so as to form a slight furrow in it. When the tongue is lying too low a lump under the chin beneath the jaw will form in singing and the tight muscles can be easily felt.
When the jaw is perfectly relaxed and the tongue lies flat in the mouth there will be a slight hollow under the chin and no stiffness in the muscles.
The tip of the tongue of course is employed in the pronunciation of the consonants and must be so agile that the minute it has finished its work it at once resumes the correct position.
In ascending the scale the furrow in the tongue increases as we come to the higher notes. It is here that the back of the palate begins to draw up in order to add to the resonance of the head notes, giving the cavities of the head free play.
You can easily see your back palate working by opening your mouth wide and giving yourself the sensation of one about to sneeze. You will see far back in the throat, way behind the nose, a soft spot that will draw up of itself as the sneeze becomes more imminent. That little point is the soft palate. It must be drawn up for the high notes in order to get the head resonance. As a singer advances in her art she can do this at will.
The adjustment of throat, tongue and palate, all working together, will daily respond more easily to her demands. However, she should be able consciously to control each part by itself.
The conscious direction of the voice and command of the throat are necessary. Frequently in opera the singer, sitting or lying in some uncomfortable position which is not naturally convenient for producing the voice, will consciously direct her notes into the head cavities by opening up the throat and lifting the soft palate. For instance, in the rôle of Violetta the music of the last act is sung lying down. In order to get proper resonance to some of the high notes I have to start them in the head cavity by means, of course, of the apoggio, or breath prop, without which the note would be thin and would have no body to it.
The sensation that I have is of a slight pressure of breath striking almost into a direct line into the cavity behind the forehead over the eyes without any obstruction or feeling in the throat at all.
This is the correct attack for the head tone, or a tone taken in the upper register. Before I explain the registers to you I must tell you one of the funniest compliments I ever received. A very flattering person was comparing my voice to that of another high soprano whom I very much admire.
"Her voice is beautiful, particularly in the upper register," I insisted when the other lady was being criticized.
"Ah, madame," responded the flattering critic, "but your registers give out so much more warmth."
I think this joke is too good to lose, also the criticism, while unjust to the other singer, is interesting to the student, because in the high register, which includes in some voices all the notes above middle C, the notes are thin and cold unless supported by the apoggio, the breath prop, of which I have told you so much. People ask whether there are such things as vocal registers. Certainly there are. There are three always and sometimes four in very high voices. The ordinary registers are the low, the middle, the high voice, or head voice, and sometimes the second high voice, which has been called the flagellant voice.
A vocal register is a series of tones which are produced by a certain position of the larynx, tongue and palate. In the woman's voice the middle register takes in the notes from E on the first line of the staff about to middle C. The head voice begins at middle C and runs up sometimes to the end of the voice, sometimes to B flat or C, where it joins the second head register, which I have heard ascend into a whistle in phenomenal voices cultivated only in this register and useless for vocal work.
Though the registers exist and the tones in middle, below and above are not produced in the same manner, the voice should be so equalized that the change in registers cannot be heard. And a tone sung with a head voice and in the low voice should have the same degree of quality, resonance and power.
As the voice ascends in the scale each note is different, and as one goes on up the positions of the organ of the throat cannot remain the same for several different tones. But there should never be an abrupt change, either audible to the audience or felt in the singer's throat. Every tone must be imperceptibly prepared, and upon the elasticity of the vocal organs depends the smoothness of the tone production. Adjusting the vocal apparatus to the high register should be both imperceptible and mechanical whenever a high note has to be sung.
In the high register the head voice, or voice which vibrates in the head cavities, should be used chiefly. The middle register requires palatal resonance, and the first notes of the head register and the last ones of the middle require a judicious blending of both. The middle register can be dragged up to the high notes, but always at the cost first of the beauty of the voice and then of the voice itself, for no organ can stand being used wrongly for a long time.
This is only one of the reasons that so many fine big voices go to pieces long before they should.
In an excess of enthusiasm the young singer attempts to develop the high notes and make them sound—in her own ears, at all events—as big as the middle voice. The pure head tone sounds small and feeble to the singer herself, and she would rather use the chest quality, but the head tone has the piercing, penetrating quality which makes it tell in a big hall, while the middle register, unless used in its right place, makes the voice muffled, heavy and lacking in vibrancy. Though to the singer the tone may seem immense, in reality it lacks resonance.
A singer must never cease listening to herself intelligently and never neglect cultivating the head tone or over-tone of the voice, which is its salvation, for it means vibrancy, carrying power and youth to a voice. Without it the finest voice soon becomes worn and off pitch. Used judiciously it will preserve a voice into old age.
Tone Emission and Attack
In my first talk I said a few words, but not half enough, on the subject of breath control.
My second talk was the physiological aspect of the throat, head and tongue, for it is necessary to become thoroughly acquainted with the mechanism with which you are to work before you can really sing. Today I'm going to take up the subject of tone emission and the attack.
A great many singers suffer from the defect called "throatiness" of the emission—that is to say, they attack or start the note in the throat. Sooner or later this attack will ruin the most beautiful voice. As I have said before, the attack of the note must come from the apoggio, or breath prop. But to have the attack pure and perfectly in tune you must have the throat entirely open, for it is useless to try to sing if the throat is not sufficiently open to let the sound pass freely. Throaty tones or pinched tones are tones which are trying to force themselves through a half-closed throat blocked either by insufficient opening of the larynx or by stoppage of the throat passage, due to the root of the tongue being forced down and back too hard or possibly to a low, soft palate.
In order to have the throat perfectly open it is necessary to have the jaw absolutely relaxed.
I have found in studying different nationalities that it is fairly easy for the French and Spanish people to learn this relaxation of jaw and the opening of the throat, but the English-speaking people generally talk with the throat half shut and even talk through half-shut teeth. Sometime, when you are talking rapidly, suddenly put your hand up to your jaw. You will find that it is stiff; that the muscles beneath it (tongue muscles) are tight and hard; that the jaw seldom goes down very far in pronouncing any of the English words, whereas in singing the jaw should be absolutely relaxed, going down and back just as far as it can with ease.
The jaw is attached to the skull right beneath the temples in front of the ears. By placing your two fingers there and dropping the jaw you will find that a space between the skull and jaw grows as the jaw drops.
In singing this space must be as wide as is possible, for that indicates that the jaw is dropped down, giving its aid to the opening at the back of the throat. It will help the beginner sometimes to do simple relaxing exercises, feeling the jaw drop with the fingers. It must drop down, and it is not necessary to open the mouth wide, because the jaw is relaxed to its utmost.
However, for a beginner it is as well to practice opening the mouth wide, being sure to lower the jaw at the back. Do this many times a day without emitting any sound merely to get the feeling of what an open throat is really like. You will presently begin to yawn after you have done the exercise a couple of times. In yawning or in starting to drink a sip of water the throat is widely open, and the sensation is a correct one which the singer must study to reproduce.
I have noticed a great many actors and actresses in America who speak with jaws tightly closed, or at least closed to such an extent that only the smallest emission of breath is possible. Such a voice production will never allow the actor to express any varying degree of emotion and will also completely eradicate any natural beauty of tone which the voice may have. However, this is a fault which can easily be overcome by practicing this daily relaxation of the jaw and always when singing breathing as if the jaw hung perfectly loose, or, better still, as if you had none at all. When you can see a vocalist pushing on the jaw you can be perfectly certain that the tone she is emitting at that moment is a forced note and that the whole vocal apparatus is being tortured to create what is probably not a pleasant noise.
Any kind of mental distress will cause the jaw to stiffen and will have an immediate effect upon the voice. This is one of the reasons why a singer must learn to control her emotions and must not subject herself to any harrowing experiences, even such as watching a sensational spectacle, before she is going to sing. Fear, worry, fright—stage as well as other kinds—set the jaw. So does too great a determination to succeed. A singer's mind must control all of her feelings if it is going to control her voice. She must be able even to surmount a feeling of illness or stage fright and to control her vocal apparatus, as well as her breath, no matter what happens.
The singer should feel as if her jaw were detached and falling away from her face. As one great singer expresses it: "You should have the jaw of an imbecile when emitting a tone. In fact, you shouldn't know that you have one." Let us take the following passage from "The Marriage of Figaro," by Mozart:
This would make an excellent exercise for the jaw. Sing only the vowels, dropping the jaw as each one is attacked—"o, eh, ah." The o, of course, is pronounced like the English o and the i in voi like e. The e in che is pronounced like the English a. Sapete is pronounced sahpata. You now have the vowels, o, ee, a, ah, a. Open the throat wide, drop the jaw and pronounce the tones on a note in the easiest part of your voice.
Do not attack a note at the same time that you are inhaling. That is too soon. Take the breath through the nose, of course, and give it an instant to settle before attacking the sound. In this way you will avoid the stroke of the glottis which is caused by the sudden and uncontrolled emission of the accumulated breath. In attacking a note the breath must be directed to the focusing point on the palate which lies just at the critical spot, different for every tone. In attacking a note, however, there must be no pressure on this place, because if there is the overtones will be unable to soar and sound with the tone.
From the moment the note is attacked the breath must flow out with it. It is a good idea to feel at first as if one were puffing out the breath. This is particularly good for the high notes on which a special stress must be laid always to attack with the breath and not to press or push with the throat. As long as the tone lasts the gentle but uninterrupted outpouring of the breath must continue behind it. This breath pressure insures the strength and, while holding the note to the focusing point on the palate, insures its pitch. In a general way it can be said that the medium tones of the voice have their focusing point in the middle part of the palate, the lower tones coming nearer to the teeth to be centralized and the high notes giving the sensation of finding their focusing point in the high arch at the back of the mouth and going out, as it were, through the crown of the head.
The resonance in the head cavities is soon perceived by those who are beginning to sing. Sometimes in producing their first high notes young people become nervous and irritated when singing high tones at the curious buzzing in the head and ears. After a short time, however, this sensation is no longer an irritation, and the singer can gauge in a way where his tones are placed by getting a mental idea of where the resonance to each particular tone should be.
High notes with plenty of head vibration can only be obtained when the head is clear and the nasal cavities unobstructed by mucous membrane or by any of the depression which comes from physical or mental cause. The best way to lose such depression is to practice. Practicing the long scale, being careful to use the different registers, as described later, will almost invariably even out the voice and clear out the head if continued long enough, and will enable the singer to overcome nervous or mental depression as well.
The different sensations in producing the tone vary according to the comparative height and depth. Beginning from the medium tones, the singer will feel as if each tone of the descending scale were being sung farther outside of the mouth, the vibration hitting the upper teeth as it goes out, whereas with the ascending scale the vibrations pass through the nasal cavities, through the cavity in the forehead and up back into the head, until one feels as if the tone were being formed high over the head at the back.
I want to say right here that whenever a young singer feels uncomfortable when singing he or she is singing incorrectly.
In attacking the note on the breath, particularly in the high notes, it is quite possible that at first the voice will not respond. For a long time merely an emission or breath or perhaps a little squeak on the high note is all that can be hoped for. If, however, this is continued, eventually the head voice will be joined to the breath, and a faint note will find utterance which with practice will develop until it becomes an easy and brilliant tone.
The reason that the tone has not been able to come forth is because the vocal apparatus cannot adjust itself to the needs of the vocal chords or because they themselves have not accustomed themselves to respond to the will of the singer and are too stiff to perform their duty.
The scale is the greatest test of voice production. No opera singer, no concert singer, who cannot sing a perfect scale can be said to be a technician or to have achieved results in her art. Whether the voice be soprano, mezzo or contralto, each note should be perfect of its kind, and the note of each register should partake sufficiently of the quality of the next register above or below it in order not to make the transition noticeable when the voice ascends or descends the scale. This blending of the registers is obtained by the intelligence of the singer in mixing the different tone qualities of the registers, using as aids the various formations of the lips, mouth and throat and the ever present apoggio without which no perfect scale can be sung.
