David Clark Taylor, Part 2

Abstract

David Clark Taylor, Part 2 Kimberly Broadwater (bio) PROVENANCE prov·e·nance (prǒv´ ə nəns) n. Place of origin, source. [Lat. Provenire, to originate.] [A continuation of an excerpt from Taylor's book, The Psychology of Singing: A Rational Method of Voice Culture Based on a Scientific Analysis of All Systems, Ancient and Modern (The Macmillan Company, 1908).] One of the most mysterious facts in the history of Voice Culture is the utter disappearance of the old Italian method. This has occurred in spite of the earnest efforts of vocal teachers to preserve the old traditions. If the conclusions drawn in the preceding chapter are justified, the old method consisted of a system of teaching singing by imitation. Assuming this to be true, there should now be no difficulty in accounting for the disappearance of the imitative method by tracing the development of the mechanical idea. Imitative Voice Culture was purely empirical in the ordinary meaning of this word. The old masters did not knowingly base their instruction on any set of principles. They simply taught as their instincts prompted them. There can now be no doubt that the old masters were fully justified in their empiricism. They taught singing as Nature intends it to be taught. But the old masters were not aware of the scientific soundness of their position. So soon as the correctness of empirical teaching was questioned they abandoned it without an attempt at defense. As a system of Voice Culture, the old method occupied a weak strategic position. With absolute right on its side, it still had no power of resistance against hostile influences. This does not imply that the old masters were ignorant men. On the contrary, the intellectual standard of the vocal profession seems to have been fully as high two hundred years ago as to-day. Even famous composers and musical theorists did not disdain to teach singing. But this very fact, the generally high culture of the old masters, was an important factor in the weakness of the old method against attack. The most intelligent masters were the ones most likely to abandon the empirical system in favor of supposedly scientific and precise methods of instruction. The hostile influence to which the old Italian method succumbed was the idea of mechanical vocal management. This idea entered almost imperceptibly into the minds of vocal teachers in the guise of a scientific theory of Voice Culture. A short historical sketch will bring this fact out clearly. From the founding of the art of Voice Culture, about 1600, up to 1741, no vocalist seems to have paid any attention to the anatomy or muscular movements of the vocal organs. In 1741 a French physician, Ferrein, presented to [End Page 395] the Academy of Sciences a treatise on the anatomy of the vocal organs, entitled "De la Formation de la Voix de l'Homme." This treatise was published in the same year, and it seems to have attracted at once the attention of the most enlightened masters of singing. That Ferrein was the first to call the attention of vocalists to the mechanical features of tone-production is strongly indicated in the German translation of Tosi's "Observations." In the original Italian edition, 1723, and the English translation, 1742, there is absolutely no mention of the anatomy or physiology of the vocal organs. But in preparing the German edition, published in 1757, the translator, J. F. Agricola, inserted a description of the vocal organs which he credited directly to Ferrein. Mancini followed Agricola's example, and included in this "Riflessioni" (1776) a brief description of the vocal organs. But Mancini made no attempt to apply this description in formulating a system of instruction. He recommends the parents of a prospective singer to ascertain, by a physician's examination, that the child's vocal organs are normal and in good health. He also gives one mechanical rule, so obvious as to seem rather quaint. "Every singer must place his mouth in a natural smiling position, that is, with the upper teeth perpendicularly and moderately removed from the lower." Beyond this Mancini says not a word of mechanical vocal management. There is no mention...