Head Voice & Nuque of the Neck

Imagine what a tenor Van Dyck would have been with a well worked out emission, a complete vocal technic, an Italian voice.

He would had had a place in Olympia with Campanini, Jean de Reszke, Maurel, Cotogni, Del Puente, Edouard de Reszke and Chaliapin, for he had a marvelous temperament and saw things in a high poetical way. He was a great actor, too; his line was superb.

Well we must learn the "trick" of singing high notes.

If we're light sopranos, we want to sing them like Sembrich or Melba, and if we are dramatic sopranos, like Lehmann. The tenors all want theirs like Caruso's and the baritones like Battistini or Titta Ruffo, while the basses would be content to do them as well as Chaliapin, Eduoard de Reszke or Plançon.

You have all heard what I have telling Trilby about the general production of her voice.

Very well!

Just do the same until you reach the head voice, then I must see that your position is right.

I spoke about the way Trilby's head was set on her body. 

Just look at Du Maurier's drawings of her and see what a straight back and neck she has. 

I want yours to be as near like that as possible. 

If you naturally have a splendid physique all you must do is to keep the chin in and the neck well back. You will notice this throws the chest up—in fact makes the position perfect in itself. In keeping the chin in, you must not tighten or contract. Keep it in, but right under the chin must be soft and relaxed. 

This is where the great suppleness of the lips that I have been telling Trilby about, is necessary, for the lips must be held away from the teeth, and pushed slightly forward, but with the most absolute relaxation. 

I hardly dare tell you to extend your lips, because you will almost surely tighten them and then the tone will be worse than if they were not extended at all. 

Just try the position. 

Try to open the mouth well with the chin slightly in and the jaw very loose. 

Now extend the lips and practice doing that until they do not touch the teeth and yet are absolutely relaxed. 

Don't curl them forward of push or push them so far that they become the least bit rigid. When you have learned the position, open the nose loosely in back—There! A note sung in that position will be a ringing head tone. 

Now how is it done? 

Chin in, mouth open well, lips slightly extended, a slight feeling of opening at the back of the nose—and then sing, holding the breath high. 

Just try this to your regular exercises—the ones I gave Trilby—and your pieces. And don't try to attack on high notes to begin with, and don't repeat a tone more than twice, or at the most, three times in succession.

John H, Duval, The Secrets of Svengali on singing, singers, teachers and critics (1922), page 35-36.

An interesting book that has been on VOICETALK's download page of a long while (my fellow blogger,, I pulled it off the shelf to have a good read the other night and found myself musing over Duval's instructions regarding head voice as well as the trill—Duval having some really good instruction in that regard.

He also writes repeatedly about the position of the body; specifically the nape of the neck—the nuque. 

Duval observed that all great singers who keep their voices for a long time have a straightened nape of the neck.

Margaret Harshaw would agree. I remember her instruction that the cervical vertebrae needed to feel "separated" when I sang. Of course, I worked at incorporating this sensation, but I didn't "get it" until 1999 when I underwent my first course of Tomatis Listening Training. Then, my spine elongated tremendously. What was I doing at the time? Listening to Mozart's music, which had been filtered at high frequency.

I once told this story to an ENT. She responded that I was fooling myself: I was making it all up—which shows that you must be careful about who you tell your "truth." She was convinced that the work of Tomatis was all mumbo-jumbo; the wild thing, of course, was that she had a speech impediment that her vast amount of knowledge did not resolve. Could Tomatis' training have helped her? I wondered about that since my issue with stammering was resolved via Tomatis' work. But that's a post for another time.

I'm throwing a bit too much into this soup, but I hope you get the point: music is powerful. It can and does change the body.

If you are like me, you will be observing the student's spine and nuque of neck while listening to the voice this week.