I should note from the outset that I adore Charles Lunn. His strong stance on the principles of the old Italian school is both bracing and illuminating. Take the article below. Readers are given a key vocal technique of the old school that confirms Manuel Garcia's teaching. [1]

Lunn, even though he had a false idea of how the false vocal folds are involved in singing, was the real McCoy. Learn more about the man and his teaching by clicking on his “tag” at the bottom of the page.

When, in the waning summer of 1879,

I urged and persuaded my friend and pupil, Mr. Orlando Steed, to take from me the scientific lead in the restoration of the old Italian school of voice culture, I thought my special mission ended.

In him was to be traced an intellect of a very high order, joined to that absence of self-assertiveness that accompanies such a great in gift, while his sense of justice and truth shone through all he wrote (see his "Music in Play and Music in Earnest"). Unfortunately he died, and, dying, left the work undone. Personally, I am unable to take back the lead I gave, as in that year I destroyed my collected notes and papers, and I will not trust my memory. But it may be serviceable to some to know the principles accepted by him, and so to possess a record of the lines taken by him and by me. This means a brief history of the last quarter of a century. And this is useful in more ways than one; for as the legitimate representatives of the old school die out, and yearly become fewer and fewer, there is every probability that a total extinction of the traditions of that school will ultimately take place unless a congress of artists, scientists, and teachers be called.

And first, to find our authority, we may divide humanity into those who speak or write of their own inmediate knowledge, and those who speak or write second-hand of that which they have heard or read. There is a great and vital difference between these two classes of men. A writer's title-deeds to write on this school appear to be these; —(1) He must have a voice. (2) He must have a voice, upwards of two octaves (the minimum compass of the old school), that has been trained such by a teacher. (3) It must have been trained by a known teacher reputed to represent that school written about. (4) That teacher must have proved his right to authority by having produced at least one "star" vocalist. To this Mr. Steed and myself each agreed; and I would now further contract, consolidate, and restrict the authority to the following:—(5) The writer must have sung. (6) He must produce press opinions in corroboration of his claimed position and personal power.

As I sacrificed friends, fortune, and repute, and gave up a public career, for the sole sake of this my mission in life, the following press opinions—briefly apologising for their reproduction—will put me right as regards the last part.

"Mr. Lunn sang with a sweetness and tone forcibly reminding the hearer of Giuglini.". Worcester Journal, 1864. "The most noticeable point [of Beethoven's 'Engedi'] was the tenor singing of Mr. Lunn, who that evening made his debut before a Cheltenham audience, and who promises to take a high position in public favor." —Musical Times, 1866.

And now for history. Five and twenty years ago there were a few men, isolated and alone, who proclaimed, as far as can be traced, similar doctrines—doctrines on voice culture diametrically opposed to the belief of the ordinary musician, the organist and pianist, into whose hands voice training seems gradually to have slipped. Of them, one was Wartel [2], now dead, who at Paris trained Trebelli and Nilsson; a second, Strakosch, still living, trained Patti; a third, Garcia, of London, trained Jenny Lind and the Irish prima donna, Catherine Hayes; and a fourth, Venceslao Cattaneo, now dead, was Angiolina Bosio's master and my own. To the admirable training of this man, against great physical obstacles, I owe a voice of three octaves all but one note. That was the state of affairs in 1860 as far as I know them. But I will confine myself to Mr. Steed’s statement respecting Garcia. Mr. Steed said the “coup de glotte” is “the central point of his (Garcia’s) system.” It is more than this, it was the central point of great old school. What then, is this? This question involves a definition of disputants.

Authors may be divided into two classes—artists and scientists. There is only one excuse for any one, writing from an art point of view, to write,—that is, to explain the cause of a given effect. I wrote in a dual capacity of artist and scientist. My “Philosophy of Voice” (1873) was originally written for the special purpose of showing that the modern German school, as propounded by Madame Seiler, is falsification of that first law laid down by Garcia. Incidentally, and to strengthen the philosophy taken up, were thrown in a number of stray thoughts, amongst others, my discovery that the use of consonants associated with vocal utterance, disturbs the organs of voice and physically disarranges them, just as bad type disturbs the organs of sight and physically injures them. Philologists have not yet risen to see the importance of this thought.

To upset Madame Seiler’s authority—which is mainly owed to that eminent professor of physics, Professor Helmholtz, supporting her—I discovered and proclaimed Helmholtz’s error respecting the “physical basis of hearing” on purpose to show scientists who had not learned to sing that he was not perfect in his own field, and that I, a trained singer, could lead better than he in mine. He falsified my profession; I corrected him in his. Madame Seiler and Professor Helmholtz give false dogma and false tradition. Garcia, in his earliest letterpress (about 1858, I think) gives true dogma and true tradition, but little science. From whence, then, did Madame Seiler get her misconceptions? She may have got the “koo” by mistaking the sound of a symbol for the thing it portrays! “Avec vous le coup” (“koo,” “koo”)—this is the most likely explanation —or she may have mistaken the locality in which the will is put to play. Then, again, the sound “oo.” Prof. Helmholtz used a tuning fork and found the mouth responded best when held by will in the form for the vowel “u” (“oo”). But we know that sound generators have resonators in conformity to their nature and requirements; a violin body, for example, would not suit as a resonator for a drum skin, nor the hemisphere of a drum for a violin string. The voice instrument is not formed like a tuning fork, and the mouth willed into the form for vowel “u” is not the form that responds to voice rightly produced. This was the vowel of the old school of training, as learned by me from Cattaneo, rejected on all middle study. The study was on “ah,” that is, the mouth was placed in its normal open state without any added volitional gird. In a dead body the lower jaw drops and if sound were projected through the open mouth, “ah” would be the vowel tone heard. The old school, then, went to place a voice primarily on its automatic and physical bases, the modern school, ignorant of metaphysics, confuses between the physical and intellectual world, so disturbs the one by the admixture of the other.

Still there seems to be amongst the uninitiated a kind of suspicion that “u” was sometimes used in study. This I will now clear up. If we blow across a soda-water bottle, “oo” is heard, resulting not from will force changing such form, but from the natural tone of a cavern in such form. The voice chiusa of the old school’s high notes is made by a thought “oo,” not by a physical change in the mouth; the pharynx responding to the created sound by “oo” as the dead man’s mouth responds to the created sound “ah.” The confusion of this metaphysical aspect is the cause of the great injury the sol-faists are doing to the voice.

Next, as regards the introduction of the consonant “k.” The old school, as learned by me—and I beg the reader mark this well—taught the highest elevation of the soft palate and the greatest depression of the base of the tongue; the consonant “k,” on the other hand, requires the greatest depression of the soft palate and the highest elevation of the base of the tongue. This latter resistance is made for the consonants “x,” “k,” and “q,” and when people snore or gargle; but such resistance is fatal to the voice, and is not the old school. The German school is not, then, the school of which I write, and which Catteneo, who learned at Bologna, taught me, and which made Grisi, Mario, and Alboni.

Having seen the power of utter misconception of a dogmatic truth by those who have not learned it, we next note the power of two persons, each equally secure in the one similar and infallible truth, explaining differently such truth. For instance, if I pluck a piano wire, my child might say the vibration of the wire made the sound; but both he and I would know we each referred to the same thing, while explaining it differently. Moreover, no intelligent being would think we referred to two different actions, or referred to two different things. So with Mr. Orlando Steed and Signor Garcia. They meant exactly the same thing when they wrote of the “shock of the glottis,” but Mr. Steed’s explanation was of a more scientific character. It may be asked, “How do I know this?” First, because Mr. Steed learned of me, and I therefore know he meant the same as I mean. Secondly, I was a contemporary with Manuel Garcia’s son, Gustave Garcia, in Milan. Gustave was trained by his father, therefore he means the same as his father; and I have frequently heard Gustave practise, therefore I know that, however we may differ in explanations, Manuel Garcia, Gustave Garcia, Orlando Steed, Catteneo, and myself mean, and do, and teach, one and the same thing when we speak of the coup do glotte. Thus much for the first point of the fast disappearing school. The old school did a certain thing; the modern German school mistook the name for the thing done, so does another and opposite thing.

The next point where the old school and Madame Seiler are at variance is this. The old school did not lay down a hard and fast line as regards the division of registers; Madame Seiler does. The old school did not say that man, woman, or child, of whatever age or size always change at an absolute instead of a relative pitch; Madame Seiler does. I saw that the inevitable result of this German fallacy would be to induce people to proclaim her third fallacy—namely, that the blind can not tell on certain notes whether it be a man or a woman singing. On the contrary, the old school insisted that quality, not pitch, decides to what class a voice belongs, and that a tenor sounds a tenor wherever in his compass he may sing, and a contralto sounds a contralto wherever in her compass she may sing. To those who can recall the voices of the past, “Tornami a dir,” sang by Grisi and Alboni, would have been quite another thing to the same duet sang by Grisi and Mario, and a blind man would have known it. To classify voice by habiliments is not the old school. To stem this corruption I ventured to discover and proclaim the fact that, underlying differences of sex and of individuals, the male and female voices are primarily identical, but of varying higher pitches, owing to varying sizes of instruments; and I ventured to proclaim that the difference in quality is owing to a different combination of harmonics blending with the chief or prime tone, and chiefly arises from difference of form and size of resonating chambers. This was a distinct scientific step in advance. Dissection gives no foundation whatever for the erroneous belief held by the old school, and pushed to an absurdity by the new; it might as well be proclaimed that the knee joint is of a fixed distance from the ground for everyone!

Dr. Gordon Holmes, writing on this subject (“Vocal Physiology,” p. 137), says:—”The physiological inconsistency, not to say absurdity, of these views need not be dwelt upon.” The old school classified by tone, the modern German school tries to annihilate this and classify by pitch. Thus much for art.

— Charles Lunn, “The Old Italian School of Singing: An Historical Autobiography,” Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review, August 1, 1885, p 535-536.

1. A key technique highlighted by Lunn that confirms the teaching of Manuel Garcia: “The old school, as learned by me—and I beg the reader mark this well—taught the highest elevation of the soft palate and the greatest depression of the base of the tongue; the consonant “k,” on the other hand, requires the greatest depression of the soft palate and the highest elevation of the base of the tongue.” As noted in my blog “The Heart of the Garcia Method,” Garcia was in earnest to move the pharyngeal arches as a precursor to the “coup de glotte.” Lunn’s “greatest depression of the base of the tongue” reflects this action.

2. Wartel’s name was misspelled here using an “e,” which I have corrected. Wartel was a student of Nouritt, himself a student of Manuel Garcia, pere.