The Old Italian School of Singing: An Historical Autobiography 2

Sep 11

Here is the second part of Charles Lunn’s address in Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review in the fall of 1885. If, in the first part, Lunn gives readers the importance of the coup de glotte, the use of [u], and affirms a fundamental tenet of Manuel Garcia’s teaching, here, you will find an important Old Italian School of Singing teaching:

“A true vocalist does not feel as though he were forcing air out, but as though he were drawing breath in, and this even when emitting the most powerful sound.”

Curiously, as much as Lunn hated the teaching of Francesco Lamperti and thought he did not honestly present the old Italian school, this was a principle of Milanese Maestro’s teaching, who talked much of “drinking” the tone. [1]

As in part one, Lunn’s explanation of how the false vocal folds are used in singing doesn’t hold up, but that should not worry us if only because Lunn makes it clear what comprises the true old-school start of tone. [2]

And now I come to the scientific aspect, and this is till more comic!

In 1873, no work in any language had been written to explain from a physiological point of view the difference between right and wrong production of voice in the same person; no work in any language had been written explaining the change or physical form that accompanies such change of voice, yet we know “there is no effect without a cause.”

The whole raison d’etre of a voice trainer is his need to produce these changes, and his value as a trainer consists in his power to produce them. The old school, secure in its empiricism, was content with its facts, and did not seek scientifically to account for them; but my position as the scientific champion of the art truths I held was different, so I ventured beyond, in order if possible to rescue the old truths and fix them on an incontrovertible base. Here I throw down a distinct and clear challenge. Let the reader seek from cover to cover any book that has been published since 1873 and see if there can be found any attempt to grasp and settle these philosophical problems. I know of none.

The solution of the problem respecting the difference between the false and true production, and the natural physics involved in this, must have been revealed to me years ago, when a boy. As a child I knew that the birds have an upper and a lower larynx, the lower layrnx producing voice—that is, doing the acoustical part of the business, the upper larynx resisting and ruling the air in measured and restricted flow—that is, doing the dynamics of the business. I noticed that the throats of song birds swell above the voice producing instrument in accurate response to the power produced. In later years I said, “The true voice physically consists of vocal cords vibrating in a column of changeable degrees of compressed air held in measured imprisonment between the false cords and the thoracic muscles below. The top larynx of birds corresponds with the false cords of men, and the space between the top and lower larynx of birds corresponds with the ventricles in men, and this space swells out by varying degrees of compression in accordance with the power of the voice.” Any one can verify this by noting a canary sing. We find exactly the same principle in the consonants “v” and “z.” For “v” the false cords are thrown open, and the lips approach to impede the escaping air, for “z” the false cords are thrown open and tongue and palate approach to impede the escaping air, and for “h” all parts capable of approach are thrown open; thus, in time a habit of insufficient approach of false cords is acquired, and that is bad production. The old school, without knowing this, got the false cords approached by pressure of compressed air in the ventricles and then afterward held them ajar a little; and that is good production, the true cords vibrating under such conditions automatically, as the wires of an aeolian harp vibrate in response to a flow of air through a window sash. Scientifically, I fail to see how beautiful sound can be produced by a sound body vibrating in a column of air in different states, compressed on one side, uncompressed on the other.

“The intensity of a sound depends upon the density of the air in which it is generated, and not on that air in which it is heard.”

“The wonderful volume of sound which proceeds from a tiny throat of a canary bird seems wholly disproportionate to its size. But it has been discovered that in birds the lungs have several openings, communicating with corresponding air-bags, or cells, which fill the whole cavity of the body from the neck downwards, and into which the air passes and repasses.”

Sir Issac Newton’s third law is, “All action is attended by its corresponding action, equal in force and opposed in action.” This, in my “Philosophy of Voice,” I ventured to call the “tonacity of voice.” It took me eighteen months’ hard study for the feeble parts to grow, and the entire instrument to rearrange itself properly, and then, and then only, I realized the difference between right and wrong production. To quote my words of 1873, “A true vocalist does not feel as though he were forcing air out, but as though he were actually drawing breath in, and this even when emitting the most powerful sound. In false emission it is not so, the point or resistance breaking loose makes him feel as though he were running after a note to catch it.” (“Philosophy of Voice,” sec. edit., p. 67.) [3]

This was a psychological definition, new, original, and my own; others have borrowed it. It is open to any one to give the world a better solution than that which I have given; this would be progress. Or to disprove me; which would be stagnation. Or neither to disprove nor supply another explanation, but to ridicule; which would be retrogression.

There are three questions before physicists, one a question of growth, another a question of change of form, a third a question of economy of air. The objections raised by physiologists are these:—(1) No one has ever advanced the view before. This objection is childish, and is opposed to all discovery and research. That, because no function has been assigned to a part such part has no function is equally absurd! It is of objectors to assign another function to the parts in debate if they wish to complete with me. (2) It is objected that the false cords are too feeble to resist, to which objection I retort, (a) “atrophy.” Parts used, grow; parts deused, wane; parts abused, resent. Physiologists might as well draw deductions respecting a blacksmith’s arm by dissecting the attenuated arm of a ballet dancer, as argue from the dissection of illused, unused, or abused voice organs. And I retort, (b) they do not resist by intrinsic muscular power, but by their for and by the angle or recoil. (3) It is objected that lions, tigers, oxen, and other animals that have “neither ventricles nor ventricular bands,” have loud voices! I retort, that is why their voices are rough and ugly, and that, therefore, they cannot sing! The voice of man, when the ventricles and the ventricular bands are not used, might be loud, but would be equally unmusical, inartistic and useless, from an art point of view, as the voices of these beasts.

Next, the difference or relative positions, as regards one part of the instrument to another. I have submitted to laryngoscopic observation several of my best pupils, and I have invariably found the more you see the worse sounds you hear, and the better the tone you hear the less of the parts you can see. The whole top of the instrument seems to shut up under artistic production, and the epiglottis to overhang the instrument, making it invisible. I come to the conclusion that I have been given the physiological and physical solution to the problem, “What is the difference between the Old Italian school and the modern German one.” Here I repeat, there is only one excuse for an artist writing on that almost lost school—namely, to point out true from false dogma, and to say who represents the school and who does not. I hope I have made it clear that the old school never taught the school which Seiler teachers, nor did it teach what modern teachers who have not learned to sing, teach. For example, the aspirate “h” is the exact opposite and polar contrary to the old attack with a good accent, taking care to give a real ‘shock of the glottis’ at each word ‘ha.’” This in the old school is an impossibility.

Again, there is only one excuse for a scientist writing on that old school, that is, to trace varying effects to their respective causes. This I have done, and, I believe, successfully done, and I know of no other person who has attempted it. The gift of scientific discovery is truly not dependent upon education nor upon memory, but upon perception; and a person who has not been trained to sing lacks the first principles for this, and is as blind man speaking about colour, outside the field of fact—he know not what to perceive.

“Better for man were he and Nature more familiar friends.”

— “The Italian School of Singing: An Historical Autobiography” by Charles Lunn, Musical Opinion & Music Trade Review, September 1, 1885, p 587.

Lunn objected to Lamperti’s use of consonants before the vowel and his insistence on sotto-voce vocalization and observed that the old school of Garcia and Cattaneo sang with a full voice from the outset. Lunn also objected to Lamperti because the latter was not known to be a singer. Readers will find a reference to “Drinking the Tone” in William Earl Brown’s Vocal Wisdom: The Maxims of Giovanni Battista Lamperti (1931).
Lunn observed that the start of the tone involved Garcia’s coup de glotte. See Part 1 for more information.
Find Charles Lunn’s texts on the download page.