effects on the one
word, "heart."

This subject of emotional expression through tone color and tone character
is so great, so important, that it is impossible to do it justice in this
little work. I have written more fully on this and kindred subjects in my
other works, therefore I shall here touch but lightly upon the aesthetics
of the vocal art.

It should be remembered that the prime object for which this book was
written, was to place more clearly, if possible, before my readers, the
importance and wonderful influence of the flexible, vitalized movements of
our system.

These movements, we find, so directly influence the voice, the singer, and
the results in every way, that we feel justified in again calling attention
to them. Too much cannot be said of them, for the average student of the
voice is inclined to neglect them. If they have been, to a certain extent,
understood and mastered, then the study of this, the fourth principle of
artistic singing, becomes a comparatively easy matter. With the student who
does not understand them, emotional or self-expression is always a
difficult matter, and with many an impossibility; which largely accounts
for the great number of mechanical singers. At least twenty years' hard
work and study have been put upon these movements in order to reduce them
to the simplest and most effective form. They are based upon common sense
and Nature's laws. Of course no one can or should expect to understand or
fully appreciate them without more or less investigation.

ARTICLE TWO.

THE FIFTH PRINCIPLE OF ARTISTIC SINGING.

The fifth principle of artistic singing is

_Automatic Articulation_.

_Theory_.--_Articulation must be spontaneous_, the result of
thought, and of the effect desired, never of direct or local effort. The
thought before the action, never the action before the thought.

_Devices_.--The development of the consonantal sounds through the
study of the three points or places of articulation, and the application by
the use of words, sentences, and sentiment, vitalized and intensified.

In our course of study or in the formula here given, it will be evident to
the reader that we lay much stress upon the principle of vitality or
vitalized energy. In the second part of this work we have considered the
principles and the devices that develop physical and mental vitality. In
the article which directly precedes this, special emphasis is placed upon
emotional vitali