ging. It might almost be thought as
necessary to forbid reading and talking during the break of voice as to
forbid its use in a daily drill of fifteen or twenty minutes in singing.

Certainly it is absurd to advocate entire non-use of the voice at this
period in either speech or song. It is rather correct to guard against
its misuse. If boys have up to this time used only the thick register,
they will in singing through the break intensify their bad habits;
throatiness, harshness, nasality will become chronic. This would be bad
enough, but each bad vocal habit results from the abnormal use of the
vocal organs, and occasions hoarseness, chronic sore throat, catarrh,
etc.

It is quite customary in school music to assign the boys to the lower
part, in part music. This practice continued from the time part-singing
begins in the music course, compels the boys to use the thick register.
As the larynx gains in firmness from year to year, they experience more
and more difficulty with their upper tones-- those lying from F to C.
Having used only the thick voice in all their school singing, they know
of no other, and very likely consider the thin voice which they are now
obliged to use in singing the higher tones as altogether too girlish for
the prospective heirs of manly bass tones.

The reluctance of boys to sing the soprano would be amusing were it not,
in the light of utterly false training, so pitiful.

School music is educational; its scope is controlled by those in charge.
The public expects good educational, rather than show work, and employs
those to supervise and teach who are supposed to know what good
educational work is in vocal music.

The supposition that children's voices can, owing to individual
differences analogous to those existing among adults, be divided into
alto and soprano voices, is erroneous; children can most assuredly sing
in parts, but the quality of tone which in the woman's voice is called
alto or contralto cannot be secured for certain physical reasons
previously explained; and the use of the chest-tone, which resembles the
adult woman's chest-voice as a clarinet resembles a viola, is wholly
objectionable.

If, however, the voices have been trained in the use of the thin
register only, the management of the boy's voice during the change is
simplified; the influence of good vocal habits will be felt; the vocal
bands which have never been strained will respond when their condition
admits of