some difficulty are sung,
covering a range of an octave and a half, or a little more. The teacher
interrupts occasionally to say "Sing those lower notes more in the chest
voice," "Place the upper notes higher in the head," "Don't let your
vocal cords open on that ah," "Sing that again and make the tones
cleaner," etc. One or two arias are then sung, interspersed with
instructions of the same sort, and also with suggestions regarding
style, delivery, and expression.

For daily practice between lessons, the student sings usually the same
exercises and studies included in the previous lesson, and also commits
to memory compositions assigned for future study.

Examples of this kind might be multiplied indefinitely, but the main
points have been fairly well brought out. Most important to be noticed
is the fact that the voice is trained by practice in actual singing. In
the whole scheme of modern Voice Culture, toneless muscular drills
consume only an insignificant proportion of the time devoted to lessons.
Further, the number of exercises and musical compositions embraced in a
single half-hour lesson is very small. On the other hand, no limit can
be set to the number of topics of vocal control touched on in any one
lesson. These latter are used, throughout the whole range of
instruction, without any systematic sequence. Whatever fault of
production the pupil's tones indicate, the teacher calls attention to
the fault, and gives the supposedly appropriate rule for its
correction.

Part II

A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN METHODS

CHAPTER I

MECHANICAL VOCAL MANAGEMENT AS THE BASIS OF VOICE CULTURE

Notwithstanding the wide diversity of opinion on most topics connected
with vocal training, there is one point on which all authorities agree.
This is, that the voice must be consciously controlled. In all the
conflict of methods, this basic mechanical idea has never been attacked.
On the contrary, it is everywhere accepted without question as the
foundation of all instruction in singing.

The idea of mechanical vocal control is also the starting-point of all
analysis of the vocal action. Every investigator of the voice approaches
the subject in the belief that an exact determination of the muscular
operations of correct singing would lead to an absolutely infallible
method of training voices. The problem of tone-production is identical,
in the common belief, with the problem of the vocal action. Three
scienc