There can be no question that the old masters were highly successful
teachers of singing. Even leaving out of consideration the vocal
achievements of the castrati, the singers of Tosi's day must have been
able to perform music of the florid style in a masterly fashion. This is
plainly seen from a study of the scores of the operas popular at that
time. Empirical methods of instruction seem to have sufficed for the
earlier masters. Not until the old method had been in existence for
nearly one hundred and fifty years does an attempt seem to have been
made to study the voice scientifically. In 1741 a famous French
physician, Ferrein, published a treatise on the vocal organs. This was
the first scientific work to influence the practices of vocal teachers.

For many years after the publication of Ferrein's treatise, the
scientific study of the voice attracted very little attention from the
singing masters. Fully sixty years elapsed before any serious attempt
was made to base a method of instruction on scientific principles. Even
then the idea of scientific instruction in singing gained ground very
slowly. Practical teachers at first paid but little attention to the
subject. Interest in the mechanics of voice production was confined
almost entirely to the scientists.

In the early decades of the nineteenth century the mechanical features
of voice production seem to have appealed to a constantly wider circle
of scientists. Lickovius (1814), Malgaine (1831), Bennati (1830), Bell
(1832), Savart (1825), brought out works on the subject. It remained,
however, for a vocal teacher, Garcia, to conceive the idea of basing
practical instruction on scientific knowledge.

Manuel Garcia (1805-1906) may justly be regarded as the founder of Vocal
Science. His father, Manuel del Popolo Viscenti, was famous as singer,
impresario, and teacher. From him Garcia inherited the old method, it is
safe to assume, in its entirety. But for Garcia's remarkable mind the
empirical methods of the old school were unsatisfactory. He desired
definite knowledge of the voice. A clear idea seems to have been in his
mind that, with full understanding of the vocal mechanism and of its
correct mode of action, voices would be more readily and surely trained.
How strongly this idea had possession of Garcia is shown by the fact
that he began the study of the vocal action in 1832, and that he
invented the laryngoscope only in 1855.

It must not be understood that G