voice, just as he had done before
adopting the (supposedly) scientific idea of instruction. Unconsciously
he led the pupil to listen and imitate. When the student found it
difficult to apply the mechanical instruction the master would say,
"Listen to me and do as I do." Naturally this would bring the desired
result. Yet both master and pupil would attribute the result to the
application of the mechanical rule. The student's voice would be
successfully trained, but he would carry away an erroneous idea of the
means by which this was accomplished. Becoming a teacher in his turn,
the vocalist taught in this fashion would entirely overlook the
unobtrusive element of imitation and would devote himself to mechanical
instruction. He would, for example, construe the precept, "Sing with
open throat," as a rule to be directly applied; that he had acquired the
open throat by imitating his master's tones this teacher would be
utterly unaware.

More than one generation of master and pupil was probably concerned, in
each succession, in the gradual loss of the substance of the old method.
The possibility of learning to sing by imitation was only gradually lost
to sight. This is well expressed by Paolo Guetta. "The aphorism 'listen
and imitate,' which was the device of the ancient school, coming down by
way of tradition, underwent the fate of all sane precepts passed along
from generation to generation. Through elimination and individual
adaptation, through assuming the personal imprint, it degenerated into a
purely empirical formula." (_Il Canto nel suo Mecanismo_, Milan, 1902.)

Guetta is himself evidently at a loss to grasp the significance of the
empirical formula, "Listen and imitate." He seems however to be aware of
an antagonism between imitation and mechanical vocal management. The
reason of this antagonism has already been noticed, but it will bear
repetition. For a teacher to tell a pupil to "hold your throat open and
imitate my tone," is to demand the impossible. A conscious effort
directly to hold the throat open only causes the throat to stiffen. In
this condition the normal action of the voice is upset and the pupil
cannot imitate the teacher's voice.

This was the condition confronting the teacher of the second generation
in the "maestral succession" just considered. He found his pupils unable
to get with their voices the results which had come easily to him.
Attributing his satisfactory progress as a student to the m