g as a matter
of purely academic interest. No insufficiency of imitative teaching had
ever been felt. Teachers of the transition period, even so late probably
as 1830, had in most cases no reason to be dissatisfied with their
methods of instruction. Garcia himself started out modestly enough to
place the traditional method, received from his father, on a definite
basis. His first idea, announced in the preface to the first edition of
his _Ecole de Garcia_, was to "reproduce my father's method, attempting
only to give it a more theoretical form, and to connect results with
causes."

Interest in the mechanics of the voice continued to be almost entirely
academic until the invention of the laryngoscope in 1855. Then the
popular note was struck. The marvelous industrial and scientific
progress of the preceding fifty years had prepared the world to demand
advancement in methods of teaching singing, as in everything else. When
the secrets of the vocal action were laid bare, a new and better method
of teaching singing was at once expected. Within very few years
scientific knowledge of the voice was demanded of every vocal teacher.

Nothing could well be more natural than a belief in the efficacy of
scientific knowledge of the vocal organs as the basis of instruction in
singing. Surely no earnest investigator of the voice can be criticized
for adopting this belief. No one ever thought of questioning the
soundness of the new scientific idea. The belief was everywhere
accepted, as a matter of course, that methods of instruction in singing
were about to be vastly improved. Vocal theorists spoke confidently of
discovering means for training the voice in a few months of study. The
singer's education under the old system had demanded from four to seven
years; science was expected to revolutionize this, and to accomplish in
months what had formerly required years.

Even then tone-production was not seen to be a distinct problem. The old
imitative method was still successfully followed. No one thought of
discarding the traditional method, but only of improving it by reducing
it to scientific principles. But that could not last. Soon after the
attempt began to be made to manage the voice mechanically,
tone-production was found to contain a real problem. This was of course
due to the introduction of throat stiffness.

From that time on (about 1860 to 1865), the problem of tone-production
has become steadily more difficult of solution