these are requisite above all things for a
singing-master as well as for a piano-teacher.

* * * * *

"My singers are to be educated for the public, for the stage, and must
therefore sing loud, study hard, force their execution, and make use of
a great deal of breath. How else will they be able to produce an
effect?"

_Answer._ What, then, is the effect of your culture? I know of none,
except that they at first are applauded, because they are young and
pretty, and are novelties; because they have good voices, and the
benevolent public wishes to encourage them; and then they disappear in a
year or two without leaving any trace.

"The singing-teacher can succeed in cultivating not more than one good
voice in twenty, with any noteworthy result. Hence the decadence of the
art of singing."

_Answer._ Unless some unusual disturbance or sickness occur, all voices
improve till the twenty-fourth year. When this is not the case, it is to
be attributed only to the singing-teacher.

"Many voices acquire a sharp tone, which is the precursor of decay."

_Answer._ All voices are, and will remain, more or less tender, if their
culture is correct.

"Only Jenny Lind and Henrietta Sontag were allowed by the public to give
out their voices naturally and lightly without straining them, and to
sing _piano_ and _pianissimo_, and their celebrity is a justification of
this privilege."

_Answer._ But how would they have obtained their celebrity, if this were
not the true, correct, and pure mode of singing?

"Our singers also try the _piano_ and _pianissimo_; but they can
produce no effect on their audiences by it, as you may see every day."

_Answer._ Good heavens! I should think so! With such a _piano_, with
strained voices, faulty attack, and the use of too much breath,--a
_piano_ which only gurgles in the throat, or deeper! That I do not mean:
I must refer you again to the three trifles mentioned in my eighth
chapter.

"But some voices have no _piano_, and many singers do not take the right
course to acquire it."

_Answer._ What a wide-spread, groundless excuse! Here we may see the
error of our times. People look for the fault outside of themselves, and
not in themselves. The inventive power of the age is here truly
astonishing! When, owing to false management, the voice soon degenerates
instead of improving with time, it is the consequence of a faulty
formation of the throat, and of the neglect