ess,
some knowledge of the organs which he brings into play in singing cannot
fail to be helpful to the vocalist himself, and surely their importance
to the teacher of singing and to the physician who has an impaired voice
to restore cannot be overestimated. Correct teaching, in fact, directs
the mind to the end, and by taking into account the physical parts
concerned in singing, imparts to them the habit of unconsciously obeying
natural laws. Singing may not be a question of how a distorted throat
looks in an oblique mirror, yet the knowledge that, because a note is
faultily produced, the throat must be distorted, and how, will be of
great service to the teacher who wishes to correct the fault, and
indispensable to the physician who wishes to eradicate the results of
a bad method. The very first principle of a vocal method should be, to
establish so correct a use of the vocal organs that nature in this
respect becomes second nature. For correct action of the voice-organs
can develop into a habit so perfectly acquired that the singer acts
upon it automatically; and the most disastrous result of poor teaching
is that a bad habit also becomes second nature and is almost impossible
to eradicate.

There seems to be no question but that the old Italian masters of
singing, whether knowingly or unknowingly, taught according to correct
physiological principles, and that, because of a neglect of these
principles since then, while there has been a general advance in
everything else, the art of voice-production actually has retrograded.
For not only did the old Italian masters understand the voice in its
physical aspects; they also insisted, because they understood it so
well, on a course of voice-training which lasted long enough to give
the pupil complete ease and entire control of technic. The story of the
famous master, Porpora, and his equally famous pupil, Caffarelli, is
worth recalling. On a single sheet of music paper Porpora wrote all the
feats of which the voice is capable, and from that one sheet Caffarelli
studied with him five, some say six years. Then the great master
dismissed him with these words: "Go, my son, I have nothing more to
teach you; you are the greatest singer in Italy and in the world." In
our own hurried days the teacher is only too apt, after a few months,
or even after only a few weeks, to say: "Go, my dear. You know _enough_.
You are pretty to look at, and you'll make a hit!" For, curiously
enough,