d from
their flexibility when under the singer's control. The movable parts of
or pertaining to the resonance-cavities are the soft palate with the
uvula, the fauces, the cheeks, the lips, the lower jaw and, most mobile
of all, the tongue.

The uvula often is too long, either by nature or through a disease
called prolongation of the uvula. It can be treated by astringents or
the elongation can be cut off, which usually is the most prompt and
efficacious way. The operator, however, in case the patient is a singer,
must calculate to a nicety just how much to remove, otherwise the voice
will suffer. There are isolated cases of deformed soft palate with uvula
so enormous that it cannot be raised. In such cases, one of which is
instanced by Kofler, a surgical operation being out of the question, the
patient simply has to give up singing.

Enlarged tonsils, whether from inflammation or other causes, also
have to be operated on, as their enlargement obviously hinders free
voice-emission. Even at its best the mouth-passage here is narrowest--and
called the "isthmus"--and nothing must be allowed to make it narrower
than it is by nature. The lips never should lie flat against the teeth,
since this would muffle resonance. On the other hand, the teeth should
not be bared, as this results in a foolish grin. The cheeks naturally
conform to the action of the lips. The lower jaw should be relaxed, which
gives the so-called "floating chin." When the lower jaw, and with it
the chin, is raised, the throat is tightened, and voice-action becomes
constricted. The "floating chin" does not, of course, mean that the chin
is to be thrust downward into the chest. In singing, as in everything
else, there is a golden rule to be observed.

It is obvious that the tongue also is a highly responsible member of
the vocal tract. Raise it too high, and you bring it so close to the
hard palate that the mouth becomes too small for free, resonant
voice-emission. The tone becomes wheezy. Let the tongue lie too flat,
and the mouth-cavity becomes too large and cavernous for tense, vibrant
voice-emission. The tone becomes too open. Let the base of the tongue
move back too far, and it will tend to close the pharynx and to check
free egress from the pharynx into the mouth, making the tone muffled.
Raise the back of the tongue until it touches the soft palate, and the
two combined close the mouth-cavity from behind, with the result that
voice is carried up the n