refully the chapters on breathing in this book will
have discovered by this time that the breathing-exercises just described
lead up to the principles of artistic breathing set forth in those
chapters; and that whoever has read them and will carry them out never
will require breathing-exercises to correct misuse of the voice from
that source, because his breathing will be absolutely correct. The same
is true of the exercises given by Dr. Van Baggen to make the
breathing-muscles cooperate with the articulation and vocal muscles.
Nevertheless, since there are people who do not read carefully, or who
go along in the same old faulty way until brought up suddenly by the
dire effects of misusing the voice, I may add that Dr. Van Baggen's
exercises for articulation will be found in detail in the pamphlets
mentioned.

When a singer who is suffering from misuse of the voice comes to a
specialist for treatment, the specialist must for the moment become a
singing-teacher and instruct the singer in the artistic coordination of
breathing, articulation and vocal muscles. The patient, having gained
proper breath-control and having had impressed upon him the importance
of forward placement and of the normal position of the tongue to correct
articulation of consonants, is ready for correction of the faulty
action of the vocal cords. This faulty action is due chiefly to faulty
attack--a faulty _coup de glotte_--manifest mainly on initial vowels in
an audible stroke, shock or check and in the emission of unvocalized
breath. This latter is the so-called _spiritus asper_, because the
emission of unvocalized breath which precedes phonation gives an
aspirated or _h_ sound, so that, instead of _ah_, we hear _haa_. The
_spiritus asper_ is caused by a too slow contraction of the vocal cords
and their too gradual approach for phonation.

In the audible shock of the glottis (sometimes called the "check
glottid") the vocal cords are pressed together and the retained breath
causes a shock or explosion. Dr. Van Baggen says that the vowel which
is thus formed might be called an articulated vowel, which accurately
describes the effect, the vowel being enunciated with the circumstance
of the articulated consonant instead of with the ease of the phonated
vowel.

With a normal attack--the _spiritus lenis_ in contradistinction to the
_spiritus asper_--the glottis is in position for phonation at the moment
breath passes through it. No unvocalized breath