en inspiration
and expiration. "Pause and reflect," one might say. For that pause,
physiologically so helpful, as will be shown, appears psychologically to
warn the singer against wasting breath and so to manage it that breath
and tone issue forth simultaneously, the tone borne along on a full
current of air that carries it to the remotest part of hall or theatre.

The pause before exhaling will be found by the singer a great aid in
enabling him to maintain control of the outgoing column of air and to
utilize it as he sees fit without wasting any portion of it. Wilful
waste makes woeful want in singing as in life.

How long should the breath be retained before emission? There can be
no hard and fast rule. It is a matter of circumstance entirely, and
it certainly is detrimental to postpone the next inspiration to the
last moment before the next note has to be intoned or the next phrase
started. Every opportune rest should be utilized for inspiration, and,
if possible, the breath should be inhaled a second or two before the
note or phrase to be sung, and the breath retained until the crucial
moment. Then breath and song together should float out in a steady
stream. The result will be pure, full, resonant tone. A _pianissimo_
upon a full breath is like the _pianissimo_ of a hundred violins, which
is a hundred times finer than that of a single instrument, and so rich
in quality that it carries much further. It is the stage-whisper of
music.

This pause and the steadiness produced by it probably constitute what
the old Italian masters of singing had in mind when they laid down for
their pupils the rule "filar il tuono" or "spin the tone," in other
words, the practice of emitting the breath just sufficiently to produce
a whisper and then convert it into a delicate and exquisite tone--a mere
filament of music. Even in rapid passages which succeed each other at
very brief intervals and such as frequently occur in the Italian arias,
it is possible to replenish the breath in such a way that some pause,
however brief, can be made between inspiration and expiration. Watch
Melba singing the Mad Scene from _Lucia_, Tetrazzini, the Shadow Song
from _Dinorah_, or Sembrich, the music of the Queen of the Night in the
_Magic Flute_, and you will observe that they replenish the original
intake of breath with half-breaths, a practice which enables them at
every opportunity to make the required pause before breath-emission.
Moreover, it a