et how
seldom is breathing systematically practised as an indispensable
preliminary to the production of tone! I have no hesitation in saying
that the subject is, in many instances, dismissed with a few general
observations. Pupils, of course, take breath somehow, and teachers are
glad to leave this uninteresting part of the business, and to proceed to
the cultivation of the voice.

It may be as well to add that what has been said so far about right and
wrong methods of breathing is not by any means mere theory, but that any
one can convince himself of the truth of the rules laid down by making a
few experiments with the spirometer, an instrument for measuring the
breathing power of the chest by indicating on a dial the exact number of
cubic inches of air expelled from the lungs. This breathing power will
be found to vary according to the way in which the inspiration has been
accomplished. In my own case, for instance, the spirometer should
register, according to the table of comparative height and breathing
power compiled by John Hutchinson, 230 cubic inches. Having suffered
from severe attacks of bleeding from the lungs, my maximum with midriff
and rib breathing is only 220, but with collar-bone breathing I barely
reach 180!

During the Summer Session of the Tonic Sol-fa College I carefully tested
the breathing capacity of ten students, and found that there was an
average excess of midriff and rib breathing over collar-bone breathing
to the extent of 25 cubic inches: the least amount of their increased
power was 12 cubic inches, and the greatest was 45! I imagine that these
figures are more eloquent than any words, and I think it superfluous to
make any further comment on them.

I am strongly of opinion that breathing exercises, especially in the
case of intending public singers, should always be carried on with a
spirometer,[D] because that instrument enables us with the greatest
accuracy to check results which otherwise can only be guessed at.

If this suggestion were acted upon we should certainly no longer be
distressed by that intolerable and never-ceasing tremolo which now so
frequently mars many, in other respects, fine voices. It is a curious,
and at first sight unaccountable, circumstance that this great fault is
specially noticeable amongst French singers. But at the Conservatoire de
Musique in Paris students are deliberately taught the wrong method of
inspiration; for, as we gather from the "Methode de