he would have a reliable choir he
must begin, continue, and end with regular voice training based on an
undeniably good system. From the very outset the pupil should be taught
to fear flat singing as a demon. With my boys I was for ever laying down
the self-evident truth, 'People can endure your singing if it be
tuneful, even though all other points of excellence are low, but no one
can put up with your singing out of tune, except as martyrs.' The cause
of flattening is always lack of culture. In the choirs I have trained it
has ceased to trouble me after a few months. The habit of letting the
pitch drop fosters itself in a remarkable manner, until at last the ear
of the performer is perfectly satisfied with the production of a
monstrosity. In proof of this I would mention a case which has come
painfully under my own notice. A number of boys known to me have been in
the daily habit of singing the tune:--

[Illustration: key E[b].:d | m:f:r | d:-:m | s:-:l | s:-:s | d1:-:t |
l:-s | &c.]

and as they have only had a 'go as you please system' to hold them in,
they now commence flattening at once with a _crescendo_ which culminates
in the second line, and creates the effect:--

[Illustration::d | m:f:r |d:-:m |s:-:l | s:-:s | 1d1:-:t |l:-:s|| &c.]

The original quite gone, they quite satisfied! The cause of continued
flat singing is allowing the _bad habit_. I am not, of course, dealing
with exceptional cases of natural inaptitude. These are rare, and I say
this after having had some years of experience in testing individual
voices. I could now with very little difficulty name the few pupils I
had at Swanley who were naturally unable to sing tunefully, and I doubt
not that nearly all my old scholars could do the same. They were in
reality exceptions, numbering, during the whole of the time I was with
them, not more than half-a-dozen.

"There is one stage in the voice training where the teacher finds his
pupils (boys I am speaking of, my experience with adults not having been
so extensive) habitually _sharpen_. In my own neighbourhood a teacher
who has commenced to properly train his boys to sing, in a conversation
he had with me told me of this, to him, unexpected difficulty. To get
good intonation in part-singing, I found the singing of chords a great
help. The class should be divided rapidly, and one note of the chord
assigned to each section. Then it should be sung softly. This should be
repeated with other chords,