and followed by easy phrases. Voices do not
at once blend, and until they do the singing should be never loud. I
look upon the earlier work as tentative--a feeling for the beauty of
perfection of pitch, tunefulness, and intonation. A practice to be
condemned is that of learning the parts of a tune separately, and then
bringing them together. There are, of course, places where it is
absolutely necessary to give special attention to exceptional passages,
but it is a mistake to teach each part as though it were an independent
tune--to give the direction, which I have often heard, 'Now sing your
part, and never mind what the others are doing,' or 'Don't you listen to
any other part.' This system is answerable for the most offending cases
of want of tunefulness, in which one part will sing on with the greatest
of satisfaction in a key a semitone from that in which the part above or
below is moving. The ear should be prepared by a symphony, or by
thinking of the key before a piece is commenced. My own practice has
been to wait after giving the key-note for the pupils to do this. I have
recently come across a method of allowing the pupils to find the tonic
of a song about to be sung, which in nine cases out of ten will make the
opening as 'restless' as the sea waves. The teacher strikes the C fork,
and the tonic being F, all the pupils sing C', B, A, G, F--doh. The C',
B, A, G, F is, I think, as likely to unsettle the ear as anything that
could be imagined. The teacher should give the key-note. He may teach
his pupils to use the fork if he will, but _not_ in a way so exquisitely
calculated to unsettle the ear when it should be strongly decided.

"With regard to Registers, I do not know whether the nomenclature I
employed with my Swanley choir will be commended by you, but as it was
successful I will describe it. The registers we called, perhaps
inelegantly, 'Top,' 'Middle,' and 'Bottom,' these terms being handier
than Upper Thin, Lower Thin, and Upper Thick. The earliest exercises
were in the Top Register--that is, the Upper Thin. Boys untrained are,
taken in bulk, unconscious of the Thin Register. Having got them to
sing, say C to koo, I have followed it by singing to the same syllable
the tune:--

[Illustration: KEY A[b] | m:m |f:f |s:--|m:--|| &c.]

('Now the day is over,'--_A. & M._), and the delight has been intense
when the pupils have thus discovered how clearly and sweetly they could
sing. When this is done great po