Description

About the Author

This book is an extensive and eloquent rejection of the assumption that healthy singing technique requires conscious management of the vocal organs. It is of necessity academic in conception and in substance. Its only purpose is to demonstrate the falsity of the idea of mechanical vocal management, and to prove the scientific soundness of instruction by imitation. There is no possibility of a practical manual of instruction in singing being accepted, based on the training of the ear and the musical education of the singer, until the vocal world has been convinced of the error of the mechanical idea. When that has been accomplished this work will have served its purpose. All of the controversial materials, together with much of the theoretical subject matter, will then be superfluous. A concise practical treatise can then be offered, containing all that the vocal teacher and the student of singing need to know about the training and management of the voice. In spite of imperfections, we believe this work is culturally important, and we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world’s literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions.

About the Author

David Clark Taylor (1871-1918) was the author of The Psychology of Singing (1908) and Self Help for Singers (1914). “A peculiar gap exists between the accepted theoretical basis of instruction in singing and the actual methods of vocal teachers. Judging by the number of scientific treatises on the voice, the academic observer would be led to believe that a coherent Science of Voice Culture has been evolved. Modern methods of instruction in singing are presumed to embody a system of exact and infallible rules for the management of the voice. Teachers of singing in all the musical centers of Europe and America claim to follow a definite plan in the training of voices, based on established scientific principles.”