How to Sing - The Original Classic Edition

How to Sing by Lilli Lehmann - The Original Classic Edition

Finally available, a high quality book of the original classic edition.

This is a new and freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work today. These selected paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside:

It has been my endeavor to set down as clearly as possible all that I have learned through zealous, conscientious study by myself and with others, and thereby to offer to my colleagues something that will bring order into the chaos of their methods of singing; something based on science as well as on sensations in singing; something that will bring expressions often misunderstood into clear relation with the exact functions of the vocal organs.[

...Perfect consciousness in moving the vocal organs, and through the aid of the ear, in placing them at will in certain relations with each other; the fact that the soft palate can be drawn up against the hard palate; that the tongue is able to take many different positions, and that the larynx, by the assistance of the vocal sound oo, takes a low position, and by that of the vowel a a high one; that all muscles contract in activity and in normal inactivity are relaxed; that we must strengthen them by continued vocal gymnastics so that they may be able to sus[Pg 39]tain long-continued exertion; and must keep them elastic and use them so.

...I can increase the size of this ball above, to a pear shape, as soon as I think of singing higher; and, indeed, I heighten the form[Pg 56] before I go on from the tone just sung, making it, so to speak, higher in that way, and thus keep the form, that is, the propagation form, ready for the next higher tone, which I can now reach easily, as long as no interruption in the stream of breath against the mucous membrane can take place.

...When the peak of the softest part of the palate is placed forward toward the nose, instead of being drawn up high behind the nose, as in the head voice (see plate, head voice and nasal tone), it forms a kind of nasal production which, as I have already said, cannot be studied enough, because it produces very noble tonal effects and extraordinary connections.

...The reason why a tone sounds too low-the so-called transition tones from the lower to the middle range and from this to the higher, come up for consideration chiefly-is that the pillars of the fauces[Pg 152] are raised too high toward the back, preventing the head tones from sounding at the same time; or the soft palate is lowered too far under the nose, which results in pressing the tone too long and too far toward the teeth.

Dettagli