Vocal Culture in Its Relation to Literary Culture

WHEN I was a small boy, at school, sixty years ago, all the scholars had to read aloud twice a day; the several classes standing while they read, and toeing a chalk line. The books used were the New Testament and Lindley Murray’s English Reader. The standard instruction imparted was very limited, but very good so far as it went, namely, “ Speak distinctly, and mind your stops.” Every boy read, at a time, but a single verse of the New Testament, or a single paragraph of the English Reader ; the 舠 master ” himself first reading a verse or a paragraph each time the reading went around the class.

Well, the result was that all the boys acquired at least a distinct articulation and a fluent utterance properly sectioned off by their minding the stops. Some of the boys, of whom I was one, had to read aloud, at home, from other books. When I showed by my expression, or, rather, by my want of it, that I did not understand what I was reading, I was at once told so, the passage was explained and read to me, and I had to read it again, to show that I had caught the meaning and the proper expression. If I were required to read something which was entirely new to me, my eye was exercised in running ahead of my voice, and taking in what was coming, to the extent of two or three sentences, in order to read with sufficient expression not to be stopped, as I was very impatient of interruption, especially if I particularly enjoyed the subject matter.

When I look back upon these daily exercises in reading, in school and at home, I feel that nothing could have been better at the time. There was no such thing as “ speaking a piece. “ with gesture, “ limbs all going like a telegraph in motion, “ and straining after effect. It was simply careful, honest reading, with no attempt at make-believe of feeling. No encouragement was given to any affectation of that kind, but whatever impressed my listeners as genuine feeling and appreciation on my part was duly praised; and I was very fond of praise, and was stimulated by it to do my best.

I fear that such reading has very much gone out of use, and untimely technical instruction has taken its place. Call on a college student to read some prose passage extempore, and what is the result, in nine cases out of ten, —rather say, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ? Why, he will read it, experto credite, in a most bungling way, with an imperfect articulation, without any proper grouping or perspective, and if the passage be an involved and long-suspended period, which his eye should run along and grasp as a whole, in advance of his voice, he will be lost in it before he get halfway through it. He has had little or no practice in reading aloud. He has “ parsed ” much in the lower schools, but his parsing has not resulted in synthesis (which should be the sole object of all analysis), has not resulted in a knowledge of language as a living organism, and the consequence is that his extempore vocalization of the passage is more or less chaotic and — afflicting.

Such early training in reading as I have described is the best possible preparation for the more elaborate expression demanded by the higher literature. And we shall not have a true, honest vocal interpretation of literature until we return to this early honest reading. I say “ return,” for, so far as my knowledge goes, there is a plentiful lack of it, at present, in primary schools.

A college student whose voice was neglected in early life, and, worst of all, whose feelings were not then so attuned to good literature, by the influences and atmosphere of his home, that he came to have an inward impulsion to vocalize whatever he specially enjoyed in his reading, will not be much profited by a course in soulless elocutionary spouting. One may have an extraordinary natural gift of vocal expression which is superior to all adverse circumstances ; but such an one is a rara avis in terris. Unless there be an early initiation into literature and its vocalization, in advance of the benumbing technical instruction of the schools, much cannot be expected from the great majority of students, in a literary or elocutionary direction.

Thomas Ellwood, Milton’s young Quaker friend, tells us, in his autobiography, of his reading Latin to the blind poet, — how he was required to get rid of his English pronunciation of the language, which his “ master ” disliked, and to learn what he calls 舠 the foreign pronunciation,” his description showing it to have been the Italian, — and then adds, “ Having a carious ear ” ¹ (that is, a careful, accurate, nice, keenly susceptible ear), “ he understood by my tone, when I understood what I read, and when I did not; and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open up the most difficult passages to me,”

This sentence suggests that much might be done, even in the study of Latin and Greek, by requiring students to voice the original in advance of translating. After having attained, by sufficient practice, an easy fluency of utterance, they could — or some could — bring out, through their voices, much which they could not reveal through translation or any amount of exegesis. All the members of the class might be on a par, so far as translation and exegesis go, in exhibiting their knowledge and appreciation of the original; but there would always be a few who could reveal through vocalization what is beyond translation and exegesis. And the professor would not necessarily need to have the “ curious ear ” of a Milton to detect this kind of superiority of the few.

This brings me to say that, in literary examinations, whatever other means be employed, a sufficiently qualified teacher could arrive at a nicer and more certain estimate of what a student has appropriated, both intellectually and æsthetically, of a literary product, or any portion of a literary product, by requiring him to read it, than he could arrive at through any amount of catechising. The requisite vocal cultivation on the part of the student is, of course, presumed.

Suppose a teacher were to examine a student on such a poem as Coleridge’s Christabel by questioning him about it, and the student were to show that he was thoroughly acquainted with all the facts and details of the poem: there would still be no evidence of that student’s susceptibility to what in the poem constitutes its mysterious charm, —none whatever. The student might be utterly destitute of such susceptibility, and yet he could just as well prepare himself to answer all the teacher’s questions. A very small boy might do so, whose appreciation of poetry had not gone beyond “ How doth the little busy bee.” There might be a most susceptible literary genius in the class, who might fall below the other student in such an examination ! It is quite likely that he would, for he would be chiefly occupied with the poem as a poem, and would assimilate its life without retaining a recollection of all the details to which the other had given exclusive attention. Or suppose the poem were Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, and a student were to pass a perfectly satisfactory examination thereupon, on the basis, say, of the valuable notes in Professor Hales’s Longer English Poems : what would that signify, in comparison with a reading of the poem which would unmistakably show whether he had responded to any extent, or not, to its sweet evening pensiveness, to the general tenor of the theme, to the moulding spirit of the whole ?

That he should understand the articulating thought, all the grammatical constructions (and there are several which need to be particularly looked into), and all points to which attention is called in Professor Hales’s notes is, to be sure, important; but an examination confined to these would not be any test of his literary capacity, of his susceptibility to the poem as a poem.

In these remarks. I assume, of course, that the prime object of a literary examination should be to test not so much a student’s knowingness as his literary capacity, which means a capacity to respond to the spiritual life of a poem, or any other form of literature, in the true sense of the word “ literature.” It is its spiritual life which makes a poem a poem, whatever the thought articulation may be. The student who is capable of such response should rank higher (nobody but a Dr. Dryasdust could deny this) than the student who could answer all questions which the most prolific questioner could ask him, but who could afford no evidence, through his reading of it, that the poem was anything more to him than a primrose was to Wordsworth’s Peter Bell.

As a student advances to the higher literature, he should be trained in the higher, more complex vocal functions demanded for its interpretation ; he should understand, all along, in his vocal education, the relation of that education to the rendering of works of genius. He should always know what his vocal exercises are for, what relation they have to the interpreting and symbolization of thought and feeling.

I remember a teacher who advised his scholars — I was one of them — to go out frequently into the open air and exercise their voices. And the poor fellows did go, and “ fright the isle from her propriety ” with their bawling, without having any conception of what they were bawling for. Their lungs were exercised thereby, but the bawling did nothing for their vocal training.

Vocal exercise must not only be physiologically intelligent, but there must always be something behind it which it is the aim of the exercise to realize in the voice. One may have a conception, more or less distinct, of how some very significant sentence in Shakespeare, for example, should be uttered, and yet his voice is not sufficiently obedient to his will and his feelings. He therefore has something to work after, and in time may vocally realize his conception ; and in doing so he has acquired some new and valuable control of his voice, which he can make use of, whenever required, in the rendering of other expressions.

A true poem is a piece of articulate music which may require to be long practiced upon by the voice before all its possible effectiveness be realized. But there must be an ideal behind the practice (merely to keep “ going over the poem will not do) ; not an entirely distinct ideal, of course, but such an ideal as may be got in advance through a spiritual responsiveness to its informing life. This ideal will become more and more distinct in the course of the practice.

This is true in every form of art. The artist starts with an ideal more or less vague (but it is an ideal which motives all his work), and this ideal only gradually takes shape in the process of its realization in a picture or a statue. Composing continues to the end. The poet is still composing, still working after a fuller realization of his ideal, when he is making the last verbal change in his poem.

Interpretative reading goes on in the same way. After long familiarity with a poem, and when a reader thinks he has realized all its possibilities of vocal effectiveness, some new vocal movement on a single word, it may be, is suggested, which is a decided contribution, to the effect before reached. The play of Hamlet abounds in little speeches, and single words, even, whose possibilities of expressiveness can hardly be exhausted. Every great poet writes, at times, more significantly than he knows.

But, after all, it is not upon inflections and emphases and other vocal functions which pertain more especially to the interpretation of the articulating thought that the true reader chiefly depends. The most important thing with him is the choral atmosphere in which a spiritualized composition requires to he presented. And it is in this respect that the art of reading particularly corresponds with the sister art of painting. The artist in form and color bathes his landscape in “ the light that never was, on sea or land ; ” or, if not that, in some light or other, some “ tender light which heaven to gaudy day denies,” and which serves to reveal the feeling which he aimed to express through his landscape. The landscape itself corresponds in painting with the articulating thought in reading ; but the spiritual attitude of the artist is exhibited through the light in which the landscape is bathed. And so the spiritual attitude of the reader is exhibited through his intonation, which corresponds with atmosphere in painting. A susceptible reader will, on the first reading of a poem or an impassioned prose composition, be more or less immediately responsive to the key-tone of the composition. An increased familiarity will finally bring this key-tone fully home to his feelings, or as fully as may be ; and if he has made the thought element his own, he is now prepared to interpret the composition to the ears of others. A reader’s success in interpreting such a poem as Tennyson’s In Mcmoriam, for example, can be but partial if he has not adequately caught and does not vocally reproduce the key-tone, however distinctly he may present the thought in a white light. It is the tone which quickens and spiritualizes the thought; and it is the main object, in reading, to quicken and spiritualize thought, to bring it into relation with the spiritual being of the hearer.

Vocal training, the most scientific and systematic, will not of itself make readers vocal interpreters of genius. Something more must be done than is at present done, in homes and schools, especially in homes, for the education of the spiritual nature; and this education must be begun early, must precede the education of the intellect. The premature forcing open of the bud of reason, which now prevails to a lamentable degree, must receive its due condemnation. It is a thing to be condemned from Christian pulpits. As George Henry Lewes says, in his novel, Ranthorpe, “ the child must feel before it can know : and knowledge, great and glorious as it is, can never be the end of life : it is but one of the many means.”

It is quite superfluous to say that a reader should have a perfect articulation ; that he should be able to command a wide range of pitch ; all degrees of force, from pianissimo to fortissimo ; radical, median, vanishing, and compound stress; every variety of inflection, direct upward and direct downward inflection ; equal and unequal, upward and downward, single and double waves; accelerated and retarded utterance ; many qualities of voice ; not to name numerous other vocal functions and attributes which are means to various kinds of interpretative ends. He should also have a complete knowledge of the language he is rendering, as a living organism, — an indispensable condition of his presenting the successive and involved groups of thought with the requisite distinctness of outline, and with the requisite perspective, determined by their relative value, of which he should have the nicest sense. A very important condition of perspective, I would say by the way, is the light touch which needs to be given to whatever is implied, has been anticipated, should be taken for granted, etc., — the light touch which conveys the impression that the mind of the reader does not come down upon the parts receiving the same, those parts saying themselves, so to speak, but is occupied with the main current of thought. Any untrained voice can emphasize, but only a trained or a naturally unperverted voice can give the light touch successfully. Yet it is possible for the heaviest, clumsiest voice to be trained to the light touch, to delicacy of tint, just as one who is clay-fisted may, in time, attain to some delicacy of manipulation. The voice and the hand have wonderful possibilities, rarely realized: the former, when converted from the error of its ways, being, indeed, the most expressive organ of the soul; the latter being “ the consummation of all perfection as an instrument.”

The highest result which can be exhibited of literary culture and a corresponding vocal culture is an organic melody, in the reading of a great poem, the outcome of the poem’s organic life. By melody, in reading, is meant that variety in the use of all the vocal functions and attributes which does not allow the ear of the hearer to detect a regular recurrence of any one of the vocal functions. There is melody of pause, of inflection, of rhyme, of rhythm, of time, of force, and of every vocal affection. In truly melodious reading, the design or figure, so to speak, is so arabesque that it is not taken in by the ear of the hearer, and does not come to his consciousness, but it tells effectively on his feelings. And by 舠 effectively ” I specially mean that the feelings are brought into harmony with the contriving creative spirit which moulds the poetic form. Such reading of high poetry is the extreme merit of vocal expression.

A reader with a nice sense of melody may conceal a deficiency of melody in the poem he is reading ; and he will do this, not by arbitrarily imposing variety, for true melody must be organic. In the reading of Pope’s uniform couplets, for example, he may keep down the hobbyhorse movement of the verse by a skillful management of the pauses (which come so uniformly in the middle and at the end of the verses) and of the rhyming words, by an acceleration and retardation of voice wherever these are permissible, by the light touch, and by various other means. Where a reader’s feelings have been melodized by culture, they will protect him against the influence of a too artificial construction of the verse. He will not impose variety, but he will utter the poet’s humdrum verse, as far as possible, under the conditions of his melodized feeling.

The importance of cultivating the speaking voice is quite as great as that of cultivating the reading voice. Perhaps it is greater; for the speaking voice has a wider and more constant influence.

How much “ the charm of beauty’s powerful glance ” may be heightened or reduced by the character of the voice which goes along with it ! A woman with a sweet and gracious voice can exert through it, in the ordinary relations of life, without even knowing it, a better influence than she could by distributing religious tracts. The moral atmosphere of a home may be not a little due to the voice of the wife and mother. The mere memory of a voice which was toned by love and sympathy may continue to be a sweet influence long after the voice itself has been hushed in death. The influence of the voice for good or evil, in the domestic, social, and all other relations of life, cannot be estimated. A voice may even have a good or bad reflex action upon its possessor.

A loving mother may be anxiously ambitious that her daughter shall have all the accomplishments required for her fullest attractiveness when she “ comes out.” Years may be spent upon her musical education, with the poor result, perhaps, of “ fine sleights of hand and unimagined fingering, shuffling off the hearer’s soul through hurricanes of notes to a noisy Tophet; ” she may be taught dancing, and French, and drawing, and painting ; she may be sent abroad to snatch the graces beyond the reach of art, of the most elegant European society ; and yet, in the grand scheme of accomplishments, the speaking voice is left out and entirely neglected, though she have a voice unpleasantly pitched, and with other remediable defects which are very, very far from idealizing, transfiguring her ! If the time devoted to the piano, with the supposed poor result, had been devoted to a careful cultivation of her voice, her power to charm (that being the end proposed) would be much more increased than by all her other mere accomplishments.

It is easy to infer what Shakespeare’s opinions were on many subjects, although his plays are regarded by some critics as peculiarly impersonal; but they are charged with his personality. The evidence is abundant that the voice was to him very significant, and that he was most susceptible to its charms and to its defects. It is her voice which the grief-stricken Lear is made to speak of, when he bends over the dead Cordelia. “ Her voice.” he says, “ was ever soft, gentle, and low; ” and to this he adds, “ an excellent thing in woman ; ” Shakespeare, no doubt, meaning that he had in his mind, at the time, the cruel voices, expressive of their hard and wicked hearts, of Regan and Goneril. After the death of Antony, Cleopatra, in her rapturous praise of him, says, —

Hamlet’s advice to the players we may take as an expression of Shakespeare’s own standard of vocal delivery.

There is evidence in the plays that, in the process of composition, he must either have heard imaginatively what he was writing, or have actually voiced his language as he went along. He did not write for the eye, but for the ear. And the high vocal capabilities of his language may be somewhat attributable to his hearing of what he wrote. Must he not have heard the effect of monosyllabic words, uttered with the tremor and semitone of old age, when he wrote King Lear’s speeches ? — “ You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, as full of grief as age,” etc., and 舠 When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools,” etc. And must he not have heard the effect of polysyllabic words as expressive of Macbeth’s sense of the vastness of his guilt, when he wrote, 舠 This my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine,” etc. ?

The impression seems to be getting stronger and stronger, in these days of excessive teaching and excessive learning, that no one can do anything or learn anything without being taught, — without “ taking a regular course,” as the phrase is. This seems to be especially true in the matter of vocal cultivation. People go to schools of oratory with nothing within themselves which is clamorous for expression ; not even a very “ still small voice ” urging them to express something. Many who desire, or think they do, to be readers, as there are many who desire, or think they do, to be artists, evidently believe that if they be trained in technique they can be readers or artists.

But suppose some one is impelled to cultivate vocal power because of his desire to express what he has sympathetically and lovingly assimilated of a work of genius : if he endeavor to give an honest expression, so far as in him lies, to what he feels, and avoid trying to express what he does not feel, and if he persevere in his endeavor, with always some ideal behind his reading, he may in time, he certainly will, become a better reader than another could if he should set out, with malice prepense, to be an elocutionist, and, with that malicious purpose, were to employ a mere voice - trainer who should teach him to make faces and to gesticulate when reading what does not need any gesture.

Some of the best readers I have ever known have been of the former class, who honestly voiced what they had sympathetically assimilated, and did not strain after effect. But it seems that when one sets out to read, with no interior capital, he or she, especially she, is apt to run into all kinds of extravagances which disgust people of culture and taste. The voice, instead of being the organ of the soul, is the betrayer of soullessnesS. Without that interior life which can respond to the indefinite life (indefinite to the intellect) of works of genius, a trained voice can do nothing of itself in the way of real interpretation. It may bring out the definite articulating thought, but the electric aura in which the thought is enveloped will not be conducted to its hearers by the requisite “ drift ” and choral intonation.

Hiram Corson.