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EXAMPLES OF NASAL QUALITY.
Masaniello.

I would that now

I could forget the monk that stands before me;
For he is like the accursed and crafty snake!

Hence! from my sight!-thou Satan, get behind me!

Go from my sight! I hate and I despise thee!

These are thy pious hopes; and I, forsooth,

Was in thy hands a pipe to play upon;
And at thy music, my poor soul to death
Should dance before thee!

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Thou stand'st at length before me undisguised,--
Of all earth's groveling crew the most accursed.
Thou worm! thou viper!-to thy native earth
Return! Away! Thou art too base for man
To tread upon! Thou scum! Thou reptile!

The above extract is not to be read or recited through the The nasal subtonics should be strongly enforced by resonance and quantity; and such words as are charged with scorn, loathing, and hate, will be intensified in expression, if their vowels are more or less nasalized. The qualities that predominate in a satisfactory rendering of the lines are, Aspirated Orotund, Guttural, and Pectoral.

For he said, 'Fight on! fight on!'

Though his vessel was all but a wreck;

And it chanced that, when half of the short summer night was gone,

With a grisly wound to be dressed, he had left the deck,
But a bullet struck him that was dressing it suddenly dead,
And himself he was wounded again in the side and the head,
And he said, 'Fight on! fight on!"

Sir Richard Grenville's grim steadfastness and bulldog tenacity of purpose cannot be completely voiced, in the 'Fight on! fight on!' of the above lines, without a decided admixture of nasality: 'on,' especially, should ring out in defiance of fate.

AN ILLUSTRIOUS EXAMPLE.-Mr. Murdoch told me that the supremacy of the great actor, Junius Brutus Booth, the Elder, in such characters as Richard III., Shylock, and Iago, was largely due to his infusion of a marked nasality into the delivery of their more malignant speeches. His rendering of Richard's harangue to his army, on the field of Bosworth, was so full of infernal energy, of such 'utmost reaching', as to produce an effect stupendous, superhuman, appalling. 'As I watched and listened, from the wings,' said Mr. Murdoch, who played Richmond to Booth's Richard, 'I could hardly help falling on my knees, in worship of such amazing power. Its effect upon me never grew weaker, though I witnessed it many times. And the secret of the spell, so far as the voice was concerned, lay in the malign nasality with which it was charged.'

FALSETTO QUALITY.

This quality-or, as musicians term it, this register,--begins at, or somewhat below 'the break' in the natural voice, and extends an octave or more above. There are several theories of its causation; and but little or nothing is really known about it.

Its appropriate uses are limited to the scream or shriek of pain or terror, caricature impersonation, and mimicry.

Actresses sometimes employ a suave, ingratiating Falsetto in passages of current conversational melody, especially in 'fine lady' impersonations; and it has always an assumed, affected, put-on character; it is of the theater, theatrical. (I have heard ladies who were not professional actresses use a honey-sweet Falsetto as their 'company' voice.)

I think it unnecessary and undesirable to give examples of the Falsetto.

THE FALSETTO LAUGH.-A very common misemployment of the Falsetto is in the laugh,—more especially in the mas

culine laugh. To hear a burly six-footer tell an amusing story, in a hearty, manly voice, followed by his breaking into a Falsetto laugh, as shrill and strident as an Indian yell, is an affliction we meet at every turn; and must still meet, until the offenders, by the diffusion of vocal enlightenment and civilization, become aware of the enormity of their crime and set their laughing utterance to a more human note.

BRIGHT AND DARK COLOR.

Animation, gaiety, sprightliness, playfulness, mirth, rapture, and kindred states of feeling, require for their appropriate vocal embodiment not only the employment of the right syllabic form, melody, and movement, but the voice itself should be of a Bright, or Brilliant, Color.

Enthusiasm, joy, splendor, courage, cheerfulness, joviality, tranquillity, ardor, cannot be adequately expressed without a resonance color that is bright, but blended with the richness and warmth derived from pharyngeal re-enforcement. Let us call this the Vital Color.

Grief, melancholy, grandeur, solemnity, reverence, awe, despondency, hate, horror, and somber moods in general, require a correspondingly Dark Color.

Bright Color is typified in the short front vowels, ĭ, ě, ǎ; Vital Color, in the open-throat, ä; and Dark Color, in the low back narrow, a.

Full command of the three distinctive colors, with all the manifold intermediate shades and blends, is a process of evolution, an evolution to be instigated and directed by intelligence. It is not a gift, and cannot be bought and sold: 'it comes, if it come at all,' as the gradual result and the ample reward of patient, well-directed, and long continued practice. Its artistic and effective employment in interpretation depends much upon taste and skill, but perhaps much more up

on sympathy with the feeling to be expressed and the reciprocal attitudes of interpreter and audience.

Vocal gymnastics, based on the suggestions below, will render the process of development and control more direct and bring about the results more speedily.

FOR BRIGHT COLOR.-Practice ĭ, ě, ǎ, with light force, effusive, expulsive, explosive. Note carefully quality, pitch, and forward projection. Then take the Murdoch Vowel Table, and conform all the vowels to the typical color and pitch of ĭ, ě, ǎ.

FOR VITAL COLOR.-With full, hearty volume and force, practice the open-throat vowel, ä. Let the resonance result from the employment of both mouth and pharynx as the vowel chamber, both cavities fully and elastically expanded. Then conform all the vowels, front and back, to the ä quality and pitch. The front vowels are deepened and rounded, and the back vowels are focused farther forward, with a consequent mitigation of their inherent somberness. When you have succeeded measurably in equalizing the vowels, with ä-quality as the criterion, practice the Table in full orotund, in middle and moderately high pitch.

FOR DARK COLOR.-Conform all the vowels to the low back, a. In darkening the front vowels, there is danger of distorting their shape, a tendency to be carefully guarded against. The blade of the tongue must be accurately adjusted to the position belonging to the vowel when pronounced with its natural color and texture; while the darkening is induced by approximating the soft palate, back tongue, and pharynx to the a adjustment.

THE VOICE, AS AFFECTED BY LOOK AND BEARING.

You cannot too soon learn that life and truth of vocal expression are inseparably connected with the mental and bodily state. The voice is an almost infallible index of

health or illness; and in speaking or reading, it should be, as it commonly is not, the faithful and complete exponent of the mental and emotional mood. Speech is feeble, lifeless, commonplace, monotonous, futile, and inadequate, because 'the whole man' is not engaged; it sounds indifferent, extraneous, and remote, because what is read or said, is outside the performer's mind and sympathy, and remains there.

Whatever we would for the moment seem, we must for the moment be, if the voice is to embody its message truly. In other words, the bearing is braced and assured, or drooping; the muscles, especially of the trunk, tense or relaxed; the face bright, pensive, frowning, smiling, lively, severe, in accordance with the words spoken: otherwise, the appropriate vocal texture and color will be wanting. To read expressively a passage of courage, enthusiasm, triumph, resolution, or kindred nature, while the face is simply placid and the muscular system 'all unbraced', is as impossible as to lie still while running a footrace. You cannot employ a truly pathetic color and melody, with smiling features; nor can you use a jovial or laughing voice that rings true, while your face looks grief-stricken, or stolid, or calm. The reader or speaker must go with' the voice, mind and heart, spirit and body, in the utterance of every group and every word.

The following paragraph, adapted from Aaron Hill's celebrated 'Essay on the Dramatic Passions', will be of interest and help to the earnest student.

Joy is expressed by muscles intense and a smile in the eye; Anger, by muscles intense and a frown in the eye; Pity, by muscles intense and a sadness in the eye; Hatred, by muscles intense and aversion in the eye; Wonder, by muscles intense and an awful alarm in the eye; Love, by muscles intense and a respectful attachment in the eye; Grief, by neither muscles nor eye intense, but both languid; Fear, by muscles and look both

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