From the Illustrated Buffalo Express, by permission. Copyright, 1895, by Geo. E. Matthews & Co.

JULY, 1895.

NO. 7.
VOL. XVII.

HE following

tone, but only one understanding of

to leading teachers throughout the country:

(1) What is pure tone?

(2) What is the difference between pure tone and impure tone?

(3) Is impure tone due to lack of training or to tone-blindness; that is, aural inaccuracy or aural defect?

(4) What proportion of the professional voice-users that you have heard use pure tone? What is the proportion among nonprofessionals; that is, in ordinary conversation?

(5) How may pure tone be acquired?

ANSWERS.

WILLIAM NELSON BURRITT.

I work for pure tone easily and freely given. I find very very few professionals or non-professionals who give what I would call a perfectly free, pure, mellow, sympathetic tone. I think it may be acquired-if acquired-only with the help of a patient, careful teacher, by a pupil with a good ear, who is willing to work slowly and carefully. I have often heard it in uncultivated voices, that were given easily and naturally.

MME. FLORENZA D'ARONA.

(1) A pure tone is the result of a definite idea of unobstructed regularity of vibrations. It has nothing to do with quality of tone, which means its character, commonly called timbre. There are many kinds of quality in Copyright, 1895, by Edgar S.

ments as well as in the human voice. We never hear the sound of the vocal cords, but simply the echo of them, and purity of tone depends upon the location of the tone and its free, unobstructed vibrations and reverberations. Unconscious response to the will of the singer alone can produce purity of tone.

(2) Tone vs. noise.-A blow upon the tone of an instrument, human or otherwise, is noise, consequently, an impure tone. If struck more forcibly than its strength and position on the vocal keyboard will permit, it is like striking a tack with a sledge-hammer; its form and symmetry are marred and ruined. Improper attack of a vocal tone interrupts the regularity of vibrations and causes impurity. Unvocalized breath makes a tone wheezy, consequently, impure. A diseased throat, bad pronunciation, etc., the approximation of the vocal cords with physical rather than psychical effort, are all causes of impurity in tone.

(3) Lack of proper training. Emission of pure tone comes from ability to eradicate the obstructions to it; then voice, will, time, intellect and heart are necessary for a student in order that he may accomplish the Werner. All rights reserved.

rest. A voice must be unfettered before it can sing a pure tone. Even a genius must work to become great. Ambition with laziness or a feeble idea of the importance of study will never make an artist. An insufficient amount of study, no matter how great the talent, will produce deplorable results. The public will soon be taught to criticize, and the day is not far off when singer and teacher will be judged according to his knowledge, rather than by ignorant usage of a beautiful voice, which is bound to suffer if not sustained and protected by knowledge.

(4) An exceedingly small percentage. Among non-professionals it depends upon nationality.

(5) Only by those who know what pure vocal tone is, the causes of its impurity, and the means necessary to eradicate the evil; and no person can do this by himself, for the reason that he has not the knowledge; if he had, he would not be singing impure tones, therefore, would not need to have them freed from impurity. This work more than all else in the vocal student's life needs the conscientious treatment of an experienced teacher.

LENA DORIA DEVINE.

(1) Nearly every musical sound is composite; that is, consists of several simultaneous tones having different rates of vibration, according to fixed rules. These rules depend upon the nature of the sonorous body and the mode of producing its vibration.

The fundamental tone may be said to generate the other two tones of the major triad, or common chord, the third and fifth, or their octaves, itself being the tonic, or keynote.

(2) The quality of a tone depends upon the presence or absence of this complement of sounds; to produce the entire harmonic tone, or pure tone, correct breathing must be either natural or acquired.

(3) Therefore, impure tone is due. in most instances to lack of breathcontrol. The tones of the voice may be as readily attuned by regulated pressure of the breath as the strings of a violin, which the violinist presses and tightens, producing a graduation of the closest semitones. Reicha in his treatise on harmony claims that he was present when a singer in executing a cadence sang a succession of quarter-tones with perfect intonation and wonderful effect.

(4) The great majority of distinguished professional voice-users that I have heard produce pure tones. It must be explained that there are often times when an artist is not at his best. The voice is subject to the influence of bodily ailments, and is not a piece of machinery. Pure tone is the quality that pleases most. Impure tone offends the ear. What money-making manager would pay anyone to displease the public, and how few would attend a musical performance unless they were pleased!

(5) By diligent study, beginning with the process of attack, with the breath held back (not the voice, as many of the so-called Lamperti teachers claim), the student, if young, may acquire absolutely pure tone.

JOSEPHINE RAND.

(1) Pure tone is vocalized breath which has a perfectly free emission.

(3) Impure tone may result from different causes: Inflammatory conditions; improper emission of tone, including constriction of throatmuscles; aural defects, and lack of training.

(4) I cannot say what proportion of professionals use pure tone, but deplore the fact that the proportion is not much larger. As to non-professionals, the ordinary speakingvoice is far from pure or pleasing; and many are the elocutionists who have yet to learn the first great principles underlying the art of speaking.

(5) Pure tone may be acquired by relieving the throat of all forced action, by relying on diaphragmatic action to control the breath, by utilizing wholly that breath, and by placing the voice high and at the front against the bones of the face and head, which form the soundingboard of the voice. The ear (unless because of some physical defect) can be trained to detect impure tone and to establish an ideal of pure tone so as to improve gradually under scientific teaching, and at last acquire the power to dictate tones which are perfect as to pitch and purity.

FREDERIC W. ROOT.

(1) Pure tone is the tone in which no disagreeable, extraneous sound is heard. Among the disagreeable elements which may be combined with tone are breathiness, harshness, and a sound of rigidity or straining.

(3) Impure tone is partly due to carelessness of utterance or to a lack of refinement in one's perceptions; but among those who make special use of the voice, it is principally owing to the fact that voices are generally trained under too great a pressure of breath, and so never acquire exact placing. The voice is not a delicate organ as to its tissues; they are exceedingly tough. But its adjustments are delicate or, at least, minute; and, muscularly, the vocal organs in the throat are no match for the muscles which expel the breath. If these throat-adjustments are to be so made and habituated

that the voice is flexible as to its shades of color and pure as to its tone, the breath must be much better controlled than it usually is, especially in the earlier stages of voicebuilding. The question of what controls the breath, whether it be diaphragmatic, costal, abdominal or clavicular control, is of secondary importance to this. All ways of managing the breath are not equally good; but almost any way may be made successful in avoiding the throaty, guttural, harsh, hollow, strained, thick or breathy sounds. which make tone impure.

(4) Among elocutionists and singers who use the voice habitually in large places, an absolutely pure tone is almost never heard throughout the compass. In the ordinary conversation of refined people, pure tone is the rule rather than the exception.

M. STEAD.

You invite your readers' definition of pure tone. I should say it is tone produced without any accompanying muscle-action in the throat. It is seemingly automatic, entirely without effort, and is made with no appreciable breath-emission. As nearly everyone uses pure tone in the speaking-voice, the best way to obtain pure tone in the singing-voice is to practice on those three or four tones used in speaking, and very gradually increase the compass above and below those tones, taking care not to sing one note higher or lower than can be done with absolute absence of sensation.

EORGIA'S brimming full o' song;

GE

Birds sing all the winter long, Every green or barren tree

Swings and rings with melody.

This is why the poets say

Georgia's happy on the way.

Birds are singing!
Bells are ringing;

Life grows sweeter

In glad metre!

Better still a song than sigh,

We'll be happy by and by!

-Atlanta Constitution