Vocal Expression Part 1

Vocal Expression.

by Katherine Jewell Everts.

TO THE PUPIL

Let me trace the evolution which has led to the plan of this text-book.

A cla.s.s in elocution of which you are a member is given a paragraph from _Modern Eloquence_, a bit from an oration or address of Beecher or Phillips or Beveridge, to study. The pa.s.sage appeals to you. You are roused by it to an eager, new appreciation of courage, conservatism or of the character of some national hero. You "look" your interest. You are asked to go to the platform. You are glad. You want to repeat the inspired word of the prophet. You begin confidently to voice the words of the great orator--the words which you had lifted alive from the page--but in your voice they sound now formal, cold, lifeless. You hesitate, your emotion is killed, your thought inhibited, your eagerness gone, your impulse dead--but you have made a discovery. You have become conscious of a great need, and your teacher, if she be wise, has discovered the nature of that need. You consult together and find three things have failed you, and, through you, the orator you wished to interpret. These things are your mind, your vocabulary, and your voice.

You find that your need is threefold--it is the need to feel intelligently and to think vitally _on your feet_; the need to acquire a vocal vocabulary; the need to train your instruments of expression--voice and body.

To help you and your teacher to meet this threefold need is the wish of this book; and the book's plan is the result of the author's experience with her own pupils in watching the evolution of their skill in vocal expression, the development, along natural lines, of their ability to speak effectively.

VOCAL EXPRESSION

INTRODUCTION

The strongest impulse of the human heart is for self-expression. The simplest form of expression is speech. Speech is the instinctive use of a natural instrument, the voice. The failure to deal justly with this simple and natural means of expression is one of the serious failures of our educational system. Whether the student is to wait on another's table or be host at his own; whether he is to sell "goods" from one side of a counter or buy them from the other; whether he is to enter one of the three great professions of law, medicine, or theology; "go on the stage" or platform; become Minister to France or President of the United States, it remains precisely true that to speak effectively will be essential to his success, and should be as essential to his own happiness as it will be to that of all involved in his pursuit of success.

Yet, if we give heed at all to the question of voice and speech, it is our last, not our first, consideration. We still look upon the mind as a storehouse instead of a clearing-house. We continue to concern ourselves with its ability to take in, not its capacity to give out. Voice and speech are still left to s.h.i.+ft for themselves during the period of school life when they should be guarded and guided as a most essential equipment for life after school days are over. To convert the resultant hard, high-pitched, nasal tone which betrays the American voice into the adequate agent of a temperament which distinguishes the American personality, and to help English speech in this country to become an efficient medium of lucid intercourse, such is the object of this book.

In an address upon the "Question of Our Speech" delivered before a graduating cla.s.s at Bryn Mawr, several years ago, Mr. Henry James said:

"No civilized body of men and women has ever left so vital an interest to run wild, to s.h.i.+ft, as we say, all for itself, to stumble and flounder, through mere adventure and accident, in the common dust of life, to pick up a living, in fine, by the wayside and the ditch.

"The French, the Germans, the Italians, the English, perhaps, in particular, and many other people, Occidental and Oriental, I surmise, not excluding the Turks and the Chinese, have for the symbol of education, of civility, a tone-standard; we alone flourish in undisturbed and in something like sublime unconsciousness of any such possibility."

So searching an arraignment by so eminent a scholar before an audience of so high a degree of intelligence and culture seems to have been necessary to command an adequate appreciation of the condition of "Our Speech" and to incite an adequate effort toward reform. Since the arraignment was made and afterward published, cla.s.ses have been organized, books written, and lectures delivered in increasing abundance, forming a veritable speech crusade--and the books and the cla.s.ses and the lectures have availed much, but the real and only "reliable remedy" lies with the teacher in the public and private schools and colleges of the United States. And it is to the teacher of English and Elocution that this _Cla.s.s Book on Vocal Expression_ is offered.

_Learning to Talk_ might have been a truer, as it had been a simpler, t.i.tle, yet the more comprehensive phrase has justifiable significance, and we have chosen it in the same spirit which discards for the text-book in Rhetoric or English Composition the inviting t.i.tle _Learning to Write_.

There is a close a.n.a.logy between the evolution of vocal and the evolution of verbal expression. The method of instruction in the study of the less heeded subject of the "Spoken Word" throws an interesting light on the teaching of the more regarded question of the "Written Word." An experience as teacher of expression and English in a normal school in Minnesota has influenced the author of these pages to so large an extent in the formulation of her own method of study, and so in the plan of this volume, that it seems advisable to record it. To the work of reading or expression to which she was originally called two cla.s.ses in composition were added. The former teacher of composition had bequeathed to the work as a text-book a rhetoric which consisted of involved theory plus one hundred and twenty-five separate and distinct rules for the use of words, and the teacher of expression found, to her amazed dismay, that the students had been required to learn these rules, not only "by heart," but by number, referring to them as rule six or thirty-six or one hundred and twenty-five, according to the demanded application.

A week, possibly a fortnight, pa.s.sed in silent struggle, then the distracted teacher of expression went to the president of the school with these questions: "Of what avail are one hundred and twenty-five rules for the use of words when these children have less than that number of words to use, and no desire to acquire more? Could you make teachers of these normal students by giving a hundred and more laws for the governing of pupils and the imparting of the material of knowledge, if you furnished neither pupils nor material upon which to test the laws?" "Certainly not!" was the restful reply of one of the wisest of the educators I have known. "May I lay aside the text-book and read with these students in English for a little?" "You may teach them to write English in any way you can!"

The next day the cla.s.s in composition was discovered eagerly reading Tennyson's _Holy Grail_, stopping to note this felicitous phrase, that happy choice of words, the pertinent personnel of a sentence or paragraph. The first examination of the term consisted in a series of single questions, written on separate slips of paper and laid face down on the teacher's desk. Each student took one of these slips which read, "Tell in your own words the story of _The Coming of Arthur_, the _Holy Grail_, _Lancelot and Elaine_ or _Guinevere_," as the chance of the chooser might allot a given idyl. The experiment was a success. The president was satisfied with the papers in English composition. Each student had had "something to say" and had said it. Each student had words at his command little dreamed of in his vocabulary before the meeting with the Knights of the Round Table.

The first step toward a mastery of Verbal Expression had been successfully taken! The consciousness of need--the need of a vocabulary--had been awakened. The desire to supply that need--to acquire a vocabulary--had been aroused. A way to acquire a vocabulary had been made manifest. Out of such consciousness alone is born the willingness to work upon which progress in the mastery of any art depends. To the teacher of expression it seemed no more advisable now than it had seemed before, to ask the students to learn either "by heart" or by number the one hundred and twenty-five rules of technique.

But the great laws governing the use of a vocabulary she now found her students eager to study, to understand, and to apply. She found her cla.s.s willing to enter upon the drudgery which a mastery of technique in any art demands.

So in the teaching of Vocal Expression, he who _begins_ with rules for the use of this change of pitch or that inflection, this pause or that color of tone, before he has aroused in the pupil the desire to express a vivid thought, and so made him conscious of the need to command subtle changes of pitch, swift contrasts in tone and turns of inflection, will find himself responsible for mechanical results sadly divorced from true and natural speech. But let the teacher of expression begin, not with rules of technique, but with the material for inspiration and interpretation; let him rouse in the pupil the impulse to express and then furnish the material and means for study which shall enrich the vocabulary of expression and he will find the instruments of the art--voice and speech--growing into the free and efficient agents of personality they are intended by nature to be.

In March, 1906, the editor of _Harper's Bazar_ began a crusade in the interest of the American voice and speech. Through the issues of more than a year the magazine published arraignment, admonition, and advice on this subject. It was the privilege of the author of this volume to contribute the last four articles in that series. In response to a definite demand from the readers of the Bazar these articles were later embodied in a little book called _The Speaking Voice_. In a preface to this book the author confesses her "deliberate effort to simplify and condense the principles fundamental to all recognized systems of vocal instruction," making them available for those too occupied to enter upon the more exhaustive study set forth in more elaborate treatises. The book was not intended for hours of cla.s.s-room work in schools or colleges, but for the spare moments of a business or social life, and its reception in that world was gratifying. But, to the author's delight, the interest aroused created a demand in the schools and colleges for a real text-book, a book which could be put into the hands of students in the departments of English and expression in public and private inst.i.tutions and colleges, and especially in normal schools. It is in response to that appeal that this cla.s.s-book in _Vocal Expression_ is issued; and it is to the teachers whose impelling interest and enthusiasm in the subject justify the publication of this volume that the author desires first to express her grateful appreciation.

To Miss Frances Nash, of the Lincoln High School in Cleveland, for her invaluable advice in determining the exact nature of the need which the book must meet, and for her a.s.sistance in choosing the material for interpretation, my grat.i.tude and appreciation are especially due.

To others whose influence through books or personal instruction has made this task possible, acknowledgment made in _The Speaking Voice_ is reiterated.

PART I

STUDIES IN VOCAL INTERPRETATION

PRELIMINARY STUDY

TO ESTABLISH A CONSCIOUS PURPOSE

"The orator must have something in his very soul he feels to be worth saying. He must have in his nature that kindly sympathy that connects him with his fellow-men and which so makes him a part of the audience that his smile is their smile, his tear is their tear, the throb of his heart the throb of the hearts of the whole a.s.sembly."--HENRY WARD BEECHER.

We have said that whatever part in the world's life we choose or are chosen to take, it remains precisely true that to speak effectively is essential to fulfilling, in the highest sense, that function. Whether the occupation upon which we enter be distinguished by the t.i.tle of cash-girl or counsellor at law; dish-washer or debutante; stable-boy or statesman; artist in the least or the highest of art's capacities, crises will arise in that calling which demand a command of effective speech. The situation may call for a slow, quietly searching interrogation or a swift, ringing command. The need may be for a use of that expressive vocal form which requires, to be efficient, the rugged or the gracious elements of your vocabulary; the vital or the velvet tone; the straight inflection or the circ.u.mflex; the salient or the slight change of pitch; the long or the short pause. Whatever form the demand takes, the need remains for command of the efficient elements of tone and speech if we are to become masters of the situation and to attain success in our calling. How to acquire this mastery is our problem. How to take the first step toward acquiring that command is the subject of this first study.

Is there a student reader of these pages who has not already faced a situation requiring for its mastery such command? Listen to Mr. James again:

"All life, therefore, comes back to the question of our speech, the medium through which we communicate with each other; for all life comes back to the question of our relations with each other. These relations are possible, are registered, are verily const.i.tuted by our speech, and are successful in proportion as our speech is worthy of its human and social function; is developed, delicate, flexible, rich--an adequate accomplished fact. The more we live by it, the more it promotes and enhances life. Its quality, its authenticity, its security, are hence supremely important for the general multifold opportunity, for the dignity and integrity, of our existence."

Is there one among you whose relations with others would not have been rendered simpler, truer, clearer at some critical moment had your "speech been more worthy of its great human and social function?" Then, do you hesitate to enter upon a study which shall make for clarified relations and a new "dignity and integrity of existence?" Antic.i.p.ating your reply, I invite you to take a first step in Vocal Expression. How shall we approach the subject? How did you begin to master any one of the activities in which you are more or less proficient? How did you learn to swim, or skate, or play the violin? Not by standing on the sh.o.r.e and gazing at the water or ice! Not by looking at violins in shop windows! No! You began by leaping into the water, putting on your skates and going out on the ice; taking the violin into your hands and drawing the bow across the strings. But you say: "We have taken the step which corresponds to these in speech! We can talk!" Exactly! But what command of the art of skating or swimming or playing the violin would the artist in any of these activities have achieved had he been content to stop with the act of jumping into the water, going out on the ice, or drawing the bow across the violin? The question's answer calls up an illuminating a.n.a.logy. Are not most of us in regard to our mastery of speech in the condition of the skater, the swimmer, the fiddler in the first stage of those expressive acts? Are we not floundering in the water, fallen on the ice, or alienating the ears of our friends? "We are so! We confess it!"--every time we speak.

And so to-day we shall offer no argument against entering upon an _introductory_ study--we shall take our first step in the Art of Vocal Expression. But we shall take it in a new spirit--the spirit of an artist bent upon the mastery of his art. If we flounder or fall, we shall not be more content in our ignominy than is the choking swimmer or the prostrate skater. If we produce painful instead of pleasing sounds with our instrument, we shall not persist in a merciless process of tone production; but we shall proceed to study diligently the laws governing the control of the instrument until we have mastered its technique and made it an agent of harmonious intercourse. We shall take the first steps with a conscious purpose, the purpose to make our speech worthy of its great social and human function.

Then in this spirit I invite you "to plunge." I furnish as the material for your experiment these sentences:

DISCUSSION OF DIRECT APPEAL

Do you ask me, then, what is this Puritan principle?

The Puritan principle in its essence is simply individual freedom!--CURTIS.

Mind your own business with your absolute will and soul, but see that it is a good business first.--RUSKIN.

Back to the bridge and show your teeth again, Back to the bridge and show to G.o.d your eyes!--MACKAYE.

What news, and quickly!--MACKAYE.