VOICE PRODUCTION.

Timaru Herald, Volume XIIC, Issue 13942, 30 June 1909, Page 2

VOICE PRODUCTION.

FOR SPEECH.

At the annual meeting of the Southland Teachers' Association, .Mr \\. I-illicrap discoursed upon a much neglected . phase of education —the training of the voice. Referring to the use of the vocal mechanism in speech, the speaker • showed liow its care and its training were not studied nor practised in modern education. The ancient Greeks, who gave infinite pains to voice-train-ing, had three distinct classes of instructors in the elocutionary art, and as a result the effectiveness of their rhetoric and oratory was wonderfully enhanced. With us, amid all our busy concern for developing the faculties, the development of this one natural power was left to mere chance influences; and the bad results of this neglect were plentifully evidenced wherever the voice was called into exercise. Among teachers, clergymen,, legal pleaders, and all to whom welltrained vocal powers were of primary importance, it was the exception rather than the rule to hear pleasant, nilturod utterance. Nor could i& well be otherwise. Exponents of other arts went through a graduated preparation before attempting the tasks of the finished craftsman. Thus the painter studied prospective and light and shade before attempting landscape. But in elocution training students were usually set at once to declaim extracts from standard literatim-. What ought to come at the end of a lightly-conceived course was attempted with off-hand confidence at the outset. No "amount of this sort of practice would cultivate the .powers as thev' were capable of being cultivated. The first step was voice production, which comprised a practised control of the'muscles connected with breathing, proper use of lips and tongue, so as to allow of free unimpeded utterance, and, again, the direction of the sound waves, so as to project them outwards and to impart, at the same time, all the possible resonance of the voice. To all who were required to use the voice in their calling, to teachers especially, and to public speak efs, voice-training would hp a boon. Many a fine discourse fell on heedless ears because it was crudely and harshly spoken. Beautiful thoughts, lofty appeals, if mouthed in thick or confus?d accents, failed to reVeal themselves to the audience. Clergymen, oblivious to the magic of the voice, did neither themselves nor their message! justice. The malady of sore throat prevalent among them was mostly the penalty of a wrong, ill-regulated use of the delicate organ of the voice.