HYGIENIC VALUE OF SINGING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6138, 26 March 1898, Page 3

HYGIENIC VALUE OF SINGING.

When one considers how many thousands of young men and women are studying the art of singing, and how very few of them ever learn ifc well enough to earn their living by it, or to give anybody much pleasure, one feels inclined to look on the vast amount of time spent on vocal exercises as so many hours wasted. But there is another point of view which is not often emphasised. In a recent number of a German journal devoted to laryngology Dr Barth has an article discussing with German thoroughness the utility of singing from a hygienic point of view. Every bodily organ is strengthened by exercise ; singers exercise their lungs moro than other people; therefore, he says, we fiud that singers have the strongest and soundest lungs. The average German takes into his lungs 3200 cubic centimetres of air at a breath, while professional singers take in 4000 to 5000. The tenor Gunz was able to fill his lungs at one gasp with air enough to suffice for the singing of the whole of Schumann's song, "The Rose, tho Lily," and one of the old Italian sopranoists was able to trill up and down the chromatic scale two octaves in one breath.

A singer nofc only supplies his lungs wifch more vitalising oxygen than other persons do, but. he subjects the muscles of his breathing apparatus for several hours a day to a course of most beneficial gymnastics. Almost all the muscles of the neck and chest are directly or indirectly involved in these gymnastics. The habit of deep breathing cultivated by singers enlarges the chest capacity and gives to singers that erect and imposing attitude which is so desirable and so much admired. The ribs, too, are rendered more elastic, and singers do nofc in old age suifer from the breathing difficulties to which others are so much subject. By exercising so many muscles singing, furthermore, improves the appetite, most vocalists being noted for their inclination to good meals. The nose of a singer is kept in a healthy condition by being, imperatively and constantly needed for breathing purposes, the injurious mouth-breathing so much indulged in by others being impossible in this case. That the ear, too, is cultivated need not be added. In short, there is hardly any kind of gymnastics that exercises and benefits so many organs as singing does.