A Warning to Girls Who Sing.

Woodville Examiner, Volume 3, Issue 282, 10 September 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Warning to Girls Who Sing.

Parents and teachers have much to answer for in permitting young girls to force their unformed voices at school exhibitions. How melancholy it is to hear little girls singing songs that require understanding and the vocal culture of mature voices. The voice when forced beyond its capabilities, if it be not utterly ruined, often becomes disagreeable at the time when it should be a delight. Mothers should impress upon their daughters that the voice should never be forced either in speaking or siuging. Better that a girl should never recite or sing in public than that her voice should be roughened or forced. No matter how much girls sing, they ought never to sing beyond half the power of which they are capable. There are girls with strong musical feeling, who can sing florid operatic music as the birds sing. In cases of this kind the singing is not to be suppressed, but to be kept within bounds. No matter how wonderfully a girl renders fioritura passages, do not encourage her to force her voice. A girl may be taught to read music pari-passu with her primer, bat vocal cultivation rarely ought to begin before the sixteenth year. The divas who have delighted the world with their “golden tones of melody ” have seldom begun their regular vocal instruction before this time. Patti, for example, could correct any falsely sung operatic passages at an extremely tender age, but her musical education did not begin until she was past the age of 15.