MUSICAL COURIER
12
January 12, 1922
the time she first appeared until the final notes of “The Bell Song from Lakme stimulated tremendous response The quality of her voice and her coloratura work and trills are astonishing considering that she is such a young artist. She has a most charming personality.
Prof. M. E. Florio, vocal maestro, is very proud of his talented artist pupil.
CINCINNATI HOLIDAY NOTES
Cincinnati, Ohio, December 27, 1921.—'This is holiday week and there is not much in the way of musical events tor the week. There was special Christmas music in the churches and a number of community “sings,” wherein carols were prominent.
The College of Music furnished the music for the annual Christmas entertainment of the Optimist Club at the Queen City Club. The soloist was Russell Dunham, tenor. Under iu direction of Frederick J. Hoffman, the boys’ choir from the Lhurch of Our Saviour, sang the Christmas carols
A special musical program was given at the Hotel Gib-son by an augmented orchestra assisted by Elizabeth Dur-land Langhorst. Robert Thufnan, Howard Hess and Robert Visconti, Jr., soloists.
Albino Gorno dean of the College of Music faculty, is spenamg Ins holidays in Chicago. Romeo Gorno has gone to New York to spend the season.
The classes of Estelle N. Whitney and Mrs. O’Meara, of the College of Music, gave a Christmas entertainment in the Odeon on December 20. The pupils of William Morgan Know assisted.
The sacred cantata, "The Word Made Flesh,” by Thomas C Shepherd was sung by the choir of the Norwood Baptist Church on Christmas.
The pupils of Charles J. Young, representing the intermediate and senior classes, rendered a program at his studio on December 18.
The Norwood Musical Club gave a program for the in-mates of the Home of the Incurables some days ago.
The cantata, Christmas,” by Paul Bliss, was given on December 25, at the Clifford Presbyterian Church, under the direction of Beulah G. Davis.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Cincinnati, lyric soprano, has been singing at theaters out of town recently.
T U P.r.°f־am, was given by Gertrude Spindler, soprano: John Eichstadt, violin; Edna Schoenfeld, reader, and Esther Remke, pianist, at the Western Hills Country Club some days ago.
“The Red Mill,” Victor Herbert’s musical comedy, was given on December 19, at Emery Auditorium by the members of the Wise Center Dramatic Circle, and it was much enjoyed.
Alfred Blackman, former grand opera singer, has recently become a member of the faculty of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Mr. Blackman was formerly a resident of Honolulu, and later went to Europe to study At Rome he was a pupil of Com. Antonio Cotogni and appeared in grand opera in Rome and Berlin. He was absent from this country for thirteen years.	W. W.
Schumann-Heink Inspires San Diego
“ ‘Welcome home 1’ was the greeting written on the vast sea of faces and acclaimed in the storm of applause that would not cease, as Schumann-Heink stepped upon the stage of the Spreckels Theater, and, with warm-hearted greeting, flung open her arms as though to embrace the multitude that had come to do her honor, and to hear again the voice that is still the greatest contralto of them all ” wrote the music editor of the San Diego Union recently atter the famous diva’s appearance in concert in that city
And to quote the heart of the lengthy criticism of the singers performance, as it appeared in the same paper• Rumors of the triumph being accorded Mme. Schumann-Heink in her Fall concert tour, and the high quality of her voice realized last night at first hand. The organ depth and richness of the lower register, the caressing mellowness of hqr mezzo voice_ and the glorious, ringing full tones are all there, in a voice that can never grow old/ The dramatic fire and the personality which go toward the making of the diva the most popular singer of her time are also undimmed.”
The Problem of “Falsetto” and “Head Voice’ BY WILLIAM A. C. ZERFFI
Copyrighted, 1922, by The Musical Courier Company.
as a remarkable feat is indicative of the vast amount of incorrect voice production in existence.
The Falsetto Voice.
To pass now to the falsetto voice, we find a parallel with the head voice just discussed, inasmuch as the marked differences between the chest and falsetto occur chiefly in the lower male voices, and that frequently with high tenor voices the line of demarkation between the two is literally non-existent. These latter voices are often able to sing forte and pianissimo tones in the higher ranges without any change of quality being discernable. Such a feat is not very often encountered among the heavier male voices, and passage from the chest to the falsetto voice usually requires careful preparation in advance. It is well to note that in the lower ranges of all voices a falsetto can hardly be said to exist, for it resolves itself without effort into the pianissimo of the voice, and only manifests itself as a separate entity when the upper tones are sung. This again furnishes undeniable proof that only one voice actually exists, and that one of the two which apparently exist must be the result of faulty production, as was found to occur m the female voice. At first thought it appears as if the
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Miriam to Sing New Songs
Alice Miriam, soprano of the Metropolitan Opera Company, has been engaged as soloist for the concert of the Kittle symphony and the Bolm Ballet Intime, George Bar--rere conducting, in Town Hall, Friday afternoon and Saturday evening, January 20 and 21. Miss Miriam will sin״ new songs by Carpenter, Szymanowski and Poldowski.
Huberman to Appear Again with Philharmonic
Bronislaw Huberman will make his twelfth New York appearance of the present season on Sunday afternoon January 15, when he will appear for a third time as soloist at one of the concerts of the Philharmonic Society
falsetto were the culprit, but strange to say it is not. The falsetto is nothing more than the undeveloped normal voice which is neglected while a forced chest voice is cultivated. Just as the forced chest voice weakens the head voice as was explained above, the same procedure weakens the falsetto until it becomes almost useless. Proof of this can be obtained by an examination of the voices of non-singers where the lack of an artificially acquired production fre-quently permits an unbroken scale of tone to be sung softly; but the lack of development of the vocal muscles renders an immediate increase in the volume of tone impossible. If accorded time for development, however, the tones can be increased in volume until finally the full weight of the breath can be applied without any danger of overstrain.
Where the voice has been improperly used for a number of years, the time consumed in redeveloping the natural voice is of course much greater than if begun without the handicap of faulty habits which must first be eradicated before the real voice can be brought out, all the more as the true vocal muscles remain almost totally inactive during the production of the forced voice. That the re-education of the muscles is a slow and laborious task need hardly be emphasized, but the results obtained are such as to surprise even the most sanguine. Once a healthy and normal action ot the vocal organ has been re-established, a steady improvement of the vocal powers is experienced and the great majority of vocal ailments literally cease to exist.
Rachel Allabach Wins Ovation
Rachel Allabach, soprano, appeared at the Toledo Exchange Club before an audience composed of bankers and the most prominent merchants and their wives at Lasalle and Koch’s Auditorum, December 8. The young gifted Toledian duplicated the success she achieved recently with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra. Rachel Allabach thrilled an audience that filled the auditorium to overflowing, from
The falsetto of the male voice, and the head voice of the female voice, present, on the whole, problems to singers, which are solved completely only in rare instances. The vast majority of male singers seem to possess two separate and distinct voices, and only few find it possible to pass from one to the other without the appearance of a decided break and a noticeable change of quality and volume. In the female voice something similar may be said to occur, the changes being particularly apparent in the lower (contralto) voices, and occurring to a much lesser degree in the higher voices. This latter fact is of particular significance and will be found to aid considerably in the search for enlightenment.
If we compare the male and female vocal organs, the only marked difference seems to be one of size; and yet if we compare the organ of a deep contralto with that of a high soprano, we are likely to find an almost greater difference in size than exists between that of a lyric tenor and a contralto. In any case the comparison between the vocal־ organs of the two_ sexes does not reveal anything of so different a nature in the male organ as to account for the existence of two distinct voices, nor is anything of this nature to be found in the female vocal organ. In spite of this, falsetto and head voice do persist as separate entities, and in the majority of cases seem impossible of incorporation into what is generally supposed to be the normal voice. It has become customary to speak of “chest voice” in contrast _ to “head voice,” and while not agreeing with the meaning inferred by these terms the writer has made use of them throughout the discussion.
The Female Head Voice.
Since this problem presents less difficulties than that of the falsetto, and also contains facts which make the elucidation of the latter a little easier, it may be as well to attack this problem first.
As has already been mentioned, the really marked contrasts in passage from chest voice to head voice are as a rule most noticeable in the contralto voices, and are but rarely apparent in the voices of high sopranos. This is undoubtedly due to the fact that the greater length of the Vocal cords of the low voices makes greater changes in the adjustments of the vocal cords necessary; in fact the lower voices are noticeably slower in action than the higher ones, as a comparison between the agility of a contralto with that of a coloratura soprano will readily reveal. In the correctly and freely produced voice, all adjustments of the vocal organ necessary for the production of tones of different pitch take place automatically, and actual breaks only occur when the normal action of the organ is impeded. This usually occurs when the attempt is made to produce a greater range and volume of tone than can normally be obtained without giving the vocal muscles time to develop, and consists in what is called “carrying up the chest voice.” This means, in other words, tightening the grip of the external throat muscles upon the larynx and obtaining the higher pitches by forcing the breath between the vocal cords. This “tour de force” method requires a great expenditure of breath and energy, and the resultant tone cannot be compared to that obtained by allowing the vocal organ to undergo its normal changes. Constant use of the voice in this manner is not only highly injurious to the vocal mechanism, but it results in the establishment of a gap between pianissimo and forte which gradually becomes wider and wider. This creates the necessity for the employment of one method for the singing of pianissimo and one method for the singing of forte. In exaggerated cases (and there are many such) the difference between the head voice and chest voice becomes as distinct as that usually found to exist between the male falsetto and chest voice. We can but conclude that the head voice is the actual but undeveloped normal voice, and that its lack of power is attributable solely to this lack of development and not to the fact that it is produced in a fictitious manner. If this correctly produced voice be accorded proper time for development, it will very soon be found to increase in strength, and ultimately not only reach but surpass the amount of volume produced by the forced voice method. That a considerable amount of time must of necessity elapse before such a result can be obtained is only to be expected, the length of time required varying in accordance with the amount of abuse to which the vocal organ has been subjected. Since any forcing directly weakens the true vocal muscles the effects of years or even months of maltreatment can not be immediately overcome. A correctly developed voice should experience no difficulty in passing from pianissimo to forte and vice versa even in the highest ranges of the voice, and the very fact that this is regarded
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