The Philosophy of Voice (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PHILOSOPHY OF VOICE, The present age is essentially one of revision and research; no longer are the accepted notions of bygone times taken as granted, but sufficient proof is required that what has been advanced on any given thing has borne the scrutiny of science, and has been weighed in the cold scale of logic. Of late years a part of the artistic world has been trying to teach the members of the medical profession, and through them others, the science underlying the art of voice production; and the reproduction in the Medical Press and Circular of Signor Garcia, s observations, taken in connection with a lecture delivered at University College, and reported in the Lancet of February, 1873, naturally challenge the attention of all lovers of truth in Nature and Tightness in human work. If the statements made by Signor Garcia and others be true, one of three things is sure: 1. Either the accepted laws of natural philosophy are unreliable; or, 2. All the observations made during dissection have been made by careless observers, and all the experimenters upon the detached larynx have been ignorant men; or, 3. Failing these, the theories held by those who profess to teach us are false. Then, in the face of the grave implications conveyed by the erroneous statements made by musical men, it is right that we should reconsider the whole question of human vocal tone from its commencement, so that discrepancies may be accounted for, erroneous notions combated, and learned ideas obtained in place of the vulgar ideas which at present prevail. As we cannot admit error in accepted laws of science, the real point at issue rests between the medical and musical professions; one or the other is wrong. It shall be shown that the latter is?that the fallacies Jield by Signor Garcia, Madame S...