The Philosophy of the Human Voice; Embracing Its Physiological History Together with a System of Principles, by Which Criticism in the Art of Elocution May Be Rendered Inteligible [I.E. Intelligible], and Instruction, Definite and Comprehensive to Which I (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 THE HUMAN VOICE. SECTION I. Of the general Divisions of Vocal Sound: with a more particular aaount of its Pitch. All the constituents of the human voice, may be refered to the five folowing modes: VOCAHLITY, FORCE, TIME, ABRUPTNESS, PITCH. The detail of these five modes, and of the multiplied combination of their several forms, degrees, and varieties, includes the enumeration of all the Articulating and the Expresive powers of speech. The extension of knowledge calls for an aditional nomenclature; and new facts and principles on the subject of the voice, will require new terms for the description and arangement of them. It is therefore proper to show, how far comon nomenclature fulfils the purpose of explanation and division; and to provide the means by which an obvious deficiency may be suplied. The terms by which Vocality or the Kind of voice is distin- guished, arej rough, smooth, harsh, full, thin, musical, and some others of the same metaphorical character. They are suficiently numerous; and as descriptive as posible, without reference to ex- . amplar sounds. Vocalists have proposed to distinguish the singing voice, by its resemblance to the sound of the reed, the string, and the musical-glass. The sub-animals aford analogies to the diferent vocalities in the human voice. For the specifications of Force, we use the wordsj strong, weak, loud, forcible, and feeble. These are indefinite in their indication, and without a fixed measure in degree. Music has more orderly and numerously distinguished the varieties of force, by its series of terms from Pianisimo to Fortisimo. I shall, in its proper place, make some new distinctions in the maner of employing this mode. Time, in speaking, is denoted by the termsj long, shor...