by the use of much less and never audible breathing, and acquire a correct, quiet guidance of the tones.  You must also make use of the voice in the middle register, and strengthen the good head-tones by skilfully lowering them; you must equalize the registers of the voice by a correct and varied use of the head-tones, and by diligent practice of solfeggio.  You must restore the unnaturally extended registers to their proper limits; and you have still other points to reform.  Are you not aware that this frequent tremulousness of the voice, this immoderate forcing of its compass, by which the chest-register is made to interfere with the head-tones, this coquetting with the deep chest-tones, this affected, offensive, and almost inaudible nasal pianissimo, the aimless jerking out of single tones, and, in general, this whole false mode of vocal execution, must continually shock the natural sentiment of a cultivated, unprejudiced hearer, as well as of the composer and singing-teacher?  What must be the effect on a voice in the middle register, when its extreme limits are forced in such a reckless manner, and when you expend as much breath for a few lines of a song as a correctly educated singer would require for a whole aria?  How long will it be before your voice, already weakened, and almost always forced beyond the limits of beauty, shall degenerate into a hollow, dull, guttural tone, and even into that explosive or tremulous sound, which proclaims irremediable injury?  Is your beautiful voice and your talent to disappear like a meteor, as others have done? or do you hope that the soft air of Italy will in time restore a voice once ruined?  I fall into a rage when I think of the many beautiful voices which have been spoiled, and have dwindled away without leaving a trace during the last forty years; and I vent my overflowing heart in a brief notice of the many singing-teachers, whose rise and influence I have watched for twenty years past.

The so-called singing-teachers whom we usually find, even in large cities and in musical institutions, I exempt from any special criticism, for they would not be able to understand my views.  They permit soprano voices to sing scales in all the five vowels at once; begin with c instead of f; allow a long holding of the notes, “in order to bring out the voice,” until the poor victim rolls her eyes and grows dizzy.  They talk only of the fine chest-tones which must be elicited, will have nothing to do with the head-tones, will not even listen to them, recognize them, or learn to distinguish them.  Their highest principle is:  “Fudge! we don’t want any rubbish of Teschner, Miksch, and Wieck.  Sing in your own plain way:  what is the use of this murmuring without taking breath?  For what do you have lungs if you are not to use them?  Come, try this aria:  ‘Grace,’ ‘grace!’ Produce an effect!  Down on your knees!”