voices must hereafter be used with much less strength, if we wish to cultivate a correct tone; and it is impossible to tell whether the chest-tones, when they are restored to their true limit, will ever come out again as powerful and at the same time as beautiful.  Let no musician, however talented and cultivated he may be, ever adopt the teaching of singing, unless he can combine with firmness of character great patience, perseverance, and disinterestedness; otherwise, he will experience very little pleasure and very little gratitude.  Even if the “Erlkoenig” does not stand in the way, every voice presents new and peculiar difficulties.

A Few Words addressed to Singing-Teachers on the Accompaniment of Etudes, Exercises, Scales, &c.

It is common for teachers to play their accompaniments as furiously as if they had to enter into a struggle for life and death with their singers.  At the beginning of the lesson, the lady singer ought to commence quite piano, at f in the one-lined octave, and to sing up and down from there through five or six notes, without any expenditure of breath, and should guide and bring out her voice by a gentle practice of solfeggio; and yet you bang, and pound on the keys, as if you had to accompany drums and trumpets.  Do you not perceive that in this way you induce your pupils to strain and force their voices, and that you mislead them into a false method?  In such a noise, and while you are making such a monstrous expenditure of strength, to which you add a sharp, uneasy touch, and a frequent spreading of the chords, how can you watch the delicate movements of the singer’s throat?  Is it necessary for me to explain how such a rude accompaniment must interfere with the effort to sing firmly and delicately?  Are you not aware that a light and agreeable, but at the same time firm and decided, accompaniment encourages and sustains the singer, and also assists and inspires her?  You ought, in every way, to seek to cultivate in your pupil the feeling for the right, the true, and the beautiful; but what is the girl of eighteen to think of your culture and your sentiment, if you pound the keys as if you were one of the “piano-furies”?

While this is your mode of accompanying the etudes, how then do you accompany the aria, the song?  If, for instance, the pupil is singing tenderly, and wishes to bring out an artistic, delicate shading, you take advantage of that occasion to make yourself heard, and to annoy the singer and the audience with your rough shading.  A singing-teacher who does not take pains to acquire a good, delicate touch, and who neglects to pay constant attention to it, is wanting in the first requirement; and this is closely connected with the want of “the three trifles.”

CHAPTER X.

VISIT AT MRS. N.’S.

MRS. N.
Her daughter FATIMA, eighteen years old. 
AN AUNT. 
DOMINIE.
Towards the end of the evening, the piano-teacher, MR. FEEBLE.