CHAPTER X

COMPASS AND QUALITY

Having found your teacher, the next thing you will want to know is precisely what sort of voice you have--and this is a matter, curiously enough, which cannot always be determined off-hand. The strangest mistakes have, indeed, not infrequently been made in this respect--as in the well-known instance of Jean de Reszke, who actually began his public career as a baritone and continued singing for some years before he finally came to the conclusion that his voice was, in reality, a tenor.

The important task of discovering whether a voice is bass, baritone, tenor, contralto, mezzo-soprano, or soprano, and the exact character of the general ranges of these voices is a matter of great delicacy, and cannot be decided at one hearing. It is largely individual, and sometimes a matter of health and circumstances. The ranges of different classes of the human voice may be generally stated as follows. In the bass voice two octaves of E, the contralto two octaves of E with a tone and a half more in the upper notes leading to G; the tenor, which sounds an octave lower than the soprano, and the soprano voice itself two octaves of C. There are also the baritone and mezzo-soprano voices, the former of which is neither bass nor tenor, and the latter neither contralto nor soprano. The average range covers two octaves of G or A in baritones and mezzo-sopranos.

In all cases there are, of course, exceptions, as, for example, the bass that extends to a melodious low C and can even reach the baritone top F. There is a further classification which has relation to the _timbre_, or colour, which distinguishes whether the artist is dramatic or purely lyric. If of a lyric tendency the artist will do well to avoid dramatic declamation until maturity and experience has taught him this difficult side of our art and _vice versa_.

It is not a question of compass only, but of compass in addition to the distinctive character and quality of the voice. But compass is undoubtedly essential, and in regard to this Lamperti’s practice was to judge not only by the notes which could be taken, but by the facility with which words could be enunciated on them at the same time.

Thus, in the case of a girl student, if she could not only sing the upper G, but could also enunciate words easily on that note, he considered that she was a true soprano; and so on with all the other voices. Thus a baritone might be able to take notes almost as high as a tenor. But if he could not pronounce words comfortably on those notes he was not, in Lamperti’s judgment, to be classed as anything but a baritone.

But, as a general rule, your teacher will not have much difficulty in deciding as to the classification of your voice, and, presuming this to have been decided, we must consider next the question of training it.

Here I feel that I must go carefully, for if there is one thing more certain than another, in my opinion, it is that the pupil who hopes to get the best results from his training must place himself unreservedly in his teacher’s hands, since otherwise he cannot possibly hope to do justice to his teaching. That is to say, he should not confuse his mind by accepting the advice and instruction of other people--so far, at all events, as concerns what may be called the strictly technical side of his training.

Therefore, I shall confine myself to general hints and observations only, based on my own experiences and herewith offered for what they are worth.