80
n on their voices. I often take fifty minutes to go through it only once, for I let no tone pass that is lacking in any degree in pitch, power, and duration, or in a single vibration of the propagation form.
SECTION XXXIII
VELOCITY
Singers, male and female, who are lacking velocity and the power of trilling, seem to me like horses without tails. Both of these things belong to the art of song, and are inseparable from it. It is a matter of indifference whether the singer has to use them or not; he must be able to. The teacher who neither teaches nor can teach them to his pupils is a bad teacher; the pupil who, notwithstanding the urgent warnings of his teacher, neglects the exercises that can help him to acquire them, and fails to perfect himself in them, is a bungler. There is no excuse for it but lack of talent, or laziness; and neither has any place in the higher walks of art.
To give the voice velocity, practise first slowly, then faster and faster, figures of five, six, seven, and eight notes, etc., upward and downward.
If one has well mastered the great, slow scale, with the nasal connection, skill in singing rapid passages will be developed quite of itself, because they both rest on the same foundation, and without the preliminary practice can never be understood.
Put the palate into the nasal position, the larynx upon oe; attack the lowest tone of the figure with the thought of the highest; force the breath, as it streams very vigorously forth from the larynx, toward the nose, but allow the head current entire freedom, without entirely doing away with the nasal quality; and then run up the scale with great firmness.
In descending, keep the form of the highest tone, even if there should be eight to twelve tones in the passage, so that the scale slides down, not a pair of stairs, but a smooth track, the highest tone affording, as it were, a guarantee that on the way there shall be no impediment or sudden drop. The resonance form