Child's voice

“ It even happens, not seldom, that through encouragement to use the voice, these children acquire a series of articulate sounds, and a number of combinations of sounds, which they employ as the expression of their wishes. ”

“ PECULIARITIES OF THE CHILD VOICEThe child voice is not merely a miniature adult voice, but is an instrument of quite different character. In the first place, it is not nearly so individualistic in timbre as the adult voice, and because of the far greater homogeneity of voice quality that obtains in children's singing, it is much easier to secure blending of tone, the effect being that of one voice rather than of a number of voices in combination. ”

“ Children like simple hymns, lullabies, songs about animals, nature, play, dolls, and action songs.
If a child is thought to have vocal talent, the voice should be especially protected from strain and misuse, and intensive training postponed until late in the teens when the voice has become placed. A teacher of ability should be engaged for the first training. ”

“ In the third place, the child voice is immature, and his vocal organs are much more likely to be injured by overstraining. When directed by a competent voice trainer, however, the effect of a large group of children singing together is most striking, and their pure, fresh, flutelike tones, combined with the appearance of purity and innocence which they present to the eye, bring many a thrill to the heart and not infrequently a tear to the eye of the worshiper. ”

“ Then again, the extremes in age between children of the same class grow farther apart as we ascend in grade, and the compass must be kept within the vocal powers of the youngest, and, from a voice-standpoint, weakest pupils. Protect the voice, and nature will attend to its development.
From the time children pass the age of twelve years on to the period of puberty, the child-voice is at its best, and if the use of the thin register has been faithfully adhered to in the lower grades, the singing-tone will now be both pure and brilliant. ”

“ It is a fascinating topic, but must be dismissed here with the remark that, as those anatomical differences in structure are far less marked in children than in adults, their voices are, in consequence, more alike in quality and strength. ”

“ Soft singing is the cure for all the ills of the vocal organs.” It would be hard to find a more terse or truthful statement than the first sentence of the above as 50 regards the voices of little children from five to seven or eight years of age. It is unmitigated foolishness to talk about vocal training as applied to children of that age. The voice-culture which is suited to little children is that sort of culture which promotes growth—food and sleep and play. ”

“ A child of barely ten years old made to sing her lungs away for four hours every day, when it is not possible yet to know what the character and qualities of her voice will be, or even if she will have any voice at all. ”

“ If teachers persist in leading the songs with their own voices and in singing exercises with the children, they can and most probably will defeat all efforts to secure the right tone in either the first, or any grade up to that in which changed 52 voices are found. ”

“ With due consideration it is said that it is a harder task to train children’s voices properly than to train the voices of adults. Where nature is so shifty in her ways, it requires keen penetration to discover her ends. ”

“ They are immediately joined to action and emotion: the inflections of the voice, for instance, play upon the child’s feelings as directly as music, and are interpreted partly by an instinctive sensibility. ”

“ The habit on his part of looking at the face of a speaker, and the habit on his mother's part of observing his gaze and, when it wanders, of pausing in her talk till he is looking at her again, are two very valuable aids in the language development of the deaf child. In addition to always raising her voice a little in speaking to her baby, the mother should several times a day take him in her lap and sing to him, and talk to him with her lips not far from his ear. ”

“ It is again proven by the continual improvement in the power and timbre of the tone through this period, 22 always premising, be it understood, that the voice is used properly, and never forced beyond its natural capabilities. The voice, at the age of eleven or twelve, is far stronger, and is capable of more sustained effort than at the age of six or seven years, and, for the year or two preceding the break of voice, the brilliance and power of boys’ voices, especially in the higher tones, is often phenomenal, and in all cases is far superior to that of previous years. ”

“ In time teachers will become quick to detect the change in register, and in time also the pupils who are trained to sing in the thin voice will yield to the force of good habit, as they once did to bad habit, and seldom offend by too loud or too harsh tone. ”

“ It seems to the author that the chief difficulty experienced by teachers and instructors of singing, in dealing with children, lies in the assumption, expressed or implied, that their voices are to be treated as we treat the voices of adults—adult women; but the vocal organs of the child differ widely from those of the adult in structure, strength and general character. As a consequence, there is a marked difference in voice. ”

“ When bad habits have been corrected, the voice made 118supple and strong, confidence attained, and deep feeling evoked in the speaker’s breast, there will be little need to care for the minutiæ of elocution. The child that is burnt needs no instruction in the mode of crying out. Let nature have her way, untrammeled by art, and all feelings will dominate the voice and cause every hearer to recognize their nature and participate in them. ”

“ The mother who cultivates in herself a habit of repose will have reposeful children.
[184]
The game of silence, as it may be put into practice in the training of children, begins with ear-training. Shut out harsh sounds from the home where there are little children. To command a child in a loud voice often results in disobedience; it makes him mentally deaf for the time being. He does not hear what is said to him; it dulls his senses. We all know how the memory of some gentle voice that either sang or spoke to us in childhood comes back to us, now, as a forceful memory. ”

“ If we are to have pretty phrases and tones of voice, mothers must see to it that the child habitually hears no other. Again, mothers will complain that their child is deaf, or, at any rate, that he has the bad habit of responding to all remarks addressed to him by saying, "What?" ”

“ It is quite obvious, for reasons herein set forth, that children do not experience the same degree of difficulty in continuing the use of the thick voice to their higher tones as do adults, but as to the effect upon their vocal organs there need be no reasonable doubt. ”

“ The vocal organs are still stiff, and only gradually lend themselves to the reproduction of the sounds heard; it is even doubtful whether these sounds are heard distinctly as we hear them. The nurse may amuse the child with songs and with very merry and varied intonation, but I object to her bewildering the child with a multitude of vain words of which it understands nothing but her tone of voice. ”

“ Our public schools, except in particularly favored districts, can do very little towards training the voices of the pupils. Even when there are special teachers the best results are found not so much in the voices as in the ability to read music. To train the human voice requires genius and much particular training, and we cannot expect that school communities will appoint such teachers for many, many generations. But [100] development of the child’s powers of expression through the stimulation of his imagination and emotions will do wonders for his voice. ”

“ The child’s first voice practice consists in screaming. So far as it is a merely reflex expression of discomfort it does not concern us, but it is probable that the crying of children becomes practice for the organs of speech. ”

“ Man has three kinds of voice, the speaking or articulate voice, the singing or melodious voice, and the pathetic or expressive voice, which serves as the language of the passions, and gives life to song and speech. The child has these three voices, just as the man has them, but he does not know how to use them in combination. Like us, he laughs, cries, laments, shrieks, and groans, but he does not know how to combine these inflexions with speech or song. ”

“ And as I played, a child came thro' the gate,
A boy who looked at me without a word,
As tho' he saw stretch far behind my head
Long lines of radiant angels, row on row.
That day we spoke a little, timidly,
And after that I never heard the voice
That sang so many songs for love of me. ”

“ The air was still; when a breath awoke, it but touched his cheek like the down of a feather, and the stillness was there again. The stillness grew great, and slowly descended upon him. It deepened and deepened. Surely it would deepen to a voice!—it was about to speak! It was as if a great single thought was the substance of the silence, and was all over and around him, and closer to him than his clothes, than his body, than his hands. I am describing the indescribable, and compelled to make it too definite for belief. In colder speech, an experience had come to the child; ”

“ You named the earth—is that the ponderous world
And dark, that from the moon must take its light?
THE VOICE.
It is the heaviest and densest sphere
Of all that travel through the space.
THE DAUGHTER.
And is it never brightened by the sun?
THE VOICE.
Of course, the sun does reach it—now and then—
THE DAUGHTER.
There is a rift, and downward goes my glance——
THE VOICE.
What sees my child? ”

“ But brave wild Voices of children fly on and on, outlasting a million earths, silencing aeons of thunder, floating strongly back of the stars. The voices of men—wizards, monks, artisans, thieves—echo no farther than their talking conceits: even of poets except as they catch up into their sonance something to interpret a cool gay clamor of child-Voices. The voices of women—singing women, lovely women, angelic honest women—die with their bodies: even of mothers of the children except as they follow with their own echo, by dream and shadow, the thronging child-Voices as they go. ”

“ No mother ever tried to stop her baby from learning to talk because its first efforts were feeble, halting and unintelligible. How differently we treat the child’s attempts at musical expression—for that is the explanation of many of the crude baby noises that we hear. ”

“ For example, the Mother-Play rhymes and jingles, which are generally accompanied by movements and gestures, and those which affect the child's own personality,—the parts of his body, etc.,—infants sensibly appreciate and enjoy before they can talk, and it is but natural that they are among the first things which they repeat as they learn to talk. ”

“ This process may be materially aided by the parent by the repetition of the child's own utterances, proving to the child that these are correct, that he is being understood and giving him confidence to venture further out in his attempts at speech amplification. This encouragement of the child-mind in its attempts to speak is so important that it is worth while to give some simple examples of what is meant, in order that the point may be clearly understood. Let us take, first, the example of a mother who, from some cause, allows herself to be of a nervous and irritable disposition. ”

“ For when the infant first wakes to consciousness, and commences its converse with the world, the first ray of knowledge, and the earliest of its discriminations, beam from a mother’s eye; and the emotions of its little heart receive their modulation from the melody of a mother’s voice. ”

“ The difficult thing to do is, very fortunately, the thing the mother is best fitted to accomplish, namely, to create in the child the ability to interpret speech by means of the eye, and the habit of expecting to get ideas by watching the face of a speaker. ”

“ To the language of the voice is added the no less forcible language of gesture. This gesture is not that of children's feeble hands; it is that seen in their faces. It is astonishing to see how much expression these immature countenances already have. From moment to moment, their features change with inconceivable quickness. On them you see the smile, the wish, the fear, spring into life, and pass away, like so many lightning flashes. Each time you seem to see a different countenance. They certainly have much more flexible facial muscles than ours. ”

“ As the songs under this head will be employed by the mother, chiefly in soothing her infant to sleep, or in mitigating its sufferings in hours of sickness or distress, it seems not necessary that all the language should be adapted to the infantile capacity. It may suffice that the words contain certain easy syllables or phrases, which, by their perpetual recurrence, make strong impressions upon the ear of the child. The exercise of singing should, however, be so managed as to afford pleasure to the child: for otherwise its taste will be injured. ”

“ Can the youth and man again place themselves in the circumstances of the child?
The child is constantly hearing the language spoken, everyone around it is teaching it to speak, everything around it stimulates it to do so. Nearly everything it learns, comes to it through its mother tongue; at play it hears, it speaks. ”

“ Our very young children still sing before speaking, and even begin with singing their first articulated sounds; and not till they are three or four years old is their speaking voice clearly distinguished from their singing voice. ”

“ In some children it is blended with the earliest, haziest recollection of life at all, as though they had been literally 'cradled in sweet song;' and we may be sure that the hearing of musical sounds and singing in association with others are for the child, as for the adult, powerful influences in awakening sympathetic emotion, and pleasure in associated action. ”