Female voice

“ A coarse, harsh voice has marred many a girl's best marriage chances, while, on the other hand, it may happen that "the ear loveth before the eye." Now what is true of the male and female voice holds true of the male and female mind in all its diverse aspects. We expect men to be not only bigger, stronger, taller, hardier, more robust, but more courageous and aggressive, more active, more creative, more sternly just, than women ”

“ The female voice is soft and low, it is not easily heard in a large room, and consequently the audience sometimes does not appreciate lady speakers to the extent that they deserve. However, I know a lady who possesses a powerful, masculine voice, and who is a very popular speaker, but she is an exception. ”

“ As Madame Marchesi, of Paris, has taught with preëminent success, and with the greatest practical consideration for the preservation of the voice and the vocal organs in an unimpaired condition, and as the author has had, through her kindness, the opportunity to become acquainted with her methods by observation, her views on the registers are here presented. It is to be understood that as she teaches only ladies, her views are considered, so far as she is concerned, as applying only to female voices. ”

“ I see no reason why quotations and prayer uttered by a female voice may not be just as acceptable to the Almighty as if spoken by a male voice. (I hate those words ‘male’ and ‘female,’ but I thought it would help her to see the absurdity of our conventional notions about such things.) ”

“ As the registers are of such great practical importance, especially for the female voice, there is no period when it is of so much value to have a lady teacher as just when the voice is being "placed"—which should mean the recognition of its main quality, and the teaching of registers by imitation as well as description. The student should be made to understand, by practical examples, the subject of "covering," or modification. ”

“ And while this transition is always so very apparent in the man’s voice, it is often scarcely observable to a practiced ear even in uncultivated female voices. Women, in speaking, always use the second chest and the first falsetto register, continually passing from one to the other of these registers without any change in the position of the mouth or of the resonance apparatus of the voice. ”

“ By the gradual disappearance of the male sopranists, instruction in singing fell into the hands of tenor singers, who usually cultivated the female voice in accordance with their own voices, which could not be otherwise than injurious in the uncertainty existing as to the limits in compass and the difference between the male and female organs of voice. ”

“ According to my researches the foot of woman is flatter and less arched than that of man, a fact which women of fashion try to hide by means of high heels. The female voice is always higher than that of the male, in animals and in man. ”

“ Bold as the assumption sounds, it is quietly assumed that every woman is naturally musical. Music is the great accomplishment, and the logic of her schools proves to demonstration that every girl has fingers and an ear. In a wonderful number of cases the same logic proves that girls have a voice. Anyhow, the assumption moulds the very course of female existence. ”

“ When the normal course of the song is not interrupted by the arrival of a female, when, that is to say, the male still pursues the routine to which he has all along been accustomed, and still sings at stated intervals in stated places with a voice that betrays no heightened emotional tone, even though the song may convey some meaning to the delicate perceptual powers of the female, we have nothing to lay hold upon which can be construed as an indication of direct relationship between the song and the presence of the female. ”

“ In this change, so far from losing animation, she gains it, and gains true expressive power; for all unnecessary motion of the body in talking simply raises a dust, so to speak, and really blurs the true thought of the mind and feeling of the heart.
The American voice—especially the female voice—is a target which has been hit hard many times, and very justly. A ladies' luncheon can often be truly and aptly compared to a poultry-yard, the shrill cackle being even more unpleasant than that of a large concourse of hens. ”

“ It possesses the penetrating and carrying power of a child's voice. It often breaks and changes, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. From being masculine, it suddenly changes timbre and becomes decidedly feminine, passing over from a bass to a treble. Your voice is sentimental, bland, caressing. It is the kind of voice a dying woman would choose to hear. ”

“ The peculiar quality of the female voice referred to above may be considered by some to have been the cause that influenced these birds; yet my informant distinctly states that the voice of an adult male equally attracted them. ”

“ It is not probable that the female voice has varied in sweetness through the ages, yet it was not until the eighteenth century that we have record of a noted songstress. Have we any reason to believe that when women have gained all the rights and privileges for which they now clamor that any significant results will follow? ”

“ If you had, and had possessed any experience or knowledge of the world, you would have realised that the owner of that voice possessed neither or else was a very great and convincing actress. Mere print cannot excuse him, perhaps, but I give you my word he was as a matter of fact excusable, since he was a bachelor. Most men are very susceptible to the human voice, especially to the female human voice, and it has always been a matter of the deepest wonder to me that the men who do not hear a lovely one once in the year are most under the dominion of their females. ”

“ A conscious choice either of the most beautiful or the loudest singer is certainly not the rule, and probably never occurs at all. But,” he adds, “is it not still a choice, though unconscious, when the female turns to the singer whose voice, whether from strength or modulation, [267] proves most attractive? Even if the song is primarily a means of recognition or an invitation from the male, still the psychological effect must be that the female follows the songster that excites her most, and so exerts a kind of unconscious selection.” ”

“ If they had not a young man who could perform the part with a face that might pass for feminine, the character was acted in a mask, which was at that time part of a lady's dress so much in use that it did not give any unusual appearance to the scene: and he that could modulate his voice in a female tone might play the women very successfully. ”

“ Here, the female principle exists, and as you predicted, most of the women are therefore entirely different from ours. The term used in this language is "femininity." It is a devastatingly attractive thing—but almost impossible to explain. I will make an attempt.
Senseless, reasonless, even foolish motions of the body and the hands, the expressions of the eyes and the mouth, the way the head is moved and tilted are a part of it. So are unusual tones of the voice and special ways in which things are said. ”

“ Both sexes have a voice, but that of the female is only a grunting noise, while the male inflates its gular sac and sends forth a sharp cracking sound, which can turn into a regular bellowing like the gruff barking of an angry dog. ”

“ The not uncommon phenomena of the smooth-faced man with a feminine voice and a figure resembling that of a woman, and of the deep-voiced, hairy-faced masculine woman, are produced by abnormalities in the development of these glands. ”

“ To my mind, one of the greatest charms of a woman should be her voice. Never did I hear a more comfortable voice than hers. It was impossible to imagine that a voice in which, to my ears, rang so unmistakably the accents of truth, could belong to one who was false. Removing my hands, I looked at her again.
She had smeared her countenance with her fingers; all down one side of her face was a crimson stain. ”

“ Do you not hear the echo of that woman's voice come over the Atlantic—returned from European shores in many a tongue—French, German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Russian, Dutch? How a woman touches the world's heart! because she speaks justice, speaks piety, speaks love. What voice is strongest, raised in continental Europe, pleading for the oppressed and down-trodden? That also is a woman's voice! ”

“ The lover of girls knows that human voices vary even more. Each one possesses more notes than the richest instrument of music. And the combinations in which the voice groups those notes are as inexhaustible as the infinite variety of personalities. When I talked with any one of my friends I was conscious that the original, the unique portrait of her individuality had been skilfully traced, tyrannically imposed on my mind as much by the inflexions of her voice as by those of her face, and that these were two separate spectacles which rendered, each in its own plane, the same single reality. ”

“ The answers came from within the wagon. They were the song of the bird whose nest we had approved. A sad song. A woman’s voice can tell a long history of sorrow in a single word. This wonderful instrument, our voice, alters its timbre with every note it yields, as the face changes with every look, until at last the dominant emotion is master, and gives quality to tone and character to expression.
It was a sad, sweet voice that answered the old gentleman’s call. A lady’s voice, — the voice of a high-bred woman, delicate, distinct, self-possessed. ”

“ Again the verse came—
"If she's not here to take your part go choose another with all your heart!"
I heard wheels then, nearer than the singing,— the clumsy rumble of our big yellow 'bus. Voices were borne to me,—Clem's voice, Miss Caroline's and another not like her's, a voice firmer, yet a dusky-warm woman's voice. That was all I could think of at the time: perhaps the night suggested it; they had qualities in common. It was a woman's voice, but a determined woman's. ”

“ And, on the other side of the scale, where we looked for a shrill head-voice or a tender musical cadence, we get that hoarse chest-voice with which young and pretty girls sometimes startle us. This voice is in fact one of the characteristics of the modern girl of a certain type; just as the habitual use of slang is characteristic of her, or that peculiar rounding of the elbows and turning out of the wrists—which gestures, like the chest-voice, instinctively belong to men only and have to be learned before they can be practised by women. ”

“ A woman's voice may imply good breeding, or the reverse, and in estimating the power of feminine charms, a pleasing voice should be placed very near the head of the list. Is it not strange, then, that so little effort is made to remedy defects in vocal expression?
We cultivate the voice for singing and for elocutionary effects, but little is done for the average boy or girl by way of training the voice for the everyday effect. ”

“ She is a witch, and her voice is not the least of her witchery, he thought, as her voice, so richly a woman's voice, so essentially her voice in contradistinction to all women's voices in the world, sang and throbbed in his ear. ”

“ Though women’s voices, when good, reach farther than those of men, a considerable number are deficient in the physical vocal power indispensable to make themselves heard in an assembly numbering above one or two hundred persons. Nothing would be more pitiable and ridiculous than for one of these ladies, whatever might be her mental gifts, to mount a pulpit and, with feeble voice rising only to crack in an occasional screech, to attempt to pour forth exhortations which three-fourths of her audience could not hear, and under which the remainder would writhe in an auditorial purgatory. ”

“ She had got something jollier, but had the same fine eyes, the same clear complexion, the same features, the same beautiful light hair, the sane gayety, and even the same voice, whose youthful and silvery sound made so lively an impression on my heart, that, even to this day, I cannot hear a young woman's voice, that is at all harmonious, without emotion. ”

“ Her voice is strong and rich, imperfectly trained, but the voice of a born singer; her acting is even more the acting of a born actress; but it is the temperament of the woman that flames into her voice and gestures, and sets her whole being violently and delicately before you. ”

“ She had not been pretty in his remembrance—a tiny, shrunken, wrinkled thing—but she had beautiful grey eyes that never grew old and a soft, gentle voice—the only woman's voice he had ever heard with pleasure. He was very critical as regards women's voices and very sensitive to them. Nothing hurt him quite so much as an unlovely voice—not even unloveliness of face. ”

“ Every syllable and every turn of melody of such a song as 'My Mother bids me bind my Hair,' sung by a lady at one end, or 'When the Heart of a Man,' sung at the other, could be distinctly heard, but with the effect before noticed, that the voice was muffled or shut in, as if the singer were in a cellar, while it was not always possible to say at once whether the voice was that of a man or a woman. ”

“ There is no striving for effect. A woman singing with a God-given voice, in simple thanks for its ownership, not a queen bidding for admiration. Had any voice ever made such glorious melody, or so stirred human souls?
The applause has in it an immensity of appreciation, as if it could never get itself wholly expressed.
Then another favourite, which everybody sang at for years afterward: "I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls." In some of the sorrows of her womanhood, the little girl was to recall the sweet refrain—
"That you loved me still the same." ”