Overtone

“ We cannot explore the nerve-waves, but, projected in the air, they become a picture that we can study. First there is the rough breathing or tremor h, then the mouth tunes itself for the musical tone o. Suppose the o to be made in a man's voice at a pitch A, below middle C. The o-making overtone is its octave overtone or second, which in this case will be A above middle C, the pitch to which the mouth will resound. Besides this prominent overtone, o has some feeble third and fourth overtones, and for the personal peculiarity say a little fifth. What is
Fig. ”

“ The author, preparing the way with a chapter on elementary acoustics, states the phenomena of overtones, and then shows their action in determining the tone-character or timbre of the various musical instruments. These overtones also constitute the natural basis for the scales, for melody, tonality, and harmony—in so far as these have a natural basis. For æsthetical influences, local, individual, and transitory, have played the largest part in giving to music its present form. ”

“ It is shown in the "American Naturalist" (April, 1879, "Animal Music," etc.) that if the overtone structure of sounds has impressed itself upon the internal ear, the most easy progression of a melody will be along the intervals existing between overtones, viz., octaves, fifths, fourths, etc. This offers a much more natural basis for melody and scale origin than the theory of Helmholtz, repeated by Mr. Pole, according to which a certain connection is established between notes, an octave, a fifth, etc., apart by the. mind's recognition of their possessing common overtones. ”

“ Now we are in condition to appreciate the full splendor of certain lines of Chinese verse. Poetry surpasses prose especially in that the poet selects for juxtaposition those words whose overtones blend into a delicate and lucid harmony. All arts follow the same law; refined harmony lies in the delicate balance of overtones. In music the whole possibility and theory of harmony is based on the overtones. In this sense poetry seems a more difficult art.
How shall we determine the metaphorical overtones of neighboring words? We can avoid flagrant breaches like mixed metaphor. ”

“ Every blemish on the beauty of a vocal tone, every fine shade of quality which detracts from its perfection, indicates to the critical hearer some faulty action of the singer's vocal organs. The more faulty the musical character of the singer's tones the more pronounced is this impression of faulty production. On the other hand, just so nearly as the singer's tones approach perfection as musical sounds, so do they also impress the ear of the critical listener as indicating the approach to the perfect vocal action. ”

“ The truth in tone, or the idealized tone, is beautiful and soulful, and demands for its production and use all the forces that Nature has given to the singer,—physical, mental, and emotional or spirituelle. Unmusical, muscular tone is not the true tone. It contains much that it should not have on the physical side, and lacks much that it should have on the spirituelle. As a rule, it means nothing; in fact, it is often simply a noise. The idealized tone always represents a thought, an idea, an emotion; it is the expression of the inner—the higher—man; it is, in reality, self-expression. ”

“ Sing a tone, about the middle of the voice, without other thought than that of simply pure, free tone. It will be found that in the most beautiful voice the tone will be common-place, meaningless; in many voices it will be simply sound. Now place yourself in every way upon a higher, a more lofty plane. Think of higher ideas and ideals. In other words, idealize the tone. Remember, the ideal is the truth, and not exaggeration. Appeal to your emotional energy, the singer's sensation, and give expression to thought and feeling aroused in this way. ”

“ The student of the voice who studies or who is trained in this way, develops, not only in character and beauty of tone, but in actual physical power and control. This study of tone color and tone character develops new power in every way. "The mechanical and mental alone are but half development, but this is full and complete development of the entire being." In proof of this, sing a light, bright, happy thought or tone, using the clear timbre, about the middle of the voice. ”

“ Gurney has said that when we feel ourselves yearning for the next unutterable, we are really yearning for the next note. That is the secret! Each one of those tendencies, demands, leanings, strivings, returns, as between tone and tone in a melody, is necessarily accompanied by the feeling-tone which belongs to such an attitude. And it is to be noted that all the more poignant emotions we get from music are always stated in terms of urgency, of strain, of effort. ”

“ In the famous 'Incantation Scene,' the Art of Tone-painting is used with a power which needs the aid of no scenic horrors to impress its meaning upon the most unimaginative comprehension, and which is, indeed, only too frequently distracted by the noise and confusion inseparable from a too exuberant 'Spectacle': while the Overture, a triumph of descriptive Instrumentation, furnishes us, by means of its leading themes, with an epitome of the entire story. ”

“ But what concerns us is the fact that it is an emotional modulation of resonance. What concerns us is the fact that, as a change of thought instantly registers itself in a change of pitch, so a change of emotion instantly produces a change in the color of the tone—if the voice is a free instrument. And so, as before, I want you not to think of the physiological aspect, but to yield to the emotion, noting the character of the resultant tone, regardless of what has happened in the larynx to produce that result. ”

“ The flute-voice in the world of tone.
Read this passage aloud as a mere statement of fact, employing a matter-of-fact tone. Gray in color, is it not? Now let your voice take the color Lanier has blended for you. Let your tone, like a thing "half song, half odor," float forth on these words and linger as only a perfume can about the thought. Now let the tone change in color to clarify and glorify the following message from the flute: [13]
Sweet friends,
Man's love ascends
To finer and diviner ends
Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends. ”

“ I may add that tone always makes a strong appeal to feeling—to abstract feeling. The tonal harmony of an opal, whose pinks and greens are suffused with creamy atmosphere, arouses in us delight, quite apart from any suggestion to our mind. The delight is one of pure feeling. Can you not see that, if an artist uses the tonal harmony of the opal as a color scheme for a picture, the harmony would still delight us in an abstract way? ”

“ Although each tone, as separate and individual, possesses its own feeling in its own right, the tonal effects are immensely accentuated by contrast with one another,—the high against the low, the poor against the rich, the loud against the soft—and through the summation, by means of repetition, of the influences of many tones of like character; the full meaning of music depends upon the relations of tones, especially the temporal relations. ”

“ But when, as in art, contemplation, the filling of the mind with the object, is the aim, the power to move of the sensuous surface of things may come again into its rights.
The emotional response to color, vague and abstract and objectless, is, like music, incapable of adequate expression in words, and for the same reason. Words are capable of expressing only the larger and fairly well-defined emotions; such subtle shadings and complex mixtures of feeling as are conveyed by color and sound are mostly beyond their ken. ”

“ There is selling value, too, in the placing of tones in your mouth. A tone placed far forward indicates lack of thought and instability. It is the tone we associate with "lip judgments." On the contrary, hidden thoughts, unwillingness to tell all you know, are suggested by tones placed far back in your mouth. The middle-of-the-mouth tone makes the impression that the voice is properly balanced, and suggests the associated idea of mind balance. Avoid the extremes in placing your tones, if you would make certain of the most effective use of your voice in selling ideas. ”

“ Here, then, in the regularizing of the number of thought-pulsations, we have another type of rhythm in poetry, and a rhythm which, coming from within, finds outward expression in sound. Cutting across the rhythm of stress, it breaks up the latter with its pauses, and imparts to the whole movement variety and richness.
But speech has not only its natural rhythm of stress-undulation and thought-pulsations; it has also, as we saw in the last chapter, a melody. The rise and fall of stress goes hand and hand with a rise and fall of pitch. ”

“ In poetry, as we have found already in our general differentiation of the several arts, tone is not as such elicited and artistically produced by various humanly constructed instruments, but the articulate sound of the human organ of speech is reduced to the mere symbol of speech, retaining thereby nothing more than the value of a sign of ideas, which is by itself devoid of significance. ”

“ The variations of tone, the modulations natural to the human voice, grow refined as the nervous organization becomes more delicate. Musical melody following the variations of human accents is capable of taking on as many shades as there are feelings in the heart. ”

“ It produces a luxury of anguish, a fulness of the satisfaction of imaginary woe, a realisation of the mysterious delights of romance, which no words can ever thoroughly supply. While the notes are living, while the music is still in the air, the ear comes to covet greedily every atom of tone which the instrument will produce, so that the slightest extraneous sound becomes an offence. ”

“ But human poets are fond of introducing this sort of inconsistent mixture, and so make themselves ridiculous in the eyes of those who, as Orpheus says, 'are ripe for true pleasure.' The experienced see all this confusion, and yet the poets go on and make still further havoc by separating the rhythm and the figure of the dance from the melody, setting bare words to metre, and also separating the melody and the rhythm from the words, using the lyre or the flute alone. ”

“ From this it is evident, that this intonation is natural to the human ear, if it is not accustomed from early youth to the attemperated system of tones. These nature-singers would sound as false to our tone-scale, [Pg 241] as we to theirs. But it is nevertheless specially remarkable, and almost disquieting, that in order to attain our present richness of harmony, we have been obliged to deviate from the Tone-scale given to us by nature. ”

“ Beauty of tone implies absence of disagreeable qualities, and freedom from unpleasant sounds. Faulty tones are called nasal, guttural, palatal, throaty, muffled, and so on, the peculiar timbre 92 of each suggesting the name. If the throat is relaxed, and if the soft parts of the vocal tube lying between the larynx and the teeth are kept out of the way, most of the disagreeable qualities of voice enumerated disappear. Certain requisites are necessary to good tone-formation. ”

“ As shown at length in Chapters VI and VII, volume of tone, its color and carrying power, is acoustically and vocally a matter of resonance.
Many there are who sing by dint of sheer force and ignorance, but their careers are necessarily short. The too common vulgar striving for power rather than for beauty or purity of tone induces unnatural effort and strain that both directly and sympathetically affect the throat with stiffness. ”

“ A word whose customary feeling-tone is too unquestioningly accepted becomes a plushy bit of furniture, a cliché. Every now and then the artist has to fight the feeling-tone, to get the word to mean what it nakedly and conceptually should mean, depending for the effect of feeling on the creative power of an individual juxtaposition of concepts or images. ”

“ If the higher harmonic over-tones grow stronger, and even overpower the fundamental tone, the sound grows shriller, but when the discordant over-tones lying close together, higher than the tones just named, overpower the fundamental tone, the timbre becomes sharp and disagreeable. ”

“ Have we not also an atmosphere resulting from a multitude of impalpable small touches? Is not the effect in each case more exact than any impression to be derived from personal familiarity with either South America or Greece? Is not the same impersonal viewpoint present? the same astringent humour in evidence in its application to the incongruities of the life presented? In both cases the avoidance of any expression of emotion, the final austerity of the highest art, exercises an effect out of all predictable proportion on the emotions of the reader. ”

“ When I sing this tone it is accompanied with a sensation as though the tone were being reflected downward from the voice box over to each side of the chest just in front of the arm-pits and then downward into the abdomen. Here the great danger arises that the unskilled student will try to produce this sensation, whereas the fact of the matter is that the sensation is the accompaniment of the properly produced tone and cannot be made artificially. Don't work for the sensation, work for the tone that produces such a sensation. ”

“ A constant repetition of false notes, wrong phrasing, irregular accents, faulty rhythms and a meaningless jumble of notes dulls the outer ear and deadens the inner tone-sense. Where there is genius, or decided talent, no obstacle can wholly [Pg 48] bar the way to music. ”

“ In short, it all depends on what the student wishes to express. Some of the best work done has been produced from negatives made purposely thin, which have at the same time been true in tone, and full of breadth. |Intensification.| The density of a negative can be increased by intensifying the negative; but it must not be forgotten that intensification does not, in our opinion, correct the tonality, this is a matter of great importance which has been overlooked. ”