hat all musicians expect to hear in the trained
singer. They all exist first as concepts.

An even scale from top to bottom of the voice.

Every tone full of strength and character.

A sympathetic quality.

Ample power.

A clear, telling resonance in every tone.

A pure legato and sostenuto.

Perfect freedom in production throughout the compass.

A perfect swell, that is, the ability to go from pianissimo to full
voice and return, on any tone in the compass, without a break, and
without sacrificing the tone quality.

The ability to pronounce distinctly and with ease to the top of the
compass.

Equal freedom in the delivery of vowels and consonants.

Sufficient flexibility to meet all technical demands.

An ear sensitive to the finest shades of intonation.

An artistic concept or interpretive sense of the highest possible order.

The process of acquiring these things is not accretion but _unfoldment_.
It is the unfoldment of ideas or concepts. The growth of ideas is
similar to that of plants and flowers. The growth of expression follows
the growth of the idea, it never precedes it. From the formation of the
first vowel to the perfect interpretation of a song the teacher is
dealing with mental concepts.

At the Gobelin Tapestry works near Paris I was told that the weavers of
those wonderful tapestries use twenty-four shades of each color, and
that their color sense becomes so acute that they readily recognize all
of the different shades. Now there are about as many shades of each
vowel, and the mental picture of the vowel must be so definite, the
mental ear so sensitive, that it will detect the slightest variation
from the perfect form. Direct control could never accomplish this. Only
the automatic response of the mechanism to the perfect vowel concept can
result in a perfect vowel.

All of those qualities and elements mentioned above as constituting the
artist come under the heading =KNOW WHAT YOU WANT=.

The second step =HAVE THE CONDITIONS RIGHT= means, in short, to free the
mechanism of all interference and properly manage the breath. This
getting rid of interference could be talked about indefinitely without
wasting time. It is far more important than most people suspect. Few
voices are entirely free from it, and when it is present in a marked
degree it is an effectual bar to progress. So long as it is present in
the slightest degree it affects the tone quality. Most students think
they are thro