s to say, this form of instruction is in no sense
scientific.

CHAPTER IV

RESONANCE

In order to understand fully the position in Vocal Science assigned to
the doctrine of resonance, it is necessary to trace the origin and the
development of this doctrine. The old Italian masters naturally knew
nothing whatever of resonance, nor of any other topic of acoustics. Yet
the accepted theories of resonance in its relation to the voice are
directly based on a set of empirical observations made by the old
masters. The facts which they noted are now a matter of common
knowledge. In singing low notes a sensation of trembling or vibration is
felt in the upper chest; high notes are accompanied by a similar
sensation in the head. How these sensations of vibration came to be made
the basis of the theories of vocal resonance, and of registers as well,
is an interesting bit of vocal history.

Although almost entirely ignorant of vocal mechanics in the scientific
sense, the old masters were eager students of the voice. They carefully
noted the characteristic sound of each tone of the voice, and worked out
what they believed to be a comprehensive theory of tone-production. One
of their observations was that in every voice the low notes have a
somewhat different quality from the high notes. To distinguish these two
qualities of tone the old masters adopted the word used for a similar
purpose by the organ builders,--_register_. Further, they noted the
sensation of vibration in the chest caused by singing low notes, and
concluded that these notes are actually produced in the chest. To the
lower notes of the voice they therefore gave the name "chest register."
As Tosi explains it, "_Voce di Petto_ is a full voice, which comes from
the breast by strength." For a precisely similar reason, viz., the
sensation of vibration in the head felt in singing the higher notes,
this portion of the voice was called by the old masters the "head
register."

When the study of vocal mechanics along scientific lines was undertaken,
in the early decades of the nineteenth century, attention was at first
paid almost exclusively to the subject of registers. The questions then
most discussed were the number of registers, the number of notes which
each should include, and the precise point of production of each
register in the chest, throat, and head. Garcia's _Memoire_, dealing
with the registers, was noticed in the preceding chapter. He showed that
d