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coloring, but also to straining, to which we have before alluded. Though this process may not be at once obviously injurious, it _invariably_ becomes so as time passes, and no vocalist who hopes to sing much and to last can ignore registers, much less make the change at a point to any appreciable extent removed from those that scientific investigation and equally sound practice teach us are the correct ones at which to make the changes. Why is it that some artists of world-wide reputation sing as well to-day as twenty years ago, while others have broken down or have become hopelessly defective in their vocal results in a few years? There is but one answer in a large proportion of these cases: correct methods in the former and wrong methods in the latter class of singers--and "correct" in no small degree refers to a strict observance of registers. The author has known a professional soprano to sing every tone in the trying "Hear, O Israel" (_Elijah_) in the chest register. How can such a singer hope to retain either voice or a sound throat? But so long as audiences will applaud exhibitions of mere lung-power and brute force the teachings of physiology and healthy art will be violated. But, surely, all artists themselves and all enlightened teachers should unite in condemning such violations of Nature's plain teachings! The question of the registers is generally considered now a somewhat simpler one for males than for females. Basses and barytones sing in the chest register only; tenors are usually taught to sing in the chest register; but few teachers believe that the high falsetto is worth the expenditure of the time and energy necessary to attain facility in its use. Probably in many male voices there are the distinctions of register Madame Seiler alludes to--_i.e._, first chest and second chest, or some change analogous to the middle of females; but, from one cause and another, this seems to readily disappear. Whether it would not be worth maintaining is a question that the author suggests as at least worth consideration. Certain it is that, speaking generally, there is no change in males equally pronounced with the passage from the lowest to the next higher (chest to middle) register in females. What, then, are the views that the author believes so well grounded, in regard to the registers, that they may be made, in all confidence, the basis of teaching? Without hesitation, he recommends that arrangement
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