ervision over it, than do some teachers of singing,
in spite of the fact that the apparatus the singer or speaker uses is
much more delicate, and wrong habits much more injurious.

The admonition "Practise, practise," is greatly overdone. The best
results cannot be obtained in either singing, speaking, or playing,
with the lengthy and necessarily more or less imperfect if not
careless practice in which many students of music indulge. Better ten
minutes with the whole attention of a fresh and interested mind given
intelligently to a subject than ten hours of mere mechanical movement.
It is a mistake to suppose that the acquirement of a sound technique
is a purely mechanical process. We have shown that for all successful
effort there must be the idea, and as soon as that fades, from
weariness, etc., the practice should be discontinued. Students are
not treated fairly when given exercises the meaning or purpose of
which is not explained to them.

There is now more need than ever that the teacher of music or
elocution should be intellectual and not mechanical in his methods.
Technique is mechanism, but it should be mechanism subordinated to
ideas. Technique is essential to art, but it is not art. Art is the
soul, technique the body. The soul will be unknown to the world
without technique; hence the author strives in this book to teach the
principles on which a sound vocal technique rests, but only that what
is best in the soul be not hidden, that the one noble or poetic
thought shall be multiplied a thousand times--indeed, that if it be
sufficiently worthy, it shall, like Tennyson's Brook, "go on forever."
To believe, on the one hand, that the highest art can be attained with
a very mediocre technique, and, on the other, that a perfect technique
is the main object of musical training, are alike great and
mischievous errors.

The author has been asked frequently such questions as the following:
"When is the best time to practise? How long should a singer practise
at one time, and for how long during a single day? Should one practise
softly (_piano_) or vigorously (_forte_)?"--etc.

Often the student is puzzled by contradictory opinions on this
subject. One celebrated prima donna states that she never practises
more than one hour a day; another, equally distinguished, that she
has often spent several hours in almost continuous strenuous practice.
What is the student to believe, and whom to follow? No one, for no two
pers