ch, and to exercises in speaking.
The second and third volumes contain vocal exercises for male and
female voices, while the fourth volume, which has just appeared,
discusses the special characteristics of the German dramatic method,
and gives detailed instructions for the development and training of
each variety of voice, together with an appendix in which some of the
most popular operatic roles are analyzed and described. It is a book
which no teacher or student who wishes to keep abreast of the times
can afford to be without.

Although Herr Hey is a disciple of Wagner, he is a cosmopolitan
admirer of all that is good in every style of the past and present. In
the elaborate scheme for the establishment of a conservatory in Munich
which Wagner submitted to King Ludwig, he dwells on the fact that
every student of song, whatever his ultimate aims, should be
instructed in Italian singing, in conjunction with the Italian
language. Herr Hey, too, admits that there is no branch of the Italian
method which the German teachers can afford to ignore. In the emission
of a mellow tone, the use of the portamento, in the treatment of
scales, of trills, and of other ornaments, and in facile vocalization
in general, all nations can learn from the Italians. But the Italian
method does not go far enough. It does not meet the demands of the
modern opera and the modern music-drama. It delights too much in
comfortable solfeggios, in linked sweetness long drawn out, which soon
palls on the senses. The modern romantic and dramatic spirit demands
more characteristic, more vigorous, more varied accents than Italian
song supplies. These dramatic accents are supplied by the German
method, and in this chiefly lies its superiority over the Italian
method.

Herr Hey uses a very happy comparison in trying to show the bad
consequences of relying too much on the Italian principles of vocal
instruction which have been current until lately in Germany as in all
other countries. Students, he says, are taught to fence with a little
walking-cane, and when it comes to the decisive battle they are
expected to wield a heavy sword. A most happy illustration this, I
repeat, for it indicates exactly what vocal teachers of the old school
are doing. They choose the easiest of the vowels and the easiest
melodic intervals, and make the pupils exercise on those constantly,
ignoring the more difficult ones; and the consequence is, that when,
subsequently, the pupils