charm lies in his unerring choice of words, which suggest in
their sound, when rightly voiced, the atmosphere of the scene he is
painting. Lanier uses words as Corot uses colors. This gives the voice
its opportunity to bring out by subtle variations in _timbre_ the
variations in light and shade of an atmosphere. To read aloud,
sympathetically, once a day, Lanier's _The Symphony_ is the best
possible way to develop simultaneously all the elements of a vocal
vocabulary. We shall use this poem to-day as a text for our study in
tone-color. Let us omit the message of the violins and heavier strings,
and take the passage beginning with the interlude upon which the
flute-voice breaks:

But presently
A velvet flute-note fell down pleasantly
Upon the bosom of that harmony,
And sailed and sailed incessantly,
As if a petal from a wild rose blown
Had fluttered down upon that pool of tone
And boatwise dropped o' the convex side
And floated down the glassy tide
And clarified and glorified
The solemn spaces where the shadows bide.
From the warm concave of that fluted note
Somewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float,
As if a rose might somehow be a throat; ...

What an ideal for tone-color! Dare we think to make it ours? We must. We
must adopt it with confidence of attainment. Let me quote a little
further:

When Nature from her far-off glen
Flutes her soft messages to men,
The flute can say them o'er again;
Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone,
Breathes through life's strident polyphone
The flute-voice in the world of tone.

Read this passage aloud as a mere statement of fact, employing a
matter-of-fact tone. Gray in color, is it not? Now let your voice take
the color Lanier has blended for you. Let your tone, like a thing "half
song, half odor," float forth on these words and linger as only a
perfume can about the thought. Now let the tone change in color to
clarify and glorify the following message from the flute:[13]

[13] The extracts on pp. 279-287 are from Mr. Sidney Lanier's volume of
"Poems," published by Charles Scribner's Sons.

Sweet friends,
Man's love ascends
To finer and diviner ends
Than man's mere thought e'er comprehends.

I cannot, for lack of space, reprint the whole flute message, but you
will get the poem, if you have it not, and voice every word of it, I am
sure. Here are some of the most telling lines