The Art of Enrico Caruso, Vol. II -- Parts 1 through 3 -- Introduction
1 – In the last clip I said I would return with the [e] and [i] vowels and I will, but the [a] vowel needs fuller investigation and it is necessary. The primary goal of Part 1 is to lay the platform, the foundation for working and developing the voice.
2 – So we begin where it begins: Lesson one: Principle one: How to address the voice--The Singing Stance to include mouth open for a perfectly formed [a] vowel on a top note and on a comfortable pitch. No principle is more valuable or more fundamental.
THE SINGING STANCE
1 – What follows is designed to create an interest in a singing stance because to mention it creates no interest. If I were to ask a pro tennis player the stance/body position when ball meets racket in a serve, or a pro golfer the same question when club face meets ball in a tee shot, they would know exactly what I ask and show me with great interest explaining everything about it. If I were to ask a singer the stance for a perfect [a] vowel on top C, instead of getting right to it, more often than not, he would give me the fisheye. Even if one can’t sing a perfect [a] vowel on a top note, one should know what it looks like, what one is shooting for. Furthermore, what has been published as correct singing posture is a hard sell, because it’s so unnatural. Even though the sincere student attempts to incorporate it into their “technique,” they do not gravitate to it. The singing stance, as singing itself, came in with nature, man discovered, not man invented, and for complete vocal development we ought to know what that singing stance is, or that it even exists. To help establish stance as a reality for singers, we have to look at stance where it is a reality: athletics.
2 – An intelligent “look” at stance is a dispassionate look at the role stance plays in the effectiveness of athletic art. And singers, let’s get it straight right now: an operatic or concert performance, or a vocal workout is as athletic for a singer as Swan Lake is for a ballerina, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D-Major is for a violinist, Beethoven’s Fifth is for a conductor, or a prize fight is for a boxer. Singers use of their bodies what’s required for their art.
3 – We instinctively know what is behind a pro golfer’s stance as he addresses a tee shot—even if we have never connected with a golf-ball. We do not question an Olympic sprinter’s stance within the blocks for a 100 meter dash; or why a boxer has his dukes up when the bell rings. All have a stance that makes absolute sense to us when they approach their art, a stance designed for one purpose: to get the most out of their instruments, their bodies, for that expression. This is obvious and this is what they train. For singers, stance is equally important.
4 – In the mid-eighties I met Dan, a fellow who played baseball for the Cincinnati Red Sox farm team during their hey-day, the championship years of the Big Red Machine—mid-seventies. He gave baseball clinics for neighboring high schools and I met him where he instructed for a neighborhood baseball complex. He told me some great stories. None had anything to do with singing, and why this one lends itself to an objective look at stance.
5 – From the beginning, Major League Baseball (MLB) players viewed film of the historically great sluggers—Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, et al.—for the fun of watching them crush the ball; watching their bodies ripple through the swing at impact and awed by it. They soon began to take that film, frame by frame, to identify the stance, as best they could, when ball met bat. Stance, instinctively, was the point of power, and the seat of that power was their center of gravity. How did these men wrap their bodies around their center-line of gravity at the moment ball met bat? This was their soul focus.
6 – Once discerned, they checked the stance that launched the swing to get it there, and bat follow-through after impact (mistakes, such as swinging at a bad pitch, registered here). But first-things first: the point of power at impact: the stance that allowed maximum potential.
7 – When the technology became available, these athletes/artists/performers applied 3-D computer graphics to that one frame, and stripped the flesh from the bones (forget muscle; get the bones right), and ran the 3-D camera 360 degrees around the subject. They calculated their centerline of gravity and observed where it ran through their body noting intersects with vertebrae, chest, and head. Hip and shoulder axis were indicated to identify their relationship to each other at impact. They ran the camera to the front of the figure to check the bat center-line for alignment with the batter’s center-line at impact. When the timing was perfect, the center-line for batter and bat was one. You have to love how these fellows approached their art. If stance is this important to the ballplayer, might stance be as important for the singer?
8 – It was Dan’s story who made the singing stance come alive for me; indeed, without it, I wouldn't have a platform.
9 – Needless to say, stance is not only real for the MLB player, but also their first consideration—you might say, lesson one: how to hold the bat. Stance is the foundation of their art, their power, and it is obvious to all, even to those who have never played organized baseball. The singing stance, the one comparable to the batting stance for the pro ballplayer, is not as obvious, and why I relate the story. But what is true for the ballplayer is true for the singer, but I have to talk baseball in hopes of getting a singer’s attention. Years later came the exclamation point. While watching a World Series playoff game, I saw a batter step in the batter’s box as daintily as a ballerina—one toe at a time—and thought: what an art! What attention to detail.
10 – The batter’s stance is for the express purpose of engaging his entire body of available energy for maximum out-put, which always includes minimum effort. The singer’s stance is for the same purpose. (Right now our concern is with addressing the voice for development. Once developed, a singer will take stance in stride and the music, what’s to be expressed, will determine the singer’s setup.) For the ballplayer in that infinitesimal nano-second before ball meets bat, the muscles are set, stretched for action with just enough tension to grip the bat until ball meets bat. Then the muscles in one organic whole come alive and exploded on the ball; it’s called timing, a talent. What did the muscles, the biceps, triceps, quadriceps, etc., do once the pitch was hit? Well, that’s a major point: the ballplayers didn’t care. Get stance right and you get bones right; get bones right, and you get muscles right because muscles are attached to bone and, in stance, bones are right. Muscles will take care of themselves. (It is here our published vocal pedagogues have made a hodgepodge of things vocal while hiding behind anatomical and physiological verbiage.) The ballplayers worked out, bodies well tuned, but they documented stance—an instinct obeyed.
11 – The Art of Hitting: 300, by Charlie Lau (New York: Hawthorn/Dutton, 1980), is one book one can judge from the cover. The entire cover, front and back, is comprised of 120 frames of one complete and perfect swing of the bat spread over 4 rows of 30 frames each. The batsman, George Brett, and Charlie Lau were pals and Brett was batting champ a couple of seasons. At the time of publication, Mr. Lau was batting instructor for the Chicago White Sox, but began his ML career behind the plate catching for the Detroit Tigers. It was here he began to watch hitters. Listening to how he thought about his art was a kind of music.
12 – There is a full page (59) photograph of Babe Ruth in batting stance and Mr. Lau has to say: “If the greatest player the game has ever produced held his bat a certain way, you’ve just got to figure there’s a reason.” Is that genius, common sense, or is common sense, genius? It raises the question: if the greatest singer of songs the art has ever produced held his head a certain way, and opened his mouth a certain way, you’ve just got to figure there’s a reason. Ya gotta love Charlie Lao.
13 – By right, singers, I can leave this discussion right here. What works for Charlie Lau, works for me. We have the greatest singer that ever lived, Enrico Caruso, captured in performance (stance). If that’s not a guiding light, I don’t know what is; and if ever “one is as good as million” applies, this is where. Of course, we have
JOAN SUTHERLAND:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CcCS5zgWvI&feature=related
KIRSTEN FLAGSTAD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAo_fTiZ2hY&feature=related
MATTEO MANUGUERRA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LxcmOxTqmM&feature=PlayList&p=C27190CCE5F8141B&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1
BENIAMINO GIGLI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPKBkjamc_s&feature=related
and ENRICO CARUSO 1:41 into this performance holding an [a] vowel on top A-natural in infr[a]nto in “Vesti la giubba.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeBpKNRpKZQ&feature=related
14 – These singers all have the obvious in common: they can sing. But how they stand and open their mouths is what we are about--lesson one (How the Babe holds his bat).
15 – If our published vocal pedagogues studied our art the way pro baseball players study their art, we may not have had to spend time attempting to create an interest in a singing stance. (See the Addendum.)
16 – With your imagination, singers, we apply the same computer graphics to the full length photograph of Caruso captured in this performance photo, remove all flesh just as the MLB players did and for the same reason: to identify the bones in stance. We insert where his center of gravity runs through his body and notice his head is balanced on it; no muscle (energy) wasted here. But the information I wish to communicate over all else we discover with the image-enhancement tool, and zero-in on Caruso’s TMJ to witness the interface of jaw (mandible) bone and head (temporal) bone; no bone set-up is more valuable. This articulation has nothing to do with voice, however; that is, we can find it without making a sound, as a skeleton would if it could. Once we do, we learn that this interface of head and jaw at the TMJ, this [a] vowel for Caruso on top A, is truly nothing more than a brace. If he were to run a two-octave scale, middle C to top C, he opens his mouth for the top C and sings the whole two octaves without moving a thing. The TMJ braces the throat open, and allows the laryngeal and pharyngeal muscles maximum function over two full octaves. The sensation of “brace” is not evident (necessary) during the first octave, but makes its presence known on the second. It has to be worked-in, daily, as in learning how to write your name or how to swing a bat.
17 – A point in Nature: All vertebrates make their sounds or sing their songs with their heads up: wolves, elephants, goats, horses, pigs, lions, you name it. Imagine a nightingale singing to worms in the ground and you’ll see how absurd the thought is. Of course these creatures want to be heard (genius), and for animals it’s an instinct, which sheds light on the art of singing: (1) All instincts stem from and are rooted in the mother of all instincts: survival. Animals know how to survive. (2) No animal is exempt from an instinct. We are animals.
18 – Think back; revisit your childhood when you were just a little animal running around unpolluted by adulthood (and voice teachers). How did you know to lift your head when you cupped your hands around your mouth to call out to your pals across the school yard, ball park, or down the road?—“Yo, Paul, Andrea,” or whomever. (Go ahead; try it.) Were you conscious then that sound waves travel a trajectory, just as do baseballs and bullets? Maybe, maybe not; I do know in there is an instinct. If you want your voice to carry—perhaps drape your entire audience in sound—I suggest you sing to the rafters. Indeed, that is what I am here to document—at least attempt.
19 – Now we string up the larynx with “A Little Anatomy,” and that’s what it is, a little and in as few words as possible. To my knowledge this first principle for developing the voice has never been established. Indeed, a singing posture/stance diametrically opposed holds roost and has for generations. So we take this opportunity to document the dichotomy where published to expose it for its falsehood, the debilitating effects on vocal development, and in hopes of eliminating this thinking from the art of teaching voice. Also, these authors promote a vocal technique based on this posture, which is not possible—one that supports vocal growth, that is, and where their technique contravenes what we teach, we document that, too, and explain why their posture lends itself to vocal abuse and burnout. Again, this is in hopes of removing this incorrect thinking from the teaching of “vocal technique.” Since the documentation has nothing to do with the video and vocal development, it’s included in the Addendum: Published Misinformation on Vocal Technique, and to be read after viewing the video—if you are interested. This is not for every body.
20 – It’s not my intention to grab a soap box, but I am well aware of the state of the art of teaching today reflected, as it is, in the state of the art of singing today, and when juxtaposed with the state of the art of yesteryear, the declivity is steep, a deep crevasse filled with dreams unfulfilled. The vocal technique published we aim to skew has polluted the teaching culture for some time now, and adopted and marketed by major schools of singing as “vocal technique.” Will this documentation help to eradicate these erroneous principles from the art of teaching? Probably not, nevertheless, it needs to be stated. The Addendum will serve that purpose.
The authors we quote refer to their publications listed here-under.
Frederick Matthias Alexander,The Alexander Technique: The Essential Writings (Secaucus, N.J.: Carroll Publishing Group, 1990),selected and introduced by Edward Maizal.
Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini, Caruso and Tetrazzini on The Art of Singing (New York: Dover Publication, Inc, 1975). Unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published by The Metropolitan Company, Publishers, New York, in 1909.
Barbara M. Doscher, The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice, 2nd Edition (Lanham, Md., The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1994).
Frieda Hempel, My Golden Age of Singing (Portland, Oregon: Amedeus Press, 1998).
Edgar Herbert-Caesari, The Voice of the Mind (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1951).
E. Herbert-Caesari, The Science and Sensations of Vocal Tone (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1938).
E. Herbert-Caesari, Tradition and Gigli (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1958).
E. Herbert-Caesari, The Alchemy of Voice (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1965).
E. Herbert-Caesari, The Vocal Truth (London: Robert Hale & Co., 1969).
Lilli Lehmann, How to Sing (Mineola, N. Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993). (First published in German and in English in 1902.)
William D. Leyerle, Vocal Development Through Organic Imagery (New York: Leyerle Publications, 1986).
Richard Miller, The Structure of Singing–System and Art in Vocal Technique (New York: Schirmer Books, 1986).
Lillian Nordica, Hints to Singers (Mineola, N. Y.: Dover Pulications, Inc., 1998). (First published in 1923.)
William Vennard, Singing, the Mechanism and the Technic (New York: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1967).
Henry Pleasants, The Great Singers – from The Dawn of Opera to Our on Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966).
2 – So we begin where it begins: Lesson one: Principle one: How to address the voice--The Singing Stance to include mouth open for a perfectly formed [a] vowel on a top note and on a comfortable pitch. No principle is more valuable or more fundamental.
THE SINGING STANCE
1 – What follows is designed to create an interest in a singing stance because to mention it creates no interest. If I were to ask a pro tennis player the stance/body position when ball meets racket in a serve, or a pro golfer the same question when club face meets ball in a tee shot, they would know exactly what I ask and show me with great interest explaining everything about it. If I were to ask a singer the stance for a perfect [a] vowel on top C, instead of getting right to it, more often than not, he would give me the fisheye. Even if one can’t sing a perfect [a] vowel on a top note, one should know what it looks like, what one is shooting for. Furthermore, what has been published as correct singing posture is a hard sell, because it’s so unnatural. Even though the sincere student attempts to incorporate it into their “technique,” they do not gravitate to it. The singing stance, as singing itself, came in with nature, man discovered, not man invented, and for complete vocal development we ought to know what that singing stance is, or that it even exists. To help establish stance as a reality for singers, we have to look at stance where it is a reality: athletics.
2 – An intelligent “look” at stance is a dispassionate look at the role stance plays in the effectiveness of athletic art. And singers, let’s get it straight right now: an operatic or concert performance, or a vocal workout is as athletic for a singer as Swan Lake is for a ballerina, Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D-Major is for a violinist, Beethoven’s Fifth is for a conductor, or a prize fight is for a boxer. Singers use of their bodies what’s required for their art.
3 – We instinctively know what is behind a pro golfer’s stance as he addresses a tee shot—even if we have never connected with a golf-ball. We do not question an Olympic sprinter’s stance within the blocks for a 100 meter dash; or why a boxer has his dukes up when the bell rings. All have a stance that makes absolute sense to us when they approach their art, a stance designed for one purpose: to get the most out of their instruments, their bodies, for that expression. This is obvious and this is what they train. For singers, stance is equally important.
4 – In the mid-eighties I met Dan, a fellow who played baseball for the Cincinnati Red Sox farm team during their hey-day, the championship years of the Big Red Machine—mid-seventies. He gave baseball clinics for neighboring high schools and I met him where he instructed for a neighborhood baseball complex. He told me some great stories. None had anything to do with singing, and why this one lends itself to an objective look at stance.
5 – From the beginning, Major League Baseball (MLB) players viewed film of the historically great sluggers—Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, et al.—for the fun of watching them crush the ball; watching their bodies ripple through the swing at impact and awed by it. They soon began to take that film, frame by frame, to identify the stance, as best they could, when ball met bat. Stance, instinctively, was the point of power, and the seat of that power was their center of gravity. How did these men wrap their bodies around their center-line of gravity at the moment ball met bat? This was their soul focus.
6 – Once discerned, they checked the stance that launched the swing to get it there, and bat follow-through after impact (mistakes, such as swinging at a bad pitch, registered here). But first-things first: the point of power at impact: the stance that allowed maximum potential.
7 – When the technology became available, these athletes/artists/performers applied 3-D computer graphics to that one frame, and stripped the flesh from the bones (forget muscle; get the bones right), and ran the 3-D camera 360 degrees around the subject. They calculated their centerline of gravity and observed where it ran through their body noting intersects with vertebrae, chest, and head. Hip and shoulder axis were indicated to identify their relationship to each other at impact. They ran the camera to the front of the figure to check the bat center-line for alignment with the batter’s center-line at impact. When the timing was perfect, the center-line for batter and bat was one. You have to love how these fellows approached their art. If stance is this important to the ballplayer, might stance be as important for the singer?
8 – It was Dan’s story who made the singing stance come alive for me; indeed, without it, I wouldn't have a platform.
9 – Needless to say, stance is not only real for the MLB player, but also their first consideration—you might say, lesson one: how to hold the bat. Stance is the foundation of their art, their power, and it is obvious to all, even to those who have never played organized baseball. The singing stance, the one comparable to the batting stance for the pro ballplayer, is not as obvious, and why I relate the story. But what is true for the ballplayer is true for the singer, but I have to talk baseball in hopes of getting a singer’s attention. Years later came the exclamation point. While watching a World Series playoff game, I saw a batter step in the batter’s box as daintily as a ballerina—one toe at a time—and thought: what an art! What attention to detail.
10 – The batter’s stance is for the express purpose of engaging his entire body of available energy for maximum out-put, which always includes minimum effort. The singer’s stance is for the same purpose. (Right now our concern is with addressing the voice for development. Once developed, a singer will take stance in stride and the music, what’s to be expressed, will determine the singer’s setup.) For the ballplayer in that infinitesimal nano-second before ball meets bat, the muscles are set, stretched for action with just enough tension to grip the bat until ball meets bat. Then the muscles in one organic whole come alive and exploded on the ball; it’s called timing, a talent. What did the muscles, the biceps, triceps, quadriceps, etc., do once the pitch was hit? Well, that’s a major point: the ballplayers didn’t care. Get stance right and you get bones right; get bones right, and you get muscles right because muscles are attached to bone and, in stance, bones are right. Muscles will take care of themselves. (It is here our published vocal pedagogues have made a hodgepodge of things vocal while hiding behind anatomical and physiological verbiage.) The ballplayers worked out, bodies well tuned, but they documented stance—an instinct obeyed.
11 – The Art of Hitting: 300, by Charlie Lau (New York: Hawthorn/Dutton, 1980), is one book one can judge from the cover. The entire cover, front and back, is comprised of 120 frames of one complete and perfect swing of the bat spread over 4 rows of 30 frames each. The batsman, George Brett, and Charlie Lau were pals and Brett was batting champ a couple of seasons. At the time of publication, Mr. Lau was batting instructor for the Chicago White Sox, but began his ML career behind the plate catching for the Detroit Tigers. It was here he began to watch hitters. Listening to how he thought about his art was a kind of music.
12 – There is a full page (59) photograph of Babe Ruth in batting stance and Mr. Lau has to say: “If the greatest player the game has ever produced held his bat a certain way, you’ve just got to figure there’s a reason.” Is that genius, common sense, or is common sense, genius? It raises the question: if the greatest singer of songs the art has ever produced held his head a certain way, and opened his mouth a certain way, you’ve just got to figure there’s a reason. Ya gotta love Charlie Lao.
13 – By right, singers, I can leave this discussion right here. What works for Charlie Lau, works for me. We have the greatest singer that ever lived, Enrico Caruso, captured in performance (stance). If that’s not a guiding light, I don’t know what is; and if ever “one is as good as million” applies, this is where. Of course, we have
JOAN SUTHERLAND:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CcCS5zgWvI&feature=related
KIRSTEN FLAGSTAD:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAo_fTiZ2hY&feature=related
MATTEO MANUGUERRA:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LxcmOxTqmM&feature=PlayList&p=C27190CCE5F8141B&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1
BENIAMINO GIGLI:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPKBkjamc_s&feature=related
and ENRICO CARUSO 1:41 into this performance holding an [a] vowel on top A-natural in infr[a]nto in “Vesti la giubba.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeBpKNRpKZQ&feature=related
14 – These singers all have the obvious in common: they can sing. But how they stand and open their mouths is what we are about--lesson one (How the Babe holds his bat).
15 – If our published vocal pedagogues studied our art the way pro baseball players study their art, we may not have had to spend time attempting to create an interest in a singing stance. (See the Addendum.)
16 – With your imagination, singers, we apply the same computer graphics to the full length photograph of Caruso captured in this performance photo, remove all flesh just as the MLB players did and for the same reason: to identify the bones in stance. We insert where his center of gravity runs through his body and notice his head is balanced on it; no muscle (energy) wasted here. But the information I wish to communicate over all else we discover with the image-enhancement tool, and zero-in on Caruso’s TMJ to witness the interface of jaw (mandible) bone and head (temporal) bone; no bone set-up is more valuable. This articulation has nothing to do with voice, however; that is, we can find it without making a sound, as a skeleton would if it could. Once we do, we learn that this interface of head and jaw at the TMJ, this [a] vowel for Caruso on top A, is truly nothing more than a brace. If he were to run a two-octave scale, middle C to top C, he opens his mouth for the top C and sings the whole two octaves without moving a thing. The TMJ braces the throat open, and allows the laryngeal and pharyngeal muscles maximum function over two full octaves. The sensation of “brace” is not evident (necessary) during the first octave, but makes its presence known on the second. It has to be worked-in, daily, as in learning how to write your name or how to swing a bat.
17 – A point in Nature: All vertebrates make their sounds or sing their songs with their heads up: wolves, elephants, goats, horses, pigs, lions, you name it. Imagine a nightingale singing to worms in the ground and you’ll see how absurd the thought is. Of course these creatures want to be heard (genius), and for animals it’s an instinct, which sheds light on the art of singing: (1) All instincts stem from and are rooted in the mother of all instincts: survival. Animals know how to survive. (2) No animal is exempt from an instinct. We are animals.
18 – Think back; revisit your childhood when you were just a little animal running around unpolluted by adulthood (and voice teachers). How did you know to lift your head when you cupped your hands around your mouth to call out to your pals across the school yard, ball park, or down the road?—“Yo, Paul, Andrea,” or whomever. (Go ahead; try it.) Were you conscious then that sound waves travel a trajectory, just as do baseballs and bullets? Maybe, maybe not; I do know in there is an instinct. If you want your voice to carry—perhaps drape your entire audience in sound—I suggest you sing to the rafters. Indeed, that is what I am here to document—at least attempt.
19 – Now we string up the larynx with “A Little Anatomy,” and that’s what it is, a little and in as few words as possible. To my knowledge this first principle for developing the voice has never been established. Indeed, a singing posture/stance diametrically opposed holds roost and has for generations. So we take this opportunity to document the dichotomy where published to expose it for its falsehood, the debilitating effects on vocal development, and in hopes of eliminating this thinking from the art of teaching voice. Also, these authors promote a vocal technique based on this posture, which is not possible—one that supports vocal growth, that is, and where their technique contravenes what we teach, we document that, too, and explain why their posture lends itself to vocal abuse and burnout. Again, this is in hopes of removing this incorrect thinking from the teaching of “vocal technique.” Since the documentation has nothing to do with the video and vocal development, it’s included in the Addendum: Published Misinformation on Vocal Technique, and to be read after viewing the video—if you are interested. This is not for every body.
20 – It’s not my intention to grab a soap box, but I am well aware of the state of the art of teaching today reflected, as it is, in the state of the art of singing today, and when juxtaposed with the state of the art of yesteryear, the declivity is steep, a deep crevasse filled with dreams unfulfilled. The vocal technique published we aim to skew has polluted the teaching culture for some time now, and adopted and marketed by major schools of singing as “vocal technique.” Will this documentation help to eradicate these erroneous principles from the art of teaching? Probably not, nevertheless, it needs to be stated. The Addendum will serve that purpose.
The authors we quote refer to their publications listed here-under.
Frederick Matthias Alexander,The Alexander Technique: The Essential Writings (Secaucus, N.J.: Carroll Publishing Group, 1990),selected and introduced by Edward Maizal.
Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini, Caruso and Tetrazzini on The Art of Singing (New York: Dover Publication, Inc, 1975). Unabridged and unaltered republication of the work originally published by The Metropolitan Company, Publishers, New York, in 1909.
Barbara M. Doscher, The Functional Unity of the Singing Voice, 2nd Edition (Lanham, Md., The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1994).
Frieda Hempel, My Golden Age of Singing (Portland, Oregon: Amedeus Press, 1998).
Edgar Herbert-Caesari, The Voice of the Mind (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1951).
E. Herbert-Caesari, The Science and Sensations of Vocal Tone (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1938).
E. Herbert-Caesari, Tradition and Gigli (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1958).
E. Herbert-Caesari, The Alchemy of Voice (London: Robert Hale Limited, 1965).
E. Herbert-Caesari, The Vocal Truth (London: Robert Hale & Co., 1969).
Lilli Lehmann, How to Sing (Mineola, N. Y.: Dover Publications, Inc., 1993). (First published in German and in English in 1902.)
William D. Leyerle, Vocal Development Through Organic Imagery (New York: Leyerle Publications, 1986).
Richard Miller, The Structure of Singing–System and Art in Vocal Technique (New York: Schirmer Books, 1986).
Lillian Nordica, Hints to Singers (Mineola, N. Y.: Dover Pulications, Inc., 1998). (First published in 1923.)
William Vennard, Singing, the Mechanism and the Technic (New York: Carl Fischer, Inc., 1967).
Henry Pleasants, The Great Singers – from The Dawn of Opera to Our on Time (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1966).