resonance of the chambers, the larynx giving no musical sound, but only a rush of air through the glottis. I gives the highest sound and U the lowest, the pitch of the notes being fixed by Helmholtz.[1] The importance of these three experiments consists in their clearly showing how the smallest deviation from a certain position produces a marked change of, resonance in the note, and an alteration in the colour of the vowel-sound.
The subject of Analysis of Language, so exhaustively treated by Professor Max Müller in connexion with ethnological research, and very critically entered into by Mr. Ellis in 'Speech in Song,' for the purpose of aiding the singer, is a very large one, and the following diagram of vowel-sounds, and table of consonants, are designed only to bring immediately under notice in a concentrated form the connexion between pure vowel-formation and articulation, and pure voice-production, and treat only of the principal sounds of the five languages already enumerated, as they must be sung.
The Italian vowels will be the starting-point, because they are the pure elementary sounds of language in general. On the line of the Phonic circle will be found all the vowel-sounds in the formation of which there is no initial contraction of the edge of the lips and no action of the point of the tongue. These sounds are placed in the order of vocal colour, and the numbers represent their importance for singing. The order of vowel-formation, in accordance with whispered vowel-sound, is as follows.
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In forming the German modified vowels 10, 12 and 19, there is more or less contraction of the inner edge of the lips. In the French u there is great contraction of the outer edge of the lips, and the end of the tongue presses slightly against the inside of the under lip, making the exit for the voice as small as is compatible with the emission of a vowel-sound. The three primary vowels A, I, U (Italian sound), give three definite, ultimate positions of the resonance chambers. A gives the most perfect tube, and therefore the largest, roundest sound. It is a mid-position with the best proportion of parts, and produces the normal singing vowel, the most gratifying of all the vowels as a question of sound. I has the mouth filled with tongue, its root and the larynx being raised, affording a very small flat exit for the voice, and requiring more lung-pressure in its emission. U gives the largest space in the resonance chambers, the tongue being retracted upon itself, with its root and the larynx drawn down. With the contraction and protrusion of the lips necessary to its formation it cannot be a sonorous vowel. If these sounds are purely pronounced, without that baneful stiffening of the root of the tongue so very general in this country, the secondary sounds 4 and 5 can be found by passing from one primary sound to another, and the other gradations in the same way. The sounds within the circle require the action of the lips and tongue. The three sounds 8, 14, and 9, above the circle, require care. The short flat English a in 'bat,' as spoken, begets a position of
- ↑ See Ellis's translation.
