voices; the chest or natural voice--which ranges over the whole of the
lower octave and the lower half of the higher octave--and the head-voice
or falsetto, which is commonly used throughout the whole of the
remainder of the upper octave, the higher notes of which can be reached
only in the falsetto. In passing from one 'voice' to the other,
especially while descending the scale, a break or crack may be observed
in the untutored and uncultivated voice. When this defect has been
overcome, and the student has acquired the power of passing from one
'voice' to the other without this break, the voice is said to be joined.
The soprano also has to contend with a similar difficulty. It often
requires many months of constant and unremitting practice to overcome
this natural defect of the vocal organ, and in some voices it is never
entirely conquered. An acute ear might often detect the faulty joining
of the voice, in both the Grisis, when executing a distant descending
interval. This obstacle meets the student at the very threshold of his
career; but we have met with many English taught amateurs, who were
altogether ignorant even of what was meant by joining the voice. In
fact, the art of singing, or of acquiring a mastery and control over the
voice, of remedying its defects, and developing its latent powers, is
comparatively unknown in England; our professors are for the most part
entirely ignorant of the capabilities of the human voice, as an
_instrument_, in the hands of the performer. Many of these observations
apply to our instrumental performers. With few exceptions, defective
training has, in this branch of the musical art, long prevented us from
producing performers of equal celebrity with those who have visited us
from the Continent. From them we have become acquainted with effects,
which we should have deemed the instruments on which they played wholly
incapable of producing. Our young professors now often follow these men
to their own country, there to learn of them that proficiency which they
would seek in vain to acquire at home.