Expressive Voice Culture, Including the Emerson System by Jessie Eldridge Southwick
page 25 of 35 (71%)
page 25 of 35 (71%)
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motive. It is not the voice of entertainment, but of influence above all.
The orator should be taught self-mastery. The orator who is not moved by high moral sense is a trickster or a hypocrite; the former juggles with human susceptibility for unworthy or inadequate ends, and the latter poses for motives he has not. So complex is human nature that this can be done by a good actor so as to deceive the judgment and feelings; but the influence will ultimately reveal the truth, if the auditor will use intuition and not be taken off guard by the psychic influence of a strong will bent on a given effect. The sincere endeavor to express a quality, with the aspiration to make it real, has the tendency to focus the power of that quality and concentrate the mind upon it. This, by repetition of effort, both increases the power and facilitates its expression. One must come to think vividly in terms of expression. In the instance before us it should be in terms of vocal expression. Anything well expressed--unconsciously--is to real art what innocence is to virtue, or what the spontaneous grace of a child is to that grace as applied to forms definitely intended to communicate an ideal to others. Self-consciousness must precede super-self-consciousness. Unconsciousness is childishness in art, and leads to vagueness of meaning, to the perpetuation of personal idiosyncrasies; and while a larger consciousness may be induced from the mind side, positive and overwhelming inspiration will be needed to overcome habitual limitations. A musician must love music itself, as well as its meanings, and a voice cannot be made the best of by one who does not love its music. Self-consciousness represents the stage of work and endeavor where faults are being overcome, power enlarged, and new forms of activity mastered. This may be at first a hindrance to spontaneity, and seem to hamper the imagination; but as facility is acquired joy comes back, and the joy of conquest with the |
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