Excerpt from Voice Culture for Children, Vol. 1: A Practical Primer on the Cultivation and Preservation of Young Voices, With Exercises for the Use of Schools, Choirs, Solo-Boys, Etc.; Instructions

The primary purpose of this work is to supply a practical primer on the subject of voice-production for boys and girls.

With so many subjects pressing for attention, few schools are able to devote much time to voice-production and singing, however fully the importance of these subjects may be realised. A boy's vocal career, too, is distressingly short, and it is absolutely necessary to secure the best possible results in the shortest time. I am confident that, so far from necessitating a further expenditure of precious hours, teachers will find that these lessons and the accompanying exercises will, in practice, save time.

I have striven throughout to avoid technical and physiological terms and to use only such clear and simple language as youthful scholars can understand. Many Of the lessons might, in fact, be read out in Class almost word for word, but where explanations are needed the diagrams and illustrations will almost suffice. I have endeavoured always to give the reasons why certain methods are recommended and others deprecated, holding that it is Of the utmost importance in singing, where so much depends upon intelligence, that a child should clearly understand the purpose of whatever he or she is asked to do.

My task has been one of some little difficulty, for without going deeply into questions which are better dealt with in more elaborate treatises it is by no means easy to Cxplain the essential principles underlying the production of that pure, refined tone to which the singing of children, especially boys, owes its transcendent attractiveness.

Reference is more than once made in these pages to the differing vowel pronunciation in the North of England and the South. The matter has a bearing on tone-production the importance of which can hardly be exaggerated, and I am hopeful that the exercises here Offered will do something at least towards eliminating that unpleasant throaty enunciation which London Children (as an example) both in singing and in speaking, have a tendency to adopt.

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