“Chest Voice” About two months ago, I received the following letter from a reader in Rouen. I would have liked to reply promptly, not only because the letter contains some infinitely kind and encouraging words for me as an occasional advocate and defender of the art of singing, but, more particularly, because it deals with a very important vocal problem on which I have for Noss MSU MRE o MENT (ce MTOM) oy Ley aarr yo aa Come forward my modest opinion. Here is the letter—or rather, the relevant portion of the letter: I write to ask you for a bit of advice. I never sing chest tones above E, and when it is not necessary to sing loudly, I even perform E-flat and D in a mixed voice. Although I have a solid and _ full-bodied pete Cae ee oO Clee Moone bBo Koyit is inadequate for loud tones. Indeed, all depends on circumstances. An expert singer such as you appear to be, Madame, can frequently project enough sound on low notes, piano, while using a “mixed voice.’ But such a singer must also be able to sing these notes as softly as possible with a “chest voice.” It is a mistake to think that this poor “chest voice,’ so discredited today, is reserved for heavy sonorities. BU Ne once mmooy nate I will single out a typical case which has prompted my long letter and on which case I beg your advice. I am referring to Debussy’s ““Chevaux de bois.” For many years, I have sung the following phrase: “Tournez aux sons du piston vainqueur” in a mixed voice, trying not to ruin my voice; and, sitting at the piano as I sing (since I always play my own accompaniments),the F-sharp on the syllable “queur’’ sounds a little shrill to me, especially in light of the vocal and instrumental crescendo. Obviously. Unless one has an exceptionally solid and full-bodied “passage”? (like, for example, Mlle Alice Raveau and the late Conchita Supervia), the F-sharp would never be loud enough in such a case, where, indeed, the word “‘vainqueur’’ is marked sff (UO I am not sure that Debussy thoroughly understood the mechanics of the human voice; but when he wrote this F-sharp, he undoubtedly “heard” it as strong and vibrant. Thus it is not surprising that, performing it in a medium register, you realized it was too weak. It could not be otherwise. But you did not merely think it was too weak; subconsciously, you also had the impression that it lacked the desired character, that it did not expresswhat it was meant to express. Again, you were right, as the following lines of your letter confirm. And so, this morning, as I was rehearsing “Les Chevaux de bois,’ which I was soon to perform for some friends, I was led for the first time, and somehow against my will, to support those last notes with a full chest voice. At first, I was startled, because the effect is somewhat vulgar; but after repeating it a couple of times, I realized it was not offensive, since the general mood of Verlaine’s poem is one of loud popular rejoicing, exactly as Debussy has conceived it. Here, Madame, you are perfectly right. By uttering that F-sharp in a “‘chest voice,’ you produced a full tone, clearly audible, facilitating good projection of the word. Moreover, you satisfied the obvious intention of the composer by evoking through a slightly vulgar tone color the picturesque vision of a country fair. But you had to benaturally able to do it, you had to possess that special sonority, your palette of sounds had to include that particular color—in short, you had to be able to produce that F-sharp with a “chest Pr voice. You will notice, Madame, that I always place the words “‘chest voice’? between quotation marks; the fact is that the expression is as imaccurate as “palatal voice,” “head voice,’ and so on. Such Coie) cats (os ET or according to a voice expert, oe conventional words aoe feXel etc ready understanding, for the voice is not produced in the chest any more than it is produced at the palate or in the head. By saying “chest tones,” “head tones,” and so on, we merely CES Teer KoMn a ME Vee OY No eoM eo tones resonate more or less exclusively. This said, I will drop the quotation marks in the interests of simplicity and say that the current denigration of the chest voice is absurd—this low opinion would havemade all the great singers of the past shrug their shoulders impatiently, for these tones are essential to the beauty of the voice. One has only to read the accounts of master teachers, to recall the leading singers we have heard and their own comments on this subject, or to listen to recordings made by the great cantatrices to be convinced that, first, chest tones are absolutely necessary to obtain richness, power, warmth, in any female voice; and, second, the use of chest tones has never caused harm to the upper register of the voice, as some would have us believe. To prove this, I shall limit myself to two or three telling examples. Lilli Lehmann, who, up to the last years of her life, performed with incomparable brilliance and purity the difficult high passages in The Abduction from the Seraglio, always ended the phrase “des Himmels Segen belohne dich”with a full chest-voice G in the medium register, even after the trill on the preceding A. And, although she ranged from indescribable sweetness to bravura high notes in the Act II aria “Non mi dir” from Don Giovanni, she did not hesitate—in Act I, when Donna Anna cries out for help—to scream (this is the right word): “Gente, servi!” on the A, middle range, chest voice. This is of course an exceptional case; nevertheless, it shows that this famous artist, despite the frequent use of chest tones (even some dangerous ones), left her marvelous top oem Clad Mme Emma Calvé recorded during a single session the aria of Mysoli with its hushed tones, the card scene from Carmen and the “Marseillaise,” using chest tones that take your breath away. Melba’s recordings of 1906, particularly the one including the “Air de la Folie” from the Thomas opera Hamlet, are irrefutable proof of the compatibility of a stronglysupported chest voice and a brilliant, clear and agile en tka To repeat, Madame: All the great singers have used the chest voice in the low register; they have done so, to be sure, with discernment and taste, with force or with tenderness as expression required. By low register I mean, for the contralto, the one that begins at E below middle C, and for the soprano, the one that extends from middle C up to F, first space. I consider these notes the pivotal points at which the voice must turn; it should be possible to feaoTe LCase MOU Cosa o Mo Cele mS sTCMmmeeLcro Heber} register. Many artists will go higher in chest tones if necessary. But this is not advisable, though Manuel Garcia, brother of the great Malibran and of Pauline Viardot, says that, in women’s voices, the chest register may extend up to C-sharp or D (I shall comment later on this matter). What is sure, for Saint-Saéns told me this, is that when Duprez wasteaching Mlle Miolan (later Mme Carvalho, who sang the premieres of Juliette, Baucis and Mireille in Gounod’s operas,? all particularly high roles), he had her sing runs up to B-flat in chest tones. “And,” added Saint-Saéns, “she must have had a very sturdy voice!” I agree; but there is a world of difference between this approach and banning chest tones in a register where they are natural and normal and serve an artistic purpose. Nothing is weaker, more woeful, duller and more distressing than the mixed register used below F. Many teachers today say that if the mixed voice is “correctly placed,” “correctly set”? and sounds good in the forehead cavities, it can replace the chest voice. Never, never, Madame, can this be a true substitute. After hearing so many thin-voiced Marguerites (though their voices were not thin because their chests lacked breadth, alas!), I remember the pleasure I had at the two thousandthperformance of Faust, hearing Mlle Yvonne Gall articulate on a well-supported, distinctive timbre, those famous words, inaudible for the past few years: “Je voudrais bien savoir quel était ce jeune homme” (“I would very much like to know who that young 99 Teer ae Following the death of M. Maton, who had been her regular accompanist, I often had the great honor of accompanying Mme Patti. By this time, she avoided the high altitudes even though she still had an admirable A, a beautiful B-flat and even a C that she reached valiantly and quickly. But the medium range of her voice was still incredibly velvety, limpid, subtle and generous. Considering the volume and caliber of her voice, she could have reached the low notes without having recourse to the chest voice, unlike so many female singers of our time who, already out of breath when singing A and G, must descend to those depths via the chest voice. Allthe same, in Zerlina’s first aria from Don Giovanni and in Cherubino’s second aria from The Marriage of Figaro, Mme Patti used a well-supported and Coen carb UTC ame yam Key Cocca TMEV METS CON A Css CK to the delight of the listening ear and to Mozart’s atk ado a The female singers I have mentioned so far, those who do not hesitate—without thinking about it—to use the chest voice in the low register, are all sopranos singing particularly high roles. In the same category, I might add Mme Nordica, Mme Gianina Russ, Mme Kousnetzoff, Mme Ponselle, Mme Blanche Marchesi (who, at the age of seventy-five, has just made some remarkable recordings), Mme Emma Eames, Mme Alda, Mme Geraldine Farrar (who, in the third act of Manon, sang some poignant chest notes), Mme Marguerite Carré, Mlle Garden, Mme Fanny Heldy, Mme Ninon Vallin, Mme Norena, and so forth and so on. It would be appropriate to addto this long list some particularly high sopranos, some illustrious specialists in light vocalises (coloraturas as they are rather ridiculously described today in view of the fact that the word vocalise is Koloratur in German)—veritable birds, in short, such as Mmes Barrientos, Verlet, Landouzy, Hidalgo, Tetrazzini and Marcella Sembrich. To this count, I must add the soprano Erna Sack, who to the best of my knowledge possesses the highest notes of any living singer, but who nonetheless, upon leaving the highest vocal ranges where she performs with such ease, fearlessly returns to the medium range by means of a few strongly emphasized notes and with no recourse to the mixed voice.