An audience is asleep. Logic demands more warmth, more fire. Not at all.
Keep silent and the sleepers will awaken.
2. Sound, notwithstanding its many shades, should be homogeneous; that
is, as full at the end as at the beginning. The mucous membrane, the
lungs and the expiratory muscles have sole charge of its transmission.
The vocal tube must not vary any more for the loud tone than for the low
tone. The opening must be the same. The low tone must have the power of
the loud tone, since it is to be equally understood. The acoustic organs
should have nothing to do with the transmission of sound. They must be
inert so that the tone may be homogeneous. The speaker or singer should
know how to diminish the tone without the contraction of the back part
of the mouth.
To be homogeneous the voice must be ample. To render it ample, take high
rather than low notes. The dipthong _eu_ (like _u_ in muff), and the
vowels _u_ and _o_ give amplitude to sound. On the contrary, the tone
is meagre in articulating the vowels _e_, _i_ and _a_. To render the
voice ample, we open the throat and roll forth the sound. The more the
sound is _circumvoluted_, the more ample it is. To render the voice
resonant, we draw the tongue from the teeth and give it a hollow form;
then we lower the larynx, and in this way imitate the French horn.
3. The voice should always be sympathetic, kindly, calm, and noble, even
when the most repulsive things are expressed.
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