What is the most frequent obstacle to good singing, the difficulty with which pupil and teacher most contend? Throat stiffness. What more than anything else mars the singing of those we hear in drawing-rooms, churches, and the concert room? Throat stiffness.

This is the vice that prevents true intonation, robs the voice of its expressiveness, limits its range, lessens its flexibility, diminishes its volume, and makes true resonance impossible.

This great interferer not only lessens the beauty of any voice, but directly affects the organ itself. The muscles of the larynx are small and delicate, and the adjustments they make in singing are exceedingly fine. When, however, the voice user stiffens his throat, these delicate muscles in their spontaneous effort to make the proper adjustments are compelled to contract with more than their normal strength. Every increase in throat stiffness demands a corresponding increase in muscle effort, an overexertion that persisted in must result in injury to the organ itself. Such misuse of the voice is bound to show injurious results. Every throat specialist knows this, and an untold multitude of those who, beginning with promise, have had to give up singing as a career, learn it too late.

Singers are so accustomed to the sound of their own voices as to be usually quite unconscious of their own throat stiffness, though they may recognize it in their neighbor.

Unfortunately throat stiffness by its very nature tends to aggravate itself, to constantly increase while the voice becomes less and less responsive to the singer's demands.

There are a number of contributing causes to throat stiffness, but the principal cause is throat consciousness and misplaced effort, due largely to current misconceptions regarding the voice. A common notion is that we sing with the throat, whereas we sing through it. Akin to this error is the notion, as common as it is fallacious, that force of tone, carrying power, originates in the larynx, whereas the initial tone due to the vibration of the vocal cords is in itself comparatively feeble. As shown at length in Chapters VI and VII, volume of tone, its color and carrying power, is acoustically and vocally a matter of resonance.

Many there are who sing by dint of sheer force and ignorance, but their careers are necessarily short. The too common vulgar striving for power rather than for beauty or purity of tone induces unnatural effort and strain that both directly and sympathetically affect the throat with stiffness.

Unnatural effort in breathing, over-effort in breath control, as well as singing without adequate breath, all induce tension that is reflected at once in the sensitive throat.

Impatience of results, American hurry, beget unnatural effort and tension. "Unclasp the fingers of a rigid civilization from off your throat." The student of the violin or the piano soon learns that only by a long and patient preparation can he fit himself to entertain even his admiring friends. The embryo singer, on the contrary, expects with far less expenditure of time and effort to appear in public.

The human voice is a direct expression of the man himself; it registers spontaneously his mental and emotional states, even when he would wish them hidden. Mental conditions tinged with impatience, with fear, or with anything that begets tension of any sort are reflected instantly in the voice, robbing it of its better qualities and inducing stiffness in the throat.

Reduced to its lowest terms voice culture to-day is a struggle with throat stiffness.

The causes indicate the remedy. Foremost, then, is dropping all throat consciousness, all thought of the throat, all drawing of attention to it. The larynx must be left uncramped, unhindered to do its work in free unconsciousness, which it will do if not disturbed by tension in its neighborhood, or by misdirected thought.

The stream of consciousness must in singing be directed to the breathing which is below the throat, and to resonance and pronunciation which are above it. These functions are more or less consciously controlled until at last mastery makes their action automatic.

I would once more emphasize the fact that the free use of all the resonance chambers, and the recognition of the great function of resonance, will do more than anything else to set the voice free and emancipate the singer from all interfering rigidity.