. Garcia the centenarian and his times; being a memoir of Manuel Garcia's life and labours for the advancement of music and science. begantaking her through all the Italian operatic day she was struggling to execute a partic-ularly difficult phrase, and at last burst out crying, You ought not to give me these songs until Ihave mastered the exercises properly. Yourequite right, he answered, and took her back tothe exercises once more. Until Antoinette Sterling commenced her train-ing under him she used the full extent of her voice,singing from the D below middle C to the topsoprano C
. Garcia the centenarian and his times; being a memoir of Manuel Garcia's life and labours for the advancement of music and science. begantaking her through all the Italian operatic day she was struggling to execute a partic-ularly difficult phrase, and at last burst out crying, You ought not to give me these songs until Ihave mastered the exercises properly. Yourequite right, he answered, and took her back tothe exercises once more. Until Antoinette Sterling commenced her train-ing under him she used the full extent of her voice,singing from the D below middle C to the topsoprano C sharp—a range of three octaves. Shesang all the contralto arias from opera and oratorio,and at the same time felt equally at home with thesoprano roles. The first thing her new master did on hearingher was to make the remark, If you continue asyou have been doing, do you know what willhappen ? Look at this piece of elastic. I take itfirmly at the two ends and stretch it. What isthe result ? It becomes thin in the middle. If Iwere to continue to do this constantly, it would getweaker and weaker, until finally it would rhoto by M^^JlLc Elliott & Fry, Baker Street, London, II. SGlL^W<i\CjL^ CHARLES SANTLEY AND ANTOINETTE STERLING. 221 It is thus with the human voice. Cultivate anextended range, and keep on singing big notes atboth extremes, and the same thing will occur whichwe have seen with the elastic. Your voice willgradually weaken in the middle. If you persist inthis course long enough, it will break, and theorgan be rendered useless. For this reason hestrongly advised her to abandon the higher notes,confining herself to genuine contralto music. More-over, with the reduced range, he told her strictlyto avoid practising on the extremes, to use them aslittle as possible, and build up her voice by exercis-ing the middle portion of it. It is an invaluablehint for all singers. His pupil realised the wisdomof what he said, and from that time onwards ceasedto use the t
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