24. I would recommend, in connection with breathing, some particular exercises in walking, pacing, striding, and running. Also, using the arms in all the movements from graceful to forcible; i. c., from sweeps to direct strokes, upward and downward, with varying degrees of force. The movements should be in accordance with the swell and stroke of vocal action in expulsion, explosion, and effusion, voice and action keeping time together.

CHAPTER III.

Pitch.

25. THE most elementary knowledge of music will serve to explain the technical terms common to this science, and that of speech, and also to aid the student to an understanding of the similarities and differences of their application in each, necessary to a correct apprehension of their employment in the latter.

In the musical scale, the progressions or variations through pitch are effected by a series of skipping or disconnected sounds, called discrete intervals, which may be individually prolonged at will upon a level line; i. e., at one point of the scale, the sound neither rising nor falling in pitch.

On the scale, the intervals between the first and second, second and third, fourth and fifth, fifth and sixth sounds are full tones. The distances between the third and fourth, seventh and eighth, are half-tones, or semitones. The intervals take their degree from these changes in the position of the notes, thus: from the first to the third, or from to e, on the piano-forte, is a discrete interval of a third.

But variation in pitch may be produced in another way; e. g., if the finger be moved with continued pressure along the string of a violin, from its lower attachment, upward or downward, while the bow is drawn, a mewing sound will be heard. The sound thus produced will be continuous, and will end at either a higher or lower pitch than that at

which it began, according as the finger is slid upward or downward. The effect upon the ear will be that of an uninterrupted sound, gliding from gravity to acuteness, or the reverse. This, on the violin, is called a slide, and is produced by a succession of changes in pitch so rapid as not to be separately discerned by the ear, and hence the result of one unbroken impulse of sound.

In the speaking voice, change of pitch, in the manner just described, is effected in the utterance of every syllable through some interval of the scale, and called a concrete interval.*

26. The speaking voice performs both the concrete and discrete transitions in pitch, the latter being as inseparable from any succession of syllabic sounds as the former from any individual utterance. To illustrate this: Suppose the pronoun I be given with earnest interrogation, expressing strong surprise, and it would pass through the rising concrete interval of probably eight notes of the musical scale. Then let the word fail be given immediately after the I, with the same interrogative surprise, though less earnestly than the first, and beginning at the same degree of the scale, and it will pass through the rising concrete of probably a fifth. Thus, we have an interrogative sentence. The voice, in passing from the termination of the first word to the commencement of the second must of necessity perform a skip or a discrete transition through an octave. A more advanced study of the subject will show us that this discrete movement, in the successive syllabic utterances of speech, is made either through proximate or (as in the instance given) through remote intervals.

*The term Concrete, etymologically considered, means grown together. The term Discrete is derived from DIS and CERNO, to see apart, or to distinguish.

If the sentence, "I am poor, and miserably old," be uttered with a plaintive expression, the syllabic utterances will pass through a semitone.

27. There is in speech still another mode of discrete transition through the degrees of pitch, produced by the voice passing discretely from acuteness to gravity, and the reverse, by intervals much smaller than a semitone, each point being touched by abrupt emissions of voice, following each other in rapid succession. The extent of the interval contained between these brief and rapid iterations is not known, nor is it important that it should be. The sound is well illustrated by the neighing of a horse, or by gurgling in the throat, and is called the Tremulous Scale of the Voice, or the Tremor.

The speaking scale progressing principally by whole tones, and not being limited, as in music, to the arrangement of tones and semitones, may be regarded as the compass of the voice, be that eight, twelve, sixteen, or more degrees. As the peculiarity of key arises from the fixed place of semitones, there can be, in the transitions of speech-melody through this scale of pitch, no change of key, and hence no modulation. This term modulation has been, and still is, popularly misapplied to denote the transi tions of voice through the speaking scale, but must be rejected from an accurate treatment of the subject of speaking sounds.

(1) Pitch is, then, a term representing any variation of the voice from gravity to acuteness.

(2) There are, in the use of speech-sounds, two kinds of transition in pitch: concrete, by a continuous or uninterrupted movement; and discrete, by a skipping or disconnected movement.

(3) Speech has four scales or modes of progression in pitch: the diatonic, the concrete, the tremulous, and the semitonic, known in music as the chromatic.

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(4) Intervals mark the distance between any two degrees of these scales, and are either concrete or discrete.

(5) Intonation in speech is the correct execution of the intervals of its several scales, and constitutes one of the chief elements of expression in spoken language.

(6) Melody of speech is an agreeable variation of these intervals on the successive syllables of language.

28. Science teaches that acuteness and gravity are the results of tension and relaxation, and consequently of rapid and slow vibration of the vocal chords attendant respectively upon the elevation and depression of the

larynx.

The larynx rises and the fauces contract in the utterance of acute sounds; the fauces dilate and the larynx

falls with the grave. The natural position for the production of high pitch elevates the chin slightly, low pitch depresses it, and in middle pitch the position is that of simple repose. We also study pitch in the five degrees of middle, low and lowest, high and highest.