Excerpt
THE HEALTHFULNESS OF SINGING.
The boy's voice, though an immature organ of delicate structure, is capable of much work, providing only that its mechanism be rightly used and not forced. Some people are unnecessarily nervous about boys; as a rule, under competent guidance, they will get nothing but good from vocal work. A cathedral organist wrote to me the other day:—
"Our best solo boy, who has a splendid voice and who sings beautifully, has been unwell, and the Dean and Chapter doctor (who has an idea that every choir-boy should be as robust as a plough-boy) has just stated that the boy is too feeble to remain in the choir. Notwithstanding my remonstrances, the Dean and Chapter decided yesterday to uphold the doctor. I tried his voice last week, and he sang with full, rich tone up to the C above the stave, and that after he had been skating from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. I should have thought that a boy who could skate all day could not be in such a 'feeble' state as represented by the medical man. Three months ago a boy with a beautiful voice was sent away for the same reason. So you see what uphill work it is for me."
It is to be hoped that fastidiousness of this sort is not common. The abuse of the voice may lead, of course, to serious results. In the New York Medical Record of March 21, 1885, p. 317, there is a case recorded of the bursting of a blood vessel through too energetic singing, but this is altogether abnormal, and beyond the scope of our enquiry. The voice, properly used, will last as long as any other organ, and it benefits by exercise. Mr. D. W. Rootham of Bristol, who now at middle age has a strong constitution and a fine baritone voice, tells me that as a boy at Cambridge he sang for seven years at five services every Sunday. The thing seems incredible, and it is an extreme case, though it shows what work the voice, properly managed, will do.
Singing, it should be remembered, promotes health. It does so indirectly by causing cheerfulness, a genial flow of spirits, and the soothing of the nerves. It does so directly by increasing the action of the lungs. So far as these organs are concerned, singing is a more energetic form of speech. As we sing we breathe deeply, bring more air into contact with the lungs, and thus vitalise and purify the blood, giving stimulus to the faculties of digestion and nutrition. A physiologist, in fact, can trace the effects of singing from the lungs into the blood, from the blood into the processes of nutrition, back again into the blood, into the nerves, and finally into the brain, which of all organs is most dependent upon healthful and well-oxygenated blood. Dr. Martin (organist of St. Paul's Cathedral) has had many years' experience in training choir-boys, and he tells me that he has never known a boy to injure his voice, or lose it through singing. It is a question of method; if the voice be used properly it will stand any amount of work. He has seen boys disposed to consumption improve in health after joining the choir. The medical man who declared that if there were more singing there would be less coughing, expressed in a graphic way the healthful influence of vocal practice....