Orthophony, Or, The Cultivation of the Voice in Elocution: A Manual of ...

4. Pity and Tenderness.

¡"Pure Tone: ""Subdued" Force: "Median" and "Vanishing Stress: High" Pitch: "Semitone Proper," and "Chromatic Fifth," throughout.)

MIRANDA, TO Ferdinand, WHEN HE IS UNDERGOING THE TASK OF CARRYING AND PILING LOGS, AT THE COMMAND OF HER FATHER. Shakespeare.

Alas! now, pray you,

Work not so hard: I would the lightning had
Burned up those logs, that you are enjoined to pile!
Pray, set it down and rest you: when this burns,
'T will weep for having wearied you. My father
Is hard at study, - pray now, rest yourself:
He's safe for these three hours.

If you'll sit down,

I'll bear your logs the while: pray, give me that, -
I'll carry it to the pile!

5. Tenderness.

("Pure Tone: " "Subdued" Force: "Median Stress: " 66 'High" Pitch: "Semitone" through the first three lines.)

GRAY'S ELEGY.

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires ;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

"Pure Tone: "

6. Condolence.

"Subdued" Force: "Gentle" "Vanishing Stress: " "Middle" Pitch: "Semitone," throughout, with occasional "Chromatic Third" and "Fifth.")

CROMWELL, TO WOLSEY ON HIS DOWNFALL.

O my lord,

Shakespeare.

Must I then leave you? must I needs forego
So good, so noble, and so true a master?

Bear witness, all that have not hearts of iron,
With what a sorrow Cromwell leaves his lord.
The king shall have my service; but my prayers
Forever and forever shall be yours!

CHAPTER VIII.

"TIME."

THE chief characteristics of utterance, which are subjects of attention in vocal culture, are the "quality" of the voice, as sound, merely, and its "expression," as produced by "force," "stress," "melody" or "pitch," and "time," - properties equivalent to those which are comprehended in music under the heads of "quality," "dynamics " (force), "melody," and "rhythm" (the effect of the union of "accent," or comparative force, and "time," on the sequence of sounds).

The subject of "time" is that which remains to be discussed, as the ground of practical exercises in elocution.

"QUANTITY."

The study of time, as a measure of speech, will lead to the primary classification of single vowel sounds, as long or short, in duration, according to their character and expression, as elements of language. The contrast, in the duration of the "tonic element," or vowel sound, a, in the words male and female, will furnish examples; the a in the former being much longer, or, in other words, occupying a much larger space of time, in utterance, than the a in the latter. The technical designation of this property of vocal sounds is "quantity," implying quantity of time, or duration. The a of male is accordingly termed a "long," the a in female, a "short quantity." Such is the usual distinction recognized in prosody and applied to versification.

Syllables, when regarded in connection with the "quantities of their component elements, and classified for the purposes of elocution, have been arranged by Dr. Rush, under the following denominations :

1st. "Immutable," or such as are, from the nature of their constituent sounds, incapable of prolongation. These are immutably fixed to the shortest "quantity" exhibited in an elementary sound, and cannot, even when accented, and uttered in solemn or in poetic expression, be prolonged, in any degree, without positive mispronunciation or destruction of the peculiar accent of the language; as the i, for example, in the word sick, or in the verb convict. "Immutable syllables terminate with an abrupt, or "atonic" element, preceeded by a short "tonic," as in the above examples.

HOTSPUR, EXCLAIMING ON HIS FATHER'S ILLNESS, AND CONSEQUENT
ABSENCE FROM THE CAMP AT SHREWSBURY. Shakespeare.
Sick now! droop now! This sickness doth infect
The very life-blood of our enterprise.

CATILINE, INDIGNANTLY DEFYING THE ROMAN SENATE. — Croly. Tried and convicted traitor! Who says this? Who'll prove it, at his peril, on my head?

2d. "Mutable" syllables are such as are constituted like the preceding, but are capable of a slight degree of prolongation, according to the nature of the feeling they express. The monosyllable yet, or the accented syllable of the word beset, uttered in the tone of any vivid emotion, will furnish an example. An instance occurs in the scene of the combat between Fitz James and Roderic Dhu, when the latter makes the taunting exclamation, "Not yet pre pared?"—and another in Blanche's dying warning,

"The path's beset, by flood and fell!

3d. "Indefinite" syllables are those which contain, or terminate with, a "tonic " element, or with any "subtonic"

but b, d, or g. The time occupied in the enunciation of such sounds is properly determined by the degree of feeling which they are, for the moment, used to express; as we perceive in the different tones of the following examples: the first in Hamlet's admiring exclamation, "What a piece of work is a man!" and Lady Macbeth's indignant and reproachful interrogation addressed to her husband, when he stands horror-stricken at the vision of the ghost of Banquo, "Are you a man?"

The power and beauty of vocal "expression are necessarily dependent, to a great extent, on the command which a reader or speaker possesses over the element of “quantity." Milton in his " Paradise Lost" affords innumerable examples of the majestic grandeur of long "quantities " in epic verse; and without the just observance of these the reading of the noblest passages in that poem becomes flat and dry.

A long-continued practice on the elements of the language, on syllables, words, and phrases, will be well bestowed in the endeavor to acquire a perfect command of " quantity."

The following exercises need close attention to the firmness, clearness, decision, and purity of the opening "radical," and the delicacy and distinctness of the "vanish." The latter should be occasionally practised in that long-protracted form, which, as Dr. Rush has expressively said, "knits sound to silence." The elements may be practised in "effusive," "explusive," and "explosive" utterance, on all the chief intervals of "slide" and "wave," commencing with the "second," and extending to the octave, both upward and downward, and on the various degrees of "force” and modes of "stress," together with the distinctions of "pitch," and the " expression" of the chief charac teristic emotions; as awe, reverence, fear, horror, despair. anger, grief, joy, love, etc.

1. Examples of Long" Quantities" and "Indefinite"