Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1911 — TONES TO SUPPLANT WORDS [ARTICLE]

TONES TO SUPPLANT WORDS

Head of Musical Department of Los Angeles High School Has New Method of Harmony. Los Angeles. Cal.—Los Angeles eventually will be a paradise of perfect linguistics If the plans of those at the head of the music department of the public schools can carry out their modern ideas of voice using. The system lately introduced aims to make conversation a continuous harmony delight and to free it from many of the everyday defects of enunciation. Children are to be taught to form words and sentences as they would the phrases of a song and to have a mellifluous effect always in mind In speaking. Miss Katherine D. Stone, head or the musical department of the public schools here, has started on a tour of all the principal cities in the country with the purpose of giving and accepting suggestions as to the successful working out of the new method of voice culture. Each voice has a different dominant note, that is, a note upon which all the speaking sounds are based. From this note every modulation and inflection of the voice should be regulated. Usually in an ordinary sentence, unless the emotion ia violent, the dominant note is used at the commencement and different tones are afterward employed through the different colors of a sentence. Grief, hatred and enmity all have distinct and varied rules for correct intoning. Grief and deep emotion are expressed in the minor key entirely. Just as a song of sorrowful cast is written in a minor strain. In the exclamation. “Oh, my.” said sadly, the whole cromatic scale is employed for a complete octave. On the other hand, joy and conviction are shown by the major key and an ejaculation such as "Hurrah!” will in complicated order cover all but one major octave fro ma low note to a high one. ——-J In a question the high note should come at the point in the sentence when the query is most pronounced; thus, in “Where are you going?” the high note would come in “where,” but If a person asked the question to ■ingle oat a certain individual, thus.

“Where are you going?” the upper tone would be upon the “you.” Miss Truslow states that the Americans as a rule speak with a closed throat, which is not, only very inharmonious, but is deadening to the voice and causes a person of thirty to speak like one of fifty. The old Italian method of singing emphasized the Importance of the open throat. Other methods - have come and goner but this has survived as the true method of “bel canto.” All the words are formed on the lips and as far to the front of the teeth cm possible. In this way a correct speaker- can often be understood! by the movement of his lips alone. Nasal, throaty and harsh voices are all caused by the tone being produced in either the nose, throat or chest A child who Is shown how to place each tone correctly will always do so through force of habit. The~children are reported as taking readily/'to the new order of things in the schools and lectures have been given on the subject before various clubs In the city.