Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 19, Number 87, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1898 — WOMAN’S SOPRANO VOICE. [ARTICLE]

WOMAN’S SOPRANO VOICE.

Why She t'nii Bench Mach Higher Tones Thnn Is I‘omtlhle for Man. The scientist who discovered in the human larynx the anatomical reason why woman has a soprano voice and a man a bass one was a woman, Mrs. Emma Seiler, says the Philadelphia Times. She was a German, born in VVurtzburg. Left a widow with two children to support, she resolved to become a teacher of singing, bxit suddenly lost her voice. Then she determined to find out why; also to discover the correct method of singing, so that others might not lose their voices. For this purpose she studied anatomy. She dissected larynx after larynx and spent years in her search, trying to find for one thing why women’s head tones could reach high C while men had no soprano tones. At length her search was rewarded. She discovered under the microscope one day two small, wedge-shaped cartilages whose action, produces the highest tones of the human voice. She made her discovery public. It excited great attention among scientists. Her own brother, a physician, praised the treatise in the highest terms till he found his own sister had written it. Then he dashed it down, suyieg in a rage that she would be better attending to her housework. Mine. Seiler's portrait, a marble relief, is in possession of the American Philosophical society of Philadelphia, of w hich she was a member. She wrote, among other books, “The Voice in Singing-" and “The Voice in Speaking.”