The Bel Canto Method
The simplest, most direct method of developing the voice and its technical control is the old Bel Canto method. Everyone has read the advertisements of teachers who announce the "genuine Bel Canto method" and most of us, knowing enough Italian to understand that the phrase means "beautiful singing," have wondered why some teachers seem to make a slogan of the phrase when one would suppose that all singing teachers taught beautiful singing. As a matter of fact, the term Bel Canto has a specialized meaning in the world of music. It is the method of voice training evolved by the Italian choirmasters of the golden age, and originated in the following manner: In those early days of musical culture (Fourth century, A.D.), singing was an important part of the Roman Catholic ritual, and the responsibility of teaching their choristers to sing beautifully fell upon the shoulders of the choirmasters. Apparently all concerned approached the problem with keen intelligence and co-operation, with results that were most gratifying. In those early days, however, women were not permitted to sing in church, and all feminine parts in such choral singing were allotted to the young boys of the choir.
Unfortunately, the choirmasters found that after a few years of singing, and at a time when these boys had by training and experience become most valuable to them, their voices underwent a physical change that necessitated their temporary retirement. Gradually, by experimentation, these early teachers of singing dis-covered that if the adolescent lads were trained to sing in falsetto voice they could continue singing during the entire period of vocal change, and could thus add several years to their professional lives. Better still, these teachers discovered that the singers who had been trained to use the falsetto during their early youth retained something of this placement in their later work as tenors, bassos, and baritones. Indubitably, this form of early training made the mature voice far more resonant and mellow, and compelled the conclusion that head resonance was closely related to falsetto, even though wholly dissimilar.
Acting upon this theory, they now specialized in teaching correct head resonance, and did so with such brilliant result that they discarded all other methods and from that time forth called this new teaching the "Bel Canto" method. Nowadays, when the term is correctly used, it still means the same thing, i.e., the properly placed voice, whose tones are all correctly focused or "pointed." Such placement eliminates the flat, colorless, or muffed tone, and eliminates as well the age-old problem of several registers in the same voice.
As you may have noticed, the untrained or badly trained singer usually will sing the lower phrases of a song in one kind of tone quality, change the placement completely for the middle passages, and for the top notes will use still another point of focus, thus utilizing as many as three different placements, or physical adjustments, during the course of one number. This, needless to say, is wholly wrong, for in artistic and correct singing every tone must match and blend with every other tone, just as a string of pearls must be evenly matched in order to attain its fullest beauty and value.
To attain the tonal match and vocal line there must be a degree of head resonance in every tone. From the lowest note to the highest, which in some instances of coloratura singing is actually a type of falsetto, every tone must be so placed that the voice will be uniform, ascending or descending its scale without perceptible change of placement. As may be readily seen, there is nothing mysterious or complicated about the Bel Canto method, yet many mistakes have been perpetrated in its name. Perhaps the commonest of these mistakes is the general misinterpretation of the simple Italian phrase, con la fronta."
The old Italian teachers told their pupils to sing "with the forehead," directing the tone toward the forehead at the juncture of the nose, to attain the proper overtone. The simple phrase was frequently misunderstood as meaning to sing with the face, or front, and this in turn was supposed by some to mean the outer part of the mouth, or lips. This meant vocalizing with consonants placed before the vowels, such as mi-mi-mi, pi-ma-mo, etc., the singer endeavoring to form the tone on the lips. This practice leads many a singer onto the rocks, for it can do great harm. The lips do not, and can not, form a tone. They must remain mobile at all times in order to aid pronunciation, but this must be after the tone has been formed and directed toward the forehead, where it acquires its resonance from the head cavities. Thus, let the reader bear in mind at all times that any tone formed in or by the mouth alone will be either colorless, muffled, or both. Vowels are of vital importance in singing via the Bel Canto method, but they do not need consonants before them to insure their correct placement.