The guttural, or throat, quality is the harsh, grating, rasping utterance to which the voice tends in the expression of hatred, contempt, revenge, and loathing. It is often combined with aspirated quality in the expression of extreme impatience or disgust, intense rage, and extreme contempt. Oh, that the slave had forty thousand lives, You shall die, base dog! and that before Signior Antonio, many a time and óft, Still have I bórne it with a patient shrúg, And all for use of that which is mine dwn. A cur can lend thrée thousand dúcats?" or Say this: Fair sír, you spát on me on Wednesday lást; V. THE FALSETTO. The falsetto is the thin, sharp, high-pitched tone produced when the voice breaks, or gets above its natural compass. It is used by men when they imitate the voices of women and children. It is the tone suitable for the expression of old age, sickness, feebleness, pain, and helpless terror. 1. "My child! my child!" with sobs and tears, 2. Billy—where are you, Billy, I say? Come, Billy, come home to your best of mothers!" 3. And even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried, "Hurrah!" 4. Mr. Orator Puff had two tones in his voice, The one squeaking thus, and the other down so; In each sentence he uttered he gave you your choice; For one half was B alt, and the rest G below. Oh! oh! Orator Puff, One voice for an orator's surely enough! "Oh! save!" he exclaimed, in his he-and-she tones, "Help me out! help me out! I have broken my bones!" "Help you out!" said a stranger, who passed, "what a bother! Why, there's two of you there; can't you help one another?" Oh! oh! Orator Puff, One voice for an orator's surely enough! When the voice slides through the interval of a semitone only, it gives the plaintive tones expressive of sadness, grief, or pathetic entreaty. If the inflection runs through the interval of a tone and a half—a minor third in music—it becomes more plaintive, and marks a stronger degree of pathos or sadness; and when the inflection extends into the minor fifth, it denotes still stronger pathetic feeling. The semitone, then, is the plaintive tone in reading, corresponding to the minor key in music. It should be used delicately, for, in excess, it runs into the whine, or becomes the affectation of cant. SEMITONE DRILL. 1. Sound the vocals, ā, ē, ī, ō, ū, three times, on the interval between C and C sharp; then on the minor third; then on the minor fifth. 2. Count from one to twenty on the same notes as above. EXAMPLES OF SEMITONE. 1. O come in life, or come in death, O lost my love, Elizabeth. 2. For I am poor and miserably old. 3. How many hired servants of my father's have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father and will say to him, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants!" 4. MY CHILD. I can not make him dead! Is ever bounding round my study chàir; With tears, I turn to him, The vision vánishes, he is not there! I walk my parlor floor, And, through the open door, To give the boy a cáll; And then bethink me that he is not there! 5. HIAWATHA. O the long and dreary Winter! O the cold and cruel Winter! Ever thicker, thicker, thicker Fell the snow o'er all the landscape, All the earth was sick and famished; Hungry was the sky above them, PIERPONT. And the hungry stars in heaven Like the eyes of wolves glared at them! "Give your children food, O Father! 6. BABIE BELL. It came upon us by degrees, We saw its shadow ere it fell, LONGFELLOW. We shuddered with unlanguaged pain, And all our thoughts ran into tears, Like sunshine into rain. We cried aloud in our belief, And perfect grow through grief." 7. MACBETH. To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, ALDRICH SHAKESPEARE. |