10/03/2021
Can you imagine teaching a child to dance with its legs tied? Well, that is just what the teacher asks from the voice when he makes a pupil sing, for example, the vowel sound "e" on the high C. One girl whose voice I tried had lost her voice at the "voice trial" in a teacher's house, when he persuaded her several times consecutively to sing "e" on high C, not listening to her prayers and supplications, but saying: "If you cannot say 'e' in the high C you will never sing." Driven to despair, the girl made a superhuman effort, by which she injured her throat for ever.
A Miss G———— was forced to sing every high note on "e". It used to hurt her dreadfully, to burn her after singing, and by and by she could sing no more. Complaining to the teacher, he simply said: "You must do it or else I send you away. I know what is good for you."
To make a man say "a" on his top note [the opening of the man's top notes] and to make a woman say "e" on her top note can only be called cruelty—cruelty perhaps from ignorance, but none the less cruelty—and should be stopped.
(Blanche Marchesi - "Singer's Pilgrimage", 1923 - Chapter XXVI, "Teachers as they are")
