‘There are those whose habit it is to lead songs with unsightly gestures, thinking that they know distinguished customs and a special manner of the singers. Some mark the tactus with both palms widely spaced, as if in the quarrel of the two of them one could not attack the other’s hair with his nails, and the extended palm threatens lethal battle to its unarmed double. I have also seen many marking the tactus with a stamping foot, like a sated pack-horse who, playing in the green, stumbles in the grass and lustfully runs riot. Some imitate a swan when leading music; just as he sings with a ben ..read more

‘Our quarrel with excess of tremolo is twofold. When passion is simulated by tremor, it is forgotten that an Englishman, when he is moved, does not tremble. He does weird things, uses queer words, or gives ordinary words an unusual turn ; or he wrests the matter in hand to his grave of anxious thoughts, and so makes them mean the more to him for their deep root in his practical life. People who make their voice tremble do, therefore, just the unconvincing thing. They ask us to believe that emotion has deprived them of the control of it, whereas we all know that real emotion would have made it ..read more

‘The Music, lovely science, awakens the spirits and comforts people. There is nothing as sweet as hearing different voices intoned without discord. If people in Castilla sang by reason, like musicians, we would be better tuned. But since everyone sings “by ear” [por uso], when one person sings in the soft hexachord the other one sings in the hard hexachord, and when one person sings on a line, the other one sings on a space. The fabordón way of singing [el cantar fabordón] and the out of tune playing [sonar al destempre] reveal what we deserve.’ ‘La música, sciencia enamorada, despierta el esp ..read more

‘Many great lovers of Singing are discouraged from Learning for want of a good Voice; which by experience I know they ought not to be, the worst Voice imaginable, being improvable by a frequent exercise of it in an artificial manner. The First thing I would have a Schollar to observe, is to be very carefull of tuning his Notes right; that being the foundation of singing true, for though a man has the best Voice in the world, he had better be silent with it, than by singing out of Tune, make himself ridiculous to any judicious Company. That which we should in the next place observe, is how to H ..read more