Manuel Garcia Jr: a clear-sighted observer of human voice production

Before Garcia, only a few notions of vocal production can be found in earlier singing treatises. In those days the authors wrote mainly upon the art of ornamentation and the rules of good language utterance. In the beginning of the 19th century, a radical change occurred with the development of scientific experiments. Several doctors or physicists drew up theories on human voice production, which were similar to those of sound production in woodwind instruments: flute, reed, or membranous lips. Yet, as the experiments on living human beings were impossible, the true nature of the vocal source remained under discussion. In addition, specific questions arose in regard to singing: Are the different registers produced by different vibrating sources or are they due to modifications of a single vibrating system? What are the reasons for a variation in loudness and in pitch, and how are the variations of voice timbre produced? Facing the contradictory opinions of the most famous scientists, Manuel Garcia Jr showed an astonishing insight as early as 1840, when he wrote his first 'Mémoire sur la voix humaine' presented to the Académie des Sciences de Paris. Being altogether an anatomist, a singer, and a great pedagogue, he could accurately observe the physiological phenomena of human voice in the right way. As the first user of the laryngoscope, he wrote a second paper presented at the Royal Society of London, in 1855, in which he confirmed his previous views. All along the different issues of his well-known singing method, we may see the lucidity and the improvements of Garcia's ideas. The only concession he made to the singers is related to the famous 'Fausset-tête' register, an unfortunate word that was bound to induce confusion later.