NEW MUSICAL PUBLICATIONS.
Vocal Exercises. By A. D. ROCHE. This work is an apt illustration of the usual course of fashionable vocal instruction; which, in truth, is any thing but teaching the art of singing. The very first thing which ought to be acquired, is the power of reading from notes with facility and correctness ; but this no pupil will learn from such an elementary work as this—dealing, as it does, with the ornamental only, and wholly neglecting the useful. It may
be supposed to profess no more, but such is not the case. It pretends to "comprehend exercises on the most important points of the art ;" while, in fact, what is important is omitted. Turns, trills, shakes, there are in abundance ; but no notice, for example, is vouchsafed to the ex
istence of a minor scale, nor to those points which are indispensable to the formation of a singer. If it is desired to acquire the knowledge of a language, the first step is to learn to read it; not to place in the pupil's hands a set of exercises on elocution, and by dint of repetition hammer them into his memory, leaving him in utter ignorance of the construction of a sentence, the distinction of parts of speech, or even the mean ing of the words which, like a parrot, he is taught to utter. In like manner, music is a language in which sounds are expressed or denoted by arbitrary vigils; and the first step to learning to sing, is to acquire the power of connecting the sound with the sign ; then follows, or should follow, the power of analyzing the composition intended to be sung—of tracing its progress from key to key, and so on. The cases are perfectly analogous, and we have stated them thus for the sake of beinggenerally understood. Until these preliminary requisites are acquired, what avails 111r. ItocHE's Studies for the Development of the Voice? Nothing. That is, nothing towards making a singer. They may facilitate the performance of certain songs, which are intended to be taught by dint of repetition, and so fastened on a pupil's memory, but no more. They will never teach him to acquire any knowledge of the language of music—they will never teach him to sing. Air. RocHE's book, it appears, is the result " of a long course of study under an eminent Italian master." No doubt. There are many " eminent Italian masters" in this metropolis who practise a long and very profitable course of public delusion ; and numberless pupils daily terminate their " studies," ignorant of the very rudiments of the vocal art. Wise in their generation, their vocation is to profit by the prevalent ignorance on this subject : ours is, as far as we can, to dispel it.
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