accentuation of single words. Thus, at the conclusion of an affirmative sentence the voice usually falls about a fourth from the medium pitch, and at the end of an interrogatory sentence rises about a fifth above the usual speaking tone. Words specially accented are usually a tone higher than the rest, &c. In public speaking and in dramatic representations these variations of sound are more numerous and complicated, and the inventor of the modern Recitative, _Jacob Perri_, even declares that he formed it by imitating in singing these variations of sound, in order to restore again the declamation of the ancient tragedians.[16] Tedious and intolerable as it is to hear so much sing-song in common speech, it is equally wearisome when people drone on always in a dry speaking tone at the same pitch, without ever letting the voice rise or fall. The most interesting matter thus delivered will lull the hearer to sleep. It cannot be denied that a rich field is here offered for farther scientific observation, and those natural laws which lie at the foundation of the art of singing may certainly be applied with advantage to the perfecting of the mode of speaking, especially in those who have to speak in public.[17] To extend these remarks any farther does not come within our present purpose, which is concerned exclusively with the voice in singing and its cultivation. For this reason I leave unnoticed many most interesting phenomena relating to music in general, but not particularly to the culture of the voice, although they are of the deepest interest to the educated musician. [7] Tyndall. [8] The concert pitch in different places and at different periods has undergone great changes. The Grand Opera in Paris in the year 1700 established 404 vibrations to a second as the concert pitch of a¹, which gradually rose higher, as the wind instruments became more perfect and had a more important part assigned them in concerted music, until 1858 it had attained the height of 448 vibrations in a second. In this same year (1858) at Berlin and St. Petersburg it reached its greatest height--451½ vibrations in the second. In Mozart's time, in Vienna, it had only 422 and 428 vibrations. [9] As long as melody alone was aimed at in music, and was accompanied only by octaves, the tones preserved their natural purity. But with the rise of harmony (the accord of different tones) there was rendered necessary a more regular system, to which the purity of the tones was sacrificed.