There is now more need than ever that the teacher of music or elocution should be intellectual and not mechanical in his methods. Technique is mechanism, but it should be mechanism subordinated to ideas. Technique is essential to art, but it is not art. Art is the soul, technique the body. The soul will be unknown to the world without technique; hence the author strives in this book to teach the principles on which a sound vocal technique rests, but only that what is best in the soul be not hidden, that the one noble or poetic thought shall be multiplied a thousand times--indeed, that if it be sufficiently worthy, it shall, like Tennyson's Brook, "go on forever." To believe, on the one hand, that the highest art can be attained with a very mediocre technique, and, on the other, that a perfect technique is the main object of musical training, are alike great and mischievous errors. The author has been asked frequently such questions as the following: "When is the best time to practise? How long should a singer practise at one time, and for how long during a single day? Should one practise softly (_piano_) or vigorously (_forte_)?"--etc. Often the student is puzzled by contradictory opinions on this subject. One celebrated prima donna states that she never practises more than one hour a day; another, equally distinguished, that she has often spent several hours in almost continuous strenuous practice. What is the student to believe, and whom to follow? No one, for no two persons are alike. All the above questions can be safely and surely answered in the light of science and experience combined, but such questions cannot be settled by the dictum of any singer, teacher, or writer, nor does the experience, in itself, of any one person furnish an adequate guide for others.