On “The Timbres” you saw the warning that one could not form a tone without dressing it in a costume made up of at least one of the timbres. Elsewhere in his text Garcia further requires students to get dressed in Clear Timbre when beginning to study. He also advises that in the Chest and Middle/Falsetto Registers we should normally sing with clear timbre. The following excerpt includes a footnote (#27) in which he names notable usage of this timbre. I mentioned these names in “Great Singing”.
A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One Page 30
A more complete description of the physiological operations that result in clear timbre application is located on previous pages of his book that are dedicated to selected text from Manuel’s “Mémoire”. This he presented, with the assistance of a few of his students, to the French Academy of Sciences in 1841. He gave this presentation to the French before he started looking down the human throat with a mirror.
Clear Timbre.
*When one wishes to produce the clear timbre, beginning with the first low tone, the pharynx swells more than in the state of rest; but as soon as the voice leaves that first tone to rise to the upper limits of the register in clear timbre, all the parts which constitute the isthmus of the throat tend to come together, following a progressive course of contraction which corresponds to the gradual rise of the larynx and of the voice. In fact, the velum lowers, and the tongue, although it depresses along the mid line toward the posterior part, lifts at the sides and approaches the velum. The form which these movements impart to the resonant tube is that of a flattened arch, of which the narrow opening is presented immediately above the larynx; this tube is, moreover, rather short and slightly rounded along its length. The posterior openings of the nasal fossae are free at this moment because of the lowering of the velum which is maintained through the entire compass of the register which the clear timbre governs.
*Meanwhile. the sonorous column, by the inclined direction which it has received from the larynx, is on its way toward the osseous anterior part of the palate, and the voice, without going to strike in the nasal fossae, must exit as thrust by the velum, ringing and pure. It is necessary at this moment to separate the corners of the mouth.
*The vowels [a], [ɛ], [ɔ], ouvertes à l’italienne, are modifications of the clear timbre which bring about this conformation of the organ.
*The general disposition of the organs, analyzed above, is again reproduced for the falsetto and head registers; however, the space which the isthmus of the throat presents is usually less than for the chest register, a fact which we must attribute in part to the position of the tongue, which begins to depress along the median line only for the head tones at the same time as it rises along the sides to the point of scarcely allowing the uvula to be seen.*
A Complete Treatise on the Art of Singing: Part One Pages lviii-lix
