This question has vexed me while watching period war movies - how did the kings/generals give long impassioned speeches to their subjects before the invention of public address system? Did they have abnormal lungs, loud voice? Or did they install human “repeaters” among the crowd?
Regards,
Vikash Sinha, India
“Blessed are the Cheesemakers?”
I think it was a combination of loud voices, good acoustics (hopefully), and publishing the text of the speech in the newspaper later (if you’re talking about an era with newspapers).
I swear, this was the very first thing I thought of while mousing over the post.
As far as speeches by battlefield commanders in the ancient world, specifically Greek and Roman, there is always a debate among historians if they even happened, or embellished by later writers. Even Thucydides, perhaps the most accurate, has his doubters about whether he reported speeches completely accurately, or was explaining to his readers what people were thinking. One interesting speech is the one reported by Tacitus from Roman general Suetonius Paulinus on the eve of the battle or Watling Street in the first century A.D. It’s a lot more direct and stripped of fiery rhetoric than the usual speeches, as compared to his opponent Queen Boudica. Since Tacitus’s father-in-law Agricola was there, it is quite probable he reported Suetonius’s words accurately (most of that rabble are woman, keep calm, remember your training, don’t go chasing after loot, we’ll get plenty after we win).
More recent public speakers without electrical sound systems such as Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt had high pitched voices which tend to carry better than deeper voices.
It’s not really a matter of strong lungs-- It’s just training. Anyone can learn to project their voice better. In our age of electronic amplification, though, it’s seldom done any more.
It’s all in the diaphragm, dude. I can easily speak to an entire high school gym without a mike. All it takes is training.
I’d say most of the people in our lunchroom could address troops without any problems.
Town criersplayed an important part in disseminating public news and official pronouncements.
Trumpets, bugles, drums and the like allowed military commanders to signal pre-arranged instructions and general intent without relying on messengers and the human voice
Anecdote time: Sometime in the late 80’s, early 90’s, I saw Les Mis for the first time. Valjean’s microphone went out three notes into “Bring Him Home”. It went, “GOD ON HIIIIII - sisscracklepop hear my prayer…” The actor noticed the problem, changed his position slightly and suddenly we could hear him perfectly all the way back in the second balcony nosebleed student seats…and he didn’t lose a bit of the soft tenderness of the song.
As someone mentioned upthread, high notes travel to the human ear better over distances, so I’m sure it helped that it’s a high falsetto song. But to this day I remain impressed that at least *some *of the Broadway singers have the old training to do it unplugged in a large auditorium.
It must have been Craig Schulman or Mark McKerracher, but darned if I can remember exactly what year it was.
Actually, on thinking about it, strong enunciation is probably even more important than mere volume. But that’s a learned skill, too.