…the most beautiful tone and the most perfect breath-control is when the tone is initiated in an absolute stillness of the entire body.

Not a rigid stillness, mark you, but a perfect repose, while it prevails for only an infinitesimal fraction of a second, is enough to insure the right conditions for an initiation of tone without either explosiveness or escape of unvocalized breath.

Clara Doria, aka Clara Kathleen Rogers, “My Voice and I” (1910).