François Delsarte

François Alexandre Nicolas Chéri Delsarte (19 November 1811 – 20 July 1871) was a French musician and teacher. Though he achieved some success as a composer, he is chiefly known as a teacher in singing and declamation. He went on to develop an acting style that attempted to connect the inner emotional experience of the actor with a systematized set of gestures and movements based upon his own observations of human interaction. This “Delsarte method” became so popular that it was taught throughout the world, particularly in America, by many teachers who did not fully understand or communicate the emotional connections behind the gestures, and as a result the method devolved into melodramatic posing, the kind in response to which Konstantin Stanislavski would later develop his inner psychological methods.

Delsarte was born in Solesmes, Nord. He became a pupil at the Paris Conservatory, was for a time a tenor in the Opéra Comique, and composed a few songs. While studying singing at the Conservatoire, he became unsatisfied with the arbitrary and posed style of acting taught there. He began to study how humans actually moved, behaved and responded to various emotional and real-life situations. By observing people in real life and in public places of all kinds, he discovered certain patterns of expression, eventually called the Science of Applied Aesthetics. This consisted of a thorough examination of voice, breath, movement dynamics, encompassing all of the expressive elements of the human body.

At the close of the 19th century much was said and written in America regarding Delsarte gymnastics. But François Delsarte was a teacher of emotional expression through voice and gesture, not the inventor of a system or method of gymnastics. "Relaxing" exercises and training in poise and in breathing control form a part of the necessary preparation for effective appearance on the platform or the stage; but complete physical education of the growing child and youth could never be accomplished by such means, and the adult requires a much broader range of motor activities. Therefore, Delsarte gymnastics was an improper American application of the theories of François Delsarte.

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