At 5:17 PM +1000 7/21/05, keith helgesen wrote:
No-one would surely claim that a counter-tenor sounds the same as a female soprano- nor would they want to. One often hears of the shock-horror of purists at the news of 'femsops' singing parts written for countertenors. Quite right too.
Hi, Keith! No, no one would claim that the sound is the same. So? The sound of the human voice is infinitely variable, and no two sopranos, especially with limited training and regardless of gender, sound "the same." But yes, the sound of Chanticleer or the Kings Singers is not the same as it would be with female sopranos. On the other hand, Monteverdi's "L'incoronatione de Poppea" calls for both Poppea and Nero to be sopranos, one male and one female, and the entire effect is lost when Nerone is sung by a tenor, turning it into early Verdi!
As for purists, those of us who are involved in early music and performance practice questions face a problem that's basically insolluable. Renaissance (and baroque) sacred music was written for all male voices, with boys, male falsettists (and you can tell the difference by looking at the ranges), and very, very seldom castrati on the superius part. And the boys' voices did not break until 4 or 5 years later than they do today. They had existing choirs, and the music was written to sound well with those existing choirs.
We, too, have existing choirs, but outside the Anglican tradition of choirs of boys and men ours are SATB mixed-gender choirs. The biggest problems are not with the soprano parts (although music written for boys' unchanged voices can have a tessitura that strains the voices of average female sopranos--especially true in Purcell), but the alto parts, which often cover the same range as the tenor parts and go too low for healthy singing by female altos. It's like transcribing orchestral music for band: yes, it can be done and often sound quite good, but inevitably it sounds DIFFERENT! (And asking clarinets to play violin figurations is cruel and unusual punishment!!)
Sorry- while the politics stinks- the decision is IMHO correct.
Only if you happen to like unthinking gender stereotyping. A correct decision would allow singers to sing the parts for which their voices are naturally suited.
John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
