On Jul 21, 2005, at 3:15 AM, dhbailey wrote:
Does that logic apply to the women singing tenor, also? Remember,
they are barred as well.
Definitely. I'd be much more predisposed against a woman singing tenor
than against a man singing soprano. I can think of three or four male
altos I've known whom I would love to have lead my choir because they
make the sound I'd want to build a section around. Of the (many)
female tenors I've heard, a few are ones I could add as another
supporting voice in a large tenor section, but I've never heard any
that makes me say, "yes, that's the tenor sound I want".
--
Thanks to all who set me straight about the all-state choir vs the high
school choir. That certainly makes a difference, though I still don't
think it's as cut and dried as some have suggested.
I agree with John Howell that any individual can be rejected for
specific reasons which might be correlated with his sex, without the
need for a blanket rule banning the sex outright. The idea of
auditioning the voices blind is interesting, but I think it's
ultimately unrealistic.
My main concern with taking a countertenor or a female alto would be
what that voice does to my overall sound and how hard it will be to
blend with the group as a whole. My next concern is the related issue
of how easily it will be to coach them all when I'm probably not going
to have much chance to work with any of them individually. It's bad
enough trying to get results from an entire section when what you
really need is for *these* girls to sing "brighter" and *those* girls
to sing "darker", or get *these* guys to have more confidence and sing
out more while *those* guys need pull back and listen more. Add on top
of that one or more singers who are trying to produce the same sound
with a significantly different vocal instrument, and you've doubled the
difficulty. The difference between this and working with two girls
with entirely different techniques and instruments may not be of a
fundamentally different nature, as someone pointed out, but it is of a
different magniturde.
Secondary in consideration, but not entirely irrelevant, is stage
presentation. I'm perfectly happy to put a guy in a tux and let him
stand among the blouses -- that's fine -- but if you're doing
repertoire from opera or musical theater, you're liable to run into
pieces where "the women" sing one text and "the men" sing another.
Then you've got an interesting challenge. Does the countertenor sing
the female text anyway? Do you try to alter the words for him? If
you're doing nothing but baroque then this is no problem -- in fact,
even for opera excerpts I'm probably delighted to have a countertenor
for Monteverdi, Handel, Rameau, etc. -- but what happens when you do
the Rodgers & Hammerstein pops half of the concert?
If it were up to me, I'd almost certainly take the countertenor anyway.
I like doing interesting things, and it's certainly interesting. My
objection is to those people who are acting like a boy singing soprano
should be exactly like a girl singing soprano, and anyone who says
otherwise is being gender oppressive. It's *not* the same. It's very
different and it's more challenging to work with. Me, I like embracing
differences and challenges, but you can't just say it doesn't matter
and everyone should be treated the same. It does matter, and it is
different.
That's why the whole business of auditioning blind seems a little
fanciful to me. We talk about fairness as if every child should be
judged on his or her voice and musical talent alone, but that's already
unrealistic. It is an everyday reality for singers that there will be
times when you're cast for how you look, how tall you are, what color
your hair is, how well you compare or contrast with the other guy who
is already cast, etc, etc. Even in a chorus, the singer's physical
presence is part of the product. It's not like an orchestra where
everyone is hiding in the pit wearing black and the only thing that
matters is how they sound. The fact of being a boy singing soprano is
significant. Sometimes it will be a plus, sometimes it will be a
minus, but it's almost never going to be something that everyone is
blind to, nor should it be.
That's my thinking, anyway.
mdl
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