At 7:30 PM -0500 5/12/11, Aaron Rabushka wrote:
OK--as long as we're OT, does anyone have any information about low
f's for choral altos? I noticed that Webern takes them down there
(twice in the 6th movement of Cantata #2, opus 31), and also that
Verdi has them bottom out at the g. In which cases is the f
practical?
A complex question, Aaron. Most instruments come from the factory
with the low range limits built in. The human voice does not. It
depends entirely on the size of the vocal mechanism and the vocal
folds, so there IS a bottom limit, but it's a limit for the
individual voice and not necessarily for a CLASS of singers that we
label altos. So there's really no pat answer.
Confused? Welcome to the club!
So, practical answer. It depends entirely on the voices involved,
which can and will vary from one ensemble to the next. And most
"altos" in college have voice teachers who want them to open up the
upper range and don't pay much attention to the lower. I'm kind of
surprised that Verdi wrote down to the G3, since most of the lower
opera roles are for mezzos, not real contraltos. But if you're
writing for publication--for a generic chorus and for editors who
want to see charts with NO extreme ranges whatsoever--stay
conservative.
When I directed The Belles of Indiana I experimented for a year, and
then settled on an inverted pyramid of voices: 3 first sopranos, 4
2nd sopranos, 5 mezzos, and 6 altos. It worked very well, because
the first sopranos tended to have had the most training and the altos
the least. (And also I don't care for a soprano-heavy sound. I much
prefer a balanced or a richer sound with the 1st sopranos not
dominating.) And I wrote down to F3 for the altos (but not for the
mezzos) a lot, and down to D3 on occasion. Of course I had darned
good 1st sopranos, too, and wrote for them up to high C6 and D6
because I always had one who could hit them without straining, and
editors didn't like THAT, either!
Writing for a mixed show ensemble here I always had good altos.
Except for one year that my non-choreographed Studio Singers had 4
women with wide ranges who could sing anything, so I rotated them on
each new arrangement! But another year my tenor section was a young
man who was actually a type of countertenor--an haute-contre--and a
young woman with a terrific sounding chest voice. They worked well
together.
But to get even more practical: high school altos, down to G3 at the
lowest, and not very often. There will be a few real altos, but also
sopranos who are singing alto because they can read music!
College altos, down to G3 at will, down to F3 on occasion should be OK.
Community choirs, older women with some training, down to E3, maybe
Eb3. Age does make a difference.
Sweet Adeline barbershop choruses, mostly middle-aged or older women,
many of whom have smoked for 20 years, D3 is no problem, Db3 possible.
BUT, with a few individual exceptions, you are not talking about loud
passages, because a lot of choral altos are not really altos at all
(just as a lot of choral basses are really baritones, but there's no
other place to put them!). For loud passages, move everything I've
said up a whole step or a minor 3rd.
For the Webern, do we know whether he assumed a pitch of A=440?
Verdi may well not have. And was Webern truly writing for chorus, or
for soloists, small ensemble, or chamber chorus. In that case you
can pretty well assume hand-picked voices. Verdi was writing for
trained opera singers, many of whom refuse to call themselves altos
because there are so few roles labeled as being for altos.
Oh, and since the F3 gets well down into tenor range, you'll find it
used MUCH less in SATB or expanded SATB writing, because it's more
effective in tenor or baritone voices. But in women-only writing you
can pretty much trust what I've suggested above.
John
--
John R. Howell, Assoc. Prof. of Music
Virginia Tech Department of Music
College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences
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
"We never play anything the same way once." Shelly Manne's definition
of jazz musicians.
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