In most of the choirs (not community choirs) I've sung in over the past few decades (mostly specialising in Renaissance music, but not always) the altos have often been asked to sing down to f and sometimes e. With music of this period it's often up to the director to decide whether to put tenors or altos on some of the inner parts, sometimes putting one of each on a line. For example, the Brumel "Earthquake" mass is notoriously difficult to assign parts to, having four (?) inner parts which are generally too high for tenors and too low for altos.
The altos in the choir I sing with currently seem to prefer the lower notes, many of them not happy going higher than soprano c or d. Mind you having a couple of male altos helps with the low notes. Frank On 13 May 2011 10:30, Aaron Rabushka <[email protected]> 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? > > Aaron J. Rabushka > [email protected] > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Finale mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale > _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
