On May 12, 2011, at 9:49 PM, Mark D Lew wrote:
Another observation: In my experience with community choruses, it
is not uncommon for the lowest-voiced women to be in the tenor
section. Those type of choruses typically have plenty of altos and
not enough tenors, so if a woman has a tone low enough to blend
with men's and she doesn't mind, she'll often be asked to sing
tenor.
Sometimes it isn't a matter of being ASKED to sing tenor, but a
matter of INSISTING on singing tenor. It doesn't happen often, but
there are certainly women who have learned over the years that the
tenor range is the "sweet spot" in their voices where they are the
most comfortable. I guess you'd call them the true contraltos (or
"contra-altos").
Remember the good ol' bell-shaped curve that represents darned near
every human characteristic? Well for voice ranges it's a bimodal
curve, a separate curve for each gender. (And yes, a third curve for
children, although they usually get ignored.) And yes, there's an
area of overlap right in the middle, and it's a pretty wide one in
practical terms. (Sez I, with a son who is a professional
countertenor!)
I completely agree that women should not be FORCED to use a part of
their voice in which they are not comfortable, whether it's high or
low. It invites vocal damage. That's why it's always better to
write for voices you know rather than for generic voices according to
some chart. And it's true that out on the fringes of the bell curve
there are fewer and fewer people as you move from one to two standard
deviations from the mean, but those voices DO exist--the bass in the
Pointer Sisters or Carol Channing on one end, Mariah Carey or Yma
Sumac on the other. (And I had a soprano in my university show
ensemble who discovered IN A SOUNDCHECK that she could hit those
Mariah Carey notes, and it was quite a sight to see our sound techs
jump for the board to slam down the faders before she busted a
speaker!!!)
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:john.how...@vt.edu)
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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