On May 18, 2011, at 10:27 AM, John Howell wrote:

> The only problem I can see is that in a huge majority of standard choral 
> repertoire, because of the imitation of lines between men's and women's 
> voices, they ARE used with octave displacements.  In ALL of the polyphonic 
> choruses in "Messiah," for instance, and in the choruses that included 
> trumpets, and had to be in D major because Handel's trumpets were in D, both 
> tenors and sopranos have to handle high As.  (

Yes, and the same for fugues.  It's definitely convenient to write the voice 
parts so that the men and women mimic each other.

But in your Messiah example, I think those high A's inspire more sense of 
"omigosh, that's a high note!" in the tenor section than in the soprano section.

mdl
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