Sean, this former tenor has just tried d'amour me plains from LSA Q, as you
requested. I tried it in my (now) natural bass voice which goes to G below
middle C and is most comfortable from C below up to g above. Then tried the
soft ("light") ballad voice an octave up. It worked either way, although I
confess as a newbie to the lute I played it on the harp tuned to G.> Thanks for the positive responses. It would be hard to ask a tenor to sing > out of his range these days esp for any extended duration but to sing > "lighter" is perhaps possible. "Lighter" would be more authentic to the era. The modern trained tenor with the powerful voice is a relatively new instrument. It is probably apochryphal, but it is said that Mozart compared the "bel canto" tenor to a chicken having its neck wrung. There is no way to know the vocal sounds of the day, but one would have to believe that the singer wouln't be expected to overpower the lute. And it is likely that the vocals might resemble the modern Irish "sean-nos" (old style), a light and melodic sound that tells a story or sets a mood. > > Btw, if any tenor/luters would like to try the D'amour me plains that's > included in this issue of the LSA, I would appreciate any observations. And FYI, and that of others on the list, I do sight read for voice. And can briefly reach my old tenor parts at the annual reunion of my college singing group of fifty years ago (when my range was three octaves from baritone to tenor). The move to instrumental, the lute and the harp, is because I have no intent of giving up the making of song and music as my voice, the primary instrument, deteriorates with age. The piece in question seems to be a bit of a bridge (vocally) between the earlier "chant" format where words weren't perfectly matched to the melody (the drawn out words going into "runs") and the more modern songs where the words set the meter. Interesting, I'll have to work on singing it. Best, Jon
