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From: Tako Oda
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Subject: castrati
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

> Can someone please tell me how castration alters the voice? I read
> that about 4 thousand boys were castrated in the 17th century every
> year to enable them to have the most beautiful voices to sing in the
> churches.

I doubt that the castration itself gave them beautiful voices, although
there are theories that the elasticity of the non-calcified rib cages
gave the castrati super human breath control. The real reason they were
amazing is probably that they were locked up in conservatories from a
young age. With 4,000 castrati given 10+ years of hard core training,
naturally you will end up with some amazing singers.

What the castration did was to make certain secondary sexual
characteristics less likely to happen at puberty: facial hair, increase
in size of genitals, change of voice. The last one is a two part thing.
The presence of (lots) of testosterone (everyone has some) causes A) the
larynx to grow about 30% more than a woman's B) neurological changes
that allow for a new kind of muscular coordination to take advantage of
the larger larynx.

The "rewiring" in the brain along with the heavier vocal cords allow for
a speaking voice about an octave lower than a boy's. Along with that is
(typically) the loss of the upper voice. Tragically, some castrati boys'
voices changed anyway, and intact men have conversely been known
sometimes not to lose their upper voice (not to be confused with
falsetto). These are the countertenors who are using a true head voice,
and therefore have a full dynamic range in their upper notes.

Here is a good web page reference on soprano countertenors and castrati:

http://www.mpae.gwdg.de/~kopp/disc/bibliogr.html

-Tako