| Date sent: Fri, 7 Jan 00 22:16:37 -0000 From: "Nicola E." To: "VOCALIST" <vocalist> Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Hi List,
The Brahms Serious Songs thread has inspired some questions and thoughts, below. However, I'm not referring to Brahms or the Serious Songs in the following; these are thoughts about music in general....
I would be interested to hear of any music where the composer has explicitly said they don't mind which type of voice(s) it is sung by.
I'm also interested in the idea that when composers have had particular performers in mind, perhaps we can't rule out the possibility that sometimes they might have preferred (or at least been happy with) other types of voice for the same piece had they been available? I'd love to go back in time and ask composers whether they really minded who sang their music, or whether they would have thought "Four times the number of voice types - that quadruples the performance opportunities for my music! I'll go for it!" I wonder what the survey statistics would be and how they would reflect the different historical musical eras.
Personally I don't think we'll be hit by a bolt of lightning if we decide to use new arrangements/transpositions/other voice-types in composers' music; in order that more people will be able to perform it; nor do I think we should feel at all guilty about singing pieces which were originally written in other keys or for other voice types. These pieces will still get plenty of performances in their original formats, and there's no reason why we shouldn't maintain an awareness of what the composer's original material was, as well as performing it in new ways.
Nicola
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