Vocalist.org archive


From: John Alexander Blyth
Subject: Blowing my own horn a bit, hopefully usefully. was:Re: Tenor timbre vs
baritone timbre
To: VOCALIST <vocalist>
Send reply to: VOCALIST <vocalist>

(Oh, oh! Can you tell things are a little quieter at work for me right
now...this really goes on a bit)

Michael Gordon, and others,
These are wise references, I think.
In the 3rd reference I found:
- to sing tenor, he had to sacrifice some of the heavy elements that
were his most prized vocal asset.
,which resonated with me. It is
reasonable for me to assume that I am a baritone, yet I have been admired
for "floating" high notes and strong low notes. What is the truth about my
voice? I really don't know: in the (spurious) Cantata #142 (Bach or ?Kuhnau)
which we shall perform this evening, I *am* a bass, and fellow singers have
been telling me how much the bass solo suits my voice - though I'm taking
the final low E up an octave in the interest of audibility. When this work
was last performed here, an excellent young baritone whom some suspect of
tenorism (suspected tennorist!) sang the same solo, with a very different
timbre, making even more transpositions, definitely turning it into a
baritone aria. A couple of weekends ago I sang the baritone parts in
Saint-Saens Christmas Oratorio - how it suited my voice! - The week before I
was Don Pasquale in a scene from that. Ditto ditto.
It may be just a matter of being a big fish in a small pond, but I
think it can work: there is such a thing as a bass with weaker low notes
(I've sung low B in Balkan choral repertoire), which I am, as well as
certainly being a baritone. I used to think that I resonated differently for
these "Faecher" but my current (still subject to change) perspective is that
I'm just singing, and the only real difference is in the repertoire and the
choices of whether to enable full "chest" resonance in a particular phrase -
it's a fairly slight and subtle thing. BTW I do look at music phrase by
phrase and have to decide at which point to articulate into "head" tone to
avoid poking the chest tone too high, with resultant ugliness, out of
tune-ness and diminished resonance. So I feel that I sort of graft baritone
me onto bass me.
Phew! Hope it was worth it.
john



At 01:57 16/12/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Dear List:
>
>Aw shoot! - I forgot a colon in my reference and now I fear the
>untechies won't find my post.
>
>Pardon my tooting my own horn, but here are some of my past Vocalist
>posts related to classification and issues like Tenor vs. Baritone (or
>Mezzo vs. Soprano). In the highly unlikely event that I am not your
>personal favorite poster for these subjects, the following serves as a
>quick index to threads of these topics and you can readily find many
>other posts (by other authors) on these same topics.
>
>http://www.vocalist.org/html/9809/msg01189.html
>(perspectives on classification)
>
>http://www.vocalist.org/html/9806/msg00734.html
>(mezzo vs. soprano)
>
>http://www.vocalist.org/html/9806/msg00461.html
>(baritone vs. tenor timbre)
>
>Here's a nice post by Karl Rasmussen:
>http://www.vocalist.org/html/9806/msg00311.html
>(what makes baritone & tenor timbre different?)
>
>Again, try the search engine and google - look for things like "vocal
>classification" and "tenor verus baritone" and "baritone versus tenor"
>and "mezzo versus soprano" etc.
>
>Cheers,
>
>Michael Gordon
>
>
John Blyth
Bass/Baritone (as opposed to Bass-Baritone) etc.
Brandon, Manitoba, Canada