> i am under the impression that mark was refering to the nature > of the discussion, not countertenors.
I hope that is true. It wouldn't be the first time I was overly sensitive.
> i am sure that someone who bothers to quote drew minter, as well > as give the reference for further reading, is not someone who is > hostile to counter-tenors.
I'd love to believe that, but the last few messages from Mark felt to me like they were designed to wear down my credibility rather than at building dialogue and understanding. Let me break it down from my perspective:
He challenged my assertion that castrati did not often sing choral alto parts. Actually, what I found problematic was that he inferred from my post that I was saying there was no such thing as an alto castrato. Later in that same post I specifically mentioned that some were altos, but that they weren't the majority source of choral altos. It felt like he wasn't reading my messages for content, rather that he was looking for points he could discredit.
Next he called the idea of a 'medium lyric countertenor' ridiculous and that it smacked of 'ego'. He also said a sub-categorization of CTs was silly, since there is no such thing as a dramatic or soprano CT. First off, I myself had already said there weren't enough dramatic CTs out there to warrant that particular label...again the sense he didn't read past the first paragraph. Second, there *are* soprano CTs - it's fine that he didn't know that, but his challenge seemed more an assertion than an honest question.
The 'fach' talk about CTs was simply exploratory and did not deserve to be shot down so quickly. Someone had asked me how *would* I categorize Daniels. As Graham mentioned, CTs aren't currently included in fach system. But don't we deserve to be categorized to protect our voices/careers from overly ambitious houses? This topic was prematurely cut off. What I'd love is to start categorizing common operatic CT rep that suit various types of CTs. We have "help me find good rep for a lyric mezzo audition" type threads all the time. This would be no different.
Finally, there's the "blather" message itself. The Drew Minter quote was that countertenors were probably nothing like castrati, which is a statement that would seem in direct contradiction to my recent theorizing that some CT who kept their childhood head voice might be using the same mechanism castrati did, at least in the upper range. It didn't seem to me Mark's message was posted for discussion - there were so many interesting questions that could have arisen from this message, such as "Why is Minter saying this after a career specializing in Senesino and Guadagni arias?" or "How curious that he would say this when he himself so strongly encouraged Daniels to pursue a career in opera?" Instead, Mark associated countertenors with blather in his subject line and posted the quote without any explanation. Maybe he meant nothing by it, but it felt mean-spirited.
Again, I could be just crazy and hyper-sensitive. If so, I'd be glad 1) to know it and 2) to apologize profusely for wasting everyone's time with my emotional blather :-)
Tako Oda, counter*tenor (how do you like the asterisk, mike?)
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